#Ursula McCarty

[jessiescock]

I do NOT like Melissa McCarty as ursula. She cant sing, she doesnt serve ANY cunt. Plus they made her look very bad but that's not her fault i guess. But idk who else could have been considered for the part bc Disney only wants to hire already famous actors and there's. not exactly an abundance of famous fat women in hollywood

[larryland]

REVIEW: "The Whipping Man" at Oldcastle

REVIEW: “The Whipping Man” at Oldcastle

[darkcolinodonorgasm]

My brain just dinged like a microwave as I spotted another thing Colin could do: The Little Mermaid live action.

Now, I bet they'll announce the cast at the end of August for D23 Expo, and only today the rumour about Melissa McCarty being cast as Ursula came out. It's not official, but she's in the talks to.

Now, Colin is a very good actor, he's been with Disney a lot since OUAT was Disney, and they know him, he can sing, he has experience on working on ships, he plays, he loves dogs, he has blue eyes and dark hair, and since they won't cast a 16 year old as Ariel because for every princess they aim for a bit older actress - Lily, Naomi, Emma with the only exception of Elle - so it wouldn't be strange for him to be Eric.

Disney keeps secrets quite well - Avengers anyone? - and it wouldn't be a surprise to me, now that I think about it, if Colin were to be announced.

Now he could be doing press stuff for a very much late August article or a September issue, or just a photoshoot that will be used to "introduce" him to those who don't know him.

At this moment, he may be doing chemistry tests for Ariel because they already hired him, and this may be happening in LA.

I may be very much wrong and completely off track, but gimme him as Eric and I'll lay my heart at your feet.

Aehm.

[rightquestionsrighttime]

New Post has been published on Lets Talk Social Media

New Post has been published on http://letstalksocialmedia.co/networks-whitechapel-documents-of-contemporary-art/

Networks (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art)

Buy Now!

$22.74

The dawn of the electronic media age in the 1960s began a cultural shift from the modernist grid and its determination of projection and representation to the fluid structures and circuits of the network, presenting art with new challenges and possibilities. This anthology considers art at the center of network theory, from the 1960s to the present.

Artists have used the “space of flows” as a basis for creating utopian scenarios, absurd yet functional propositions or holistic planetary visions. Others have explored the economies of reciprocity and the ethics of generosity, in works that address changed conditions of codependence and new sites of social negotiation. The “infra-power” of the network has been a departure point for self-organized counterculture and the creation of new types of agency. And a “poetics of connectivity” runs through a diverse range of work that addresses the social and material complexity of networks through physical structures and ambient installation, the mapping of the Internet, or the development of robots and software that take on the functions of artist or curator.

Artists surveyed includeJoseph Beuys, Ursula Biemann, Heath Bunting, Critical Art Ensemble, Fernand Deligny, Peter Fend, Gego, Jobim Jochimsen, Koncern, Christine Kozlov, Pia Lindman, Mark Lombardi, Diana McCarty, Marta Minujín, Aleksandra Mir, Tanja Ostojic, Ola Pehrson, Walid Raad, Artüras Raila, Hito Steyerl, Tomaso Tozzi, Suzanne Treister, Ultra Red, Wolf Vostell, Stephen Willats

Writers include Jane Bennett, Hakim Bey, Luc Boltanski, Manuel Castells, Ève Chiapello, Guy Debord, Umberto Eco, Okwui Enwezor, Michael Hardt, Bruno Latour, Marshall McLuhan, Marcel Mauss, Reza Negarestani, Antonio Negri, Sadie Plant, Lane Relyea, Craig Saper, Saskia Sassen, Pit Schultz, Steven Shaviro, Tiziana Terranova, Paolo Virno

[mill3nniumforc3]

RIP Krista Diane Underwood, age 91 days

Loving daughter of the late Arthur “Artie” Page and Kelly Underwood. Beloved mother of Margaret “Maggie” Maynard (Thomas “Tommy”), Franklin “Frank” (Claire), Lewis (Taylor), Sara Welch (Frederick “Fred), Bethany Cody (Buck), Jessalynn Kay (Leon), Ursula Thorpe (Gavin), Fiona Ogre (Shrek), Kassidi Roland (Xavier), Greta, Nicholas, and Parker. Grandmother of Morgan and Kara Maynard, Kirsten “Kizzie,” Dustin (deceased), and Marlene Underwood, Victoria “Vickie” and Torrey (deceased) Underwood, Andrew, Ashley, Chana, Jacklyn, and Elise Welch, Richard “Rickie” and Shayla Cody, Deborah “Debbie,” Roxanne (deceased), and Rocco “Rocky” Kay, Bianca Thorpe, Shelley and Megan Ogre, Antony and Clarence Roland, and Monica and Courteney Underwood.

Ex-lover of Dejuan McCarty (deceased), Gilbert Scales (deceased), Darryl Bethea (deceased), Norris Littlejohn, Ramin Thornton (deceased), Frank Snyder (deceased), and Lucas Messer (deceased). (everyone has a twin except for Ursula and Parker, who are singletons, so no rules were broken)

The challenge continues with Greta.

[larryland]

REVIEW: "Proof" at Oldcastle Theatre Company

REVIEW: “Proof” at Oldcastle Theatre Company

[larryland]

REVIEW: "Red" at Oldcastle Theatre Company

REVIEW: “Red” at Oldcastle Theatre Company

[larryland]

Oldcastle Producing Artistic Director Eric Peterson has written a play about the ongoing local PFOA crisis. In case you don’t live locally, plants in North Bennington VT, Hoosick Falls, NY, and various other local towns used chemicals that leached PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid) into the soil and eventually the groundwater. Studies have found correlation between high PFOA exposure and six health outcomes: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

While all water sources are effected, the financial burden on those with wells are obviously larger than for those on town water/sewer hook-ups alike. And trying to sell real estate or attract new business (let alone retain existing ones) in a PFOA effected area is hopeless.

Fun stuff, huh? And very personal, timely stuff for the majority of Oldcastle’s audiences. Peterson had to find a way to package this story so that it wouldn’t be either depressing or enraging. So he has written the bad news – and there is plenty of it –as personal stories told by a variety of men and women, from single parents to state senators, all smoothly played by Patrick Ellison Shea, and Natalie Wilder. These monologues, which are undoubtedly fact-based but not verbatim transcripts of interviews of people affected, are slipped in between scenes of two young and eager journalists who, with the assistance of two wise elders of the town of Walloomsac, Vermont, buy the dying local daily newspaper and doggedly pursue “The Truth”.

This structure works to keep the play light and engaging, but should it be? These are actual life and death issues for people in this region, and at Oldcastle Peterson is preaching to the choir

I kept waiting for Clark Kent to wander in and help Jimmy Olson and Lois Lane catch the bad guys, the newsroom scenes are that clean and cute. And yes, it is adorable that the two young journalists are named Nick and Nora, but the parallels between them and Dashiell Hammett’s Thin Man sleuths are few and far between. I would have preferred them to be named Jimmy and Lois – the reference would be more accessible to contemporary audiences.

#gallery-0-5 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-5 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Christine Decker and Richard Howe. Photo Deborah Peterson.

Ed Rosini and Halley Cianfarini. Photo Deborah Peterson.

Natalie Wilder. Photo Deborah Peterson.

Patrick Ellison Shea and Halley Cianfarini. Photo Deborah Peterson.

Ed Rosini and Halley Cianfarini are genuinely appealing as Nick and Nora, who Peterson has written as autodidacts devoted to the waning art of print journalism. While the script hints at romantic sparks it doesn’t follow through and the pair remain platonic colleagues. It is the older couple – Katherine Dwyer (Christine Decker) and Ethan Corcoran (Richard Howe) who have the love affair, one of many decades standing.  Nick and Nora convince Corcoran to buy the ailing Walloomsac Tribune, and he agrees to do so only if Dywer is brought back to the newsroom she ran successfully for decades.

The ease with which Corcoran and Dwyer agree to reengage with the teetering business of print media, and the immediate cordial relationship Dwyer establishes with Nick and Nora are a little too pat, but since that story is just the sugar coating for the water pollution crisis it is as well it doesn’t distract with any unnecessary drama.

I am always glad when older characters are allowed to have careers and romance, and I am also glad when women are shown in unquestioned  positions of power. In fact Walloomsac is a regular Themyscira with the mayor, the state governor, the scientists who test the water, and the EPA officials all referred to or depicted as female.

And if you are going to have a powerful older female character on your stage, Christine Decker is among the best regional actresses for the job. She plays Katherine Dwyer with warmth and chutzpah, and Ursula McCarty has given her very flattering costumes that just scream “successful Vermont businesswoman.” The rest of McCarty’s energies have been spent developing a wardrobe shorthand for Wilder and Shea’s many monologue characters.

Wm. John Aupperlee has designed a set full of playful print. The back wall is papered in newsprint (I was slightly annoyed that it was wallpaper with a repeating pattern rather than actual newsprint. The newspaper doesn’t even get to play itself on stage these days!) and Nick and Nora’s desks are cluttered with several decades worth of gadgets – books, typewriters, early PCs, laptops, telephones of various eras. McCarty has designed some costume pieces – notably a handsome jacket for Cianfarini – adorned with letters in a bold serif font.

In the second act we meet Chandler Tillsbury (David Snider), the former owner of the now closed factory that both enabled large chunks of the population to live comfortable middle class lives and poisoned their soil and water. Peterson has warned us repeatedly that there are no bad guys in this story, but by the end Tillsbury looks pretty darned culpable.

The play ends, but Peterson fails to deliver anything resembling an ending. Of course in real life there is no resolution to this tragedy and the story will spin itself out for generations to come, but on stage you need some sort of conclusion. Yet when the curtain call comes neither characters nor story have finished their arc.

This is the second time this season that I have reviewed a play written and directed by the artistic director of the theatre staging it, and this is the second time that I feel that the play could have been shaped better if additional eyes and ears were allowed into the production process.  This is a story that needs to be told and needs to be heard, so I hope that Peterson and Oldcastle continue to develop Water, Water, Everywhere… until it becomes an effective tool to advocate for much needed change.

Water, Water, Everywhere… written and directed by Eric Peterson, runs October 4-20 at the Oldcastle Theatre Company, 331 Main Street in Bennington, VT. Set design by Wm. John Aupperlee, costume design by Ursula McCarty, lighting design by David V. Groupe, sound design by Cory Wheat, stage manager Gary Allan Poe. CAST: Ed Rosini as Nick, Halley Cianfarini as Nora, Richard Howe as Ethan Corcoran, Christine Decker as Katherine Dwyer, David Snider as Chandler Tillsbury, with Patrick Ellison Shea and Natalie Wilder in 22 various roles.

Performances Wednesday-Saturday at 7:30 pm, with 2 pm matinees Thursdays and Sundays and a special matinee on Saturday, August 6. For tickets call 802-447-0564 or visit https://oldcastletheatre.org

REVIEW: “Water, Water, Everywhere…” at Oldcastle Theatre Company Oldcastle Producing Artistic Director Eric Peterson has written a play about the ongoing local PFOA crisis. In case you don’t live locally, plants in North Bennington VT, Hoosick Falls, NY, and various other local towns used chemicals that leached…

[larryland]

Oldcastle Theatre Company Presents World Premiere of "Water, Water, Everywhere..."

Oldcastle Theatre Company Presents World Premiere of “Water, Water, Everywhere…”

A new version of the famed movie detectives Nick and Nora make their stage debut in “Water, Water, Everywhere…” a new play that takes its inspiration from the local PFOA water contamination crisis and is the final production of Oldcastle Theatre Company’s 48th season opening Friday October 4th.

The play is set in the office of a small town newspaper in the fictional small town of Walloomsac,…

[larryland]

Oldcastle Theatre Company Presents "Brighton Beach Memoirs"

Oldcastle Theatre Company Presents “Brighton Beach Memoirs”

  The most popular American playwright in history was, easily, Neil Simon, and comedic master’s best play, according to many critics, gets a revival at Oldcastle Theatre as the company presents “Brighton Beach Memoirs” opening Friday  July 12th.

     Fifteen year old Eugene, modeled on Simon himself, is preoccupied with sex, and the Yankees, a writer-to-be, an alternately perplexed and perceptive…

[larryland]

by Gail M. Burns

“While the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.”

– Mark Rothko

“What do you see?” is both the opening line and the penultimate one in John Logan’s play, Red, now on the boards at Oldcastle Theatre.

The difference between the fine arts – painting and sculpture – and the performing arts – theatre and dance – is that the former have a period of stasis, while the latter are constantly changing and completely ephemeral. They can be recorded via audio or video, but the live moment is there and gone. Even the people who experience a live performance each perceive it from their own physical, intellectual, and emotional point of view. When a painter puts down his/her brush and declares the work complete, then it stays in that form until time and the elements eventually destroy it. While each person views it through his/her individual lens, the object itself stays the same.

Logan presents the artist Mark Rothko (1903-1970) as a fragile and insecure man who lives for, with, and in his paintings. During the two year period 1958-1960 depicted in the play, Rothko, then in his mid-50s, was working on a series of murals for the swanky Four Seasons Restaurant in the newly constructed Seagram Building on New York’s Park Avenue, one of his first major and lucrative corporate commissions. Logan’s Rothko is beginning to feel the pressure of the new generation of artists coming up while facing the fact that his cohort is beginning to fade from public interest, and, in some cases, dead.

Logan’s Rothko spends almost all of the play looking at and talking about the series of large paintings he is working on for the Four Seasons. The audience doesn’t see any of Rothko’s work, but I include photographs of the existing paintings from the Seagram series, sections of which are currently on display in the Tate Modern Gallery in London, the Kawamura Memorial DIC Musuem of Art in Japan, and in the National Galley in Washington, DC, so that you can see that they are indeed predominately red.

At the Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art in Japan.

At the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

At the Tate Modern Gallery in London.

Rothko, played by Oldcastle stalwart Peter Langstaff, expounds endlessly and forcefully on the topics of art, color, impermanency, mortality, ambition, jealousy, and so much more to his hapless young assistant Ken, played by Brendan O’Grady, who made his Oldcastle debut as Edmund Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

I was surprised to learn that O’Grady’s character had a name, since Rothko never asks it of him nor refers to him by it. That right there establishes the non-existent relationship between the two men. Rothko talks, and Ken listens. When Ken talks Rothko generally tells him that he is wrong. Finally, Ken gives Rothko a good dressing down, which is quite cathartic for Ken and the audience, but it really is too little too late, and Rothko hears nothing.

While it won many awards in 2009/2010 when it first opened in London and then New York, Red is more of a “tell” than a show. Sometimes the judges of major theatre awards vote in favor of straight plays with lots of big words and ideas instead of actual drama, just as judges of musical theatre often reward spectacle over ingenuity and creativity. There are some really interesting ideas about art in the script, but there are so many that they zoom by, like being caught in a kaleidoscope of butterflies – individually they are beautiful and unique, but collectively they are overwhelming.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I have seen and reviewed Red once before, and while it was a much more emotionally dynamic production, I still thought the play itself was overwrought. This time, without the emotional fireworks between the two men, I was far less intrigued. O’Grady actually brings more passion to his performance than Langstaff, while Rothko is clearly supposed to be an intellectual and emotional superior to the young painter. Ken is also a wholely fictional character, and yet we learn more of his backstory than Rothko’s.

The set by Wm. john Apperlee is both quite busy – there are tables full of painting supplies, a phone (rotary dial!), a coffee pot, etc. flanking the playing area – and very plain – the upstage walls are completely unadorned. Only in the central section of the play, the only part with any exciting physical activity to watch, Rothko and Ken paint a very large canvas red. They do so while a passage from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” plays – part of Cory Wheat’s excellent sound design – and they must time it so that they finish painting as the music concludes, not two seconds before or two seconds after, but simultaneously. In the performance I attended they nailed it! I am sure they have the routine down pat and will hit their mark when you go too. It is a thrilling bit of theatre, and, alas, none of Oldcastle’s publicity shots feature it.

Rothko insisted on the lighting be very low in his studio, and so David V. Groupe has made it so on the stage for large chunks of the play. I often joke that some day I will forget to take off my sunglasses when I enter the theatre and complain needlessly that the lighting is very dim, well, my sunglasses were in my purse and the lighting WAS very dim. Be warned.

I found Ursula McCarty’s costumes to be sadly bland. There was nothing about the way the actors dressed that told me what time period this was or who they were. Granted, painting is a messy activity, and both the actors and the costumes have either a pinkish tinge or red splotches on them by the end of the play, so the costumes have to be washable and there may be multiples on hand in case of catastrophe, but particularly in the early scenes, when character, time, and place are establish and before the paint starts flying, a little more period detail would be helpful.

There are many highly over-rated, award-winning plays out there, and sadly Red is one of them. While it does pose some fascinating questions about art and creativity, it ultimately lacks action and interest.

Red by John Logan, directed by Eric Peterson  ]runs Jun 7-23, 2019 at Oldcastle Theatre Company, 331 Main Street in Bennington, VT. Set design by Wm. John Auperlee, lighting design by David V. Groupe, sound design by Cory Wheat, Costume design by Ursula McCarty, stage management by Gary Allan Poe. CAST: Peter Langstaff as Mark Rothko and Brendan O’Grady as Ken. The show runs 90 minutes with no intermission and would be boring to kids under 14.

Tickets

https://oldcastletheatre.org/

      REVIEW: “Red” at Oldcastle Theatre Company by Gail M. Burns “While the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.”

[larryland]

Oldcastle Theatre Company Presents “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” The most famous and momentous day in American theatre history is Eugene O'Neill's remarkable semi-autobiographical play…

[larryland]

by Gail M. Burns

David Auburn’s Proof burst on the national consciousness nearly twenty years ago – winning Tonys and a Pulitzer and being made into a big budget, star-studded film – so the initial flurry of professional and amateur productions across the country has run its course and the play is ripe for revisiting in the #metoo era.

A simple play about complex subjects, Proof centers on 25-year-old Catherine (Talley Gale) who has just lost her widowed father, Robert (Richard Howe), a brilliant mathematician at the University of Chicago, after years of mental illness during which she was his sole caregiver. Her only sibling, older sister Claire (Halley Cianfarini), has opted for a high-powered career in Manhattan, but of course Claire is headed home for the funeral. Also in the mix is Hal (Ethan Botwick), a young professor of Mathematics at the University who was mentored by Catherine and Claire’s father, and who is going through the late professor’s effects to see if any important and undiscovered research survives him.

Claire and Hal begin a relationship, and she gives him a notebook containing an astonishing mathematical proof that she claims she wrote. But Claire doesn’t even hold an undergraduate degree, her studies having been interrupted by her father’s illness and her decision to care for him, and she also seems to have inherited some of his mental instability. Can she prove that the proof is her work and not a last burst of brilliance from her father?

At Oldcastle Eric Peterson has directed a gentle, low-key but deeply engrossing production. Because there is less high drama, the characters come across as more realistic. Gale, who is on stage nearly non-stop, presents Catherine as exhausted and grief stricken – after all these years of dealing with her father’s non-lethal mental illness it is a sudden cardiac event that carries him off – but not mentally unbalanced. There is a seismic shift for a caregiver when they suddenly wake up one morning and no one needs them anymore. Catherine is not only unmoored emotionally, but because was a caregiver during the years most people spend finding themselves and establishing a career, she also has no sense of herself separate from her father – except for her proof, which she worked on in the wee hours of the night, the only time when her father didn’t demand her full attention.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Gale literally twists herself into pretzels trying to simultaneously hug herself and render herself as small as is humanly possible. But when she and Hal connect and she gives him her most valuable possession, the thing that establishes her as someone other than her father’s daughter, we see the relative freedom and joy in her movements.

Botwick’s Hal is equally physically restricted. Like Catherine, he has lived in Robert’s professional shadow, – before he was 25 Robert had already made two discoveries that changed the course of modern mathematics. Both worry that the adage that a mathematician’s best years are over by the time he or she is 25 – in other words at about the age they receive their doctorate and embark on their academic career – is true. Have Catherine and Hal’s best years already passed? Hal sees himself as a mediocre mathematician and being able to discover and publish a posthumous proof of Robert’s could make his career. The likelihood of the proof Catherine gives him being hers and not her father’s seem slim…

Cianfarini’s Claire is all yuppie bonhomie. Freshly ground gourmet coffee, jojoba crème rinse, and an engagement to her equally upwardly mobile boyfriend form the center of her world. Accepting early that she has inherited only a small portion of her father’s mathematical skills, she has settled into a career as a currency analyst. She acknowledges that Catherine has inherited far more from their father – but worries whether that is a good thing.

Howe’s performance as Robert was a bit of a disappointment. I described Peterson’s production as low key, but in Howe’s case we get little sense of Robert’s illness, his brilliance, or his neediness. Whether there is a physiological connection or not, mental illness and great genius often coincide. This and the deep connection between Robert and Catherine – and we see Robert only in Catherine’s memories and imagination – are lacking.

On my previous encounters with this play I didn’t see the focus on the relationship between Catherine and Hal as central to the plot, but now it takes on a different complexion. At previous production I can remember thinking Hal was quite the villain, but director Eric Peterson makes it clear here that Catherine and Hal are genuinely attracted to each other, and that neither is using the other for ulterior motives. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen a more engaging love scene than the one Gale and Botwick enacted at the end of Act I.

The other bit of gender politics in the play is the issue, which is still the case, that the majority of mathematicians are male. That a woman, and a young, uncredentialed woman at that, could best the “guys” at their game raises all sorts of toxic masculine reactions, which are played only subtly here.

When you enter the theatre you are greeted by Wm. John Aupperlee’s set depicting the back deck of the house Robert and Catherine share, adorned with Cory Wheat’s projection. I say adorned because as soon as the initial projection – an astonishing black and white trompe-l’œil image of the rear of the house – is switched for more subtle sunlight-through-the-leaves patterns, as it must be or the actors would be performing with blotchy projections all over them, the “house” resolves into nothing but a matte black wall with a door in it. The house projection returns during scene changes, but every time it vanishes again you feel a sense of loss.

It took me until well into Act II to understand that that one door – through which people seemed to access both the interior of the house and the outside world – was meant to be the back door of the house and that there was an unseen front door as well. In other words when people “left the house” they were going in through the back door and then out through the front door. In my mind exits to the outside world should have been made off of the deck, stage left, and indeed occasionally they were. When the critic has to spend a long while pondering a door there is something wrong with the set and/or the direction.

Ursula McCarty’s costumes subtly conveyed character and socio-economic rank while offering freedom of movement. The matter of the vanishing house aside, Wheat’s projections were fine, as was David V. Groupé’s lighting. Wheat is also credited with the sound design, which consisted mostly of an increasingly loud and insistent recording of The Sound of Silence played during scene changes. I usually like that song…

My technical quibbles aside, this a strong and moving production of a thought-provoking play. If you saw a production a decade or so ago, I encourage you to revisit it. And take along a teenage or twenty-something woman while you are at it. There is good fodder for debate and discussion on the ride home.

Proof by David Auburn, directed by Eric Peterson, runs August 31-September 9, 2018, at the Oldcastle Theatre Company, 331 Main Street in Bennington, Vt. Set design by Wm. John Aupperlee; costume design by Ursula McCarty; lighting design by David V. Groupé; sound and projections by Cory Wheat; stage management by Gary Allan Poe. CAST: Richard Howe as Robert, Talley Gale as Catherine, Halley Cianfarini as Claire, and Ethan Botwick as Hal.

For ticket reservations or additional information contact Oldcastle Theatre at www.oldcastletheatre.org or 802-447-0564.

  REVIEW: “Proof” at Oldcastle Theatre Company by Gail M. Burns David Auburn’s Proof burst on the national consciousness nearly twenty years ago – winning Tonys and a Pulitzer and being made into a big budget, star-studded film - so the initial flurry of professional and amateur productions across the country has run its course and the play is ripe for revisiting in the #metoo era.

[larryland]

by Roseann Cane

In the days following the end of the Civil War, a young Confederate soldier named Caleb (Justin Pietropaolo) painfully makes his way into his once-grand Richmond family estate to find the place in ruins. Caleb, too, is in ruins: a bullet in his leg has been left untreated, and the infection has become gangrenous. He collapses and is soon discovered by another member of the household, Simon (Herb Parker), a slave formerly owned by Caleb’s family, who is waiting for his own family’s return. They are soon joined by another former family slave, John (Brandon Rubin), who bears food and wine he has ransacked from nearby houses.

Simon quickly determines that to save Caleb’s life, he and John must amputate the young man’s leg. (While this scene is certainly distressing, the audience is spared any gore; we do feel the symbolism as well as the physical and psychic pain of the surgery, which creates an important plot point.) Over the next couple of days as Caleb recovers, the three men taking shelter in this shell of a house are faced with the tasks of attempting to reestablish their relationships while exploring the significance of dependence and  independence, slavery and freedom. Another layer of complexity is soon revealed: Caleb’s family is Jewish, and the family slaves are Jews as well.

In The Whipping Man, playwright Matthew Lopez has created a gripping examination of the consequences of slavery and the real meaning of freedom in the United States of America. The play may be talky and nearly overloaded with expository dialogue, but Parker, Pietropaolo, and Rubin’s performances are fiery and feelingful, and we become transfixed by the action onstage.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As it happens, Caleb’s homecoming coincides with Passover, the Jewish festival that celebrates the exodus of Jews from Egypt, and their liberation from slavery. Simon insists that the three celebrate with a seder, the ritual feast during which the story of Exodus is read and foods symbolic of the Exodus are shared. Participants take turns reading the Haggadah (the text that describes the Exodus), and although Simon prizes the Haggadah he owns, he is unable to read. No matter: he knows enough of it by heart.

Parker’s vibrant recitation of the Haggadah, and his passionate rendition of “Go Down Moses,” which he sings during the seder, are deeply affecting. The ardor of this actor suffuses his entire performance, and he is riveting. Pietropaolo and Rubin are equally well cast and embody their roles powerfully. As two men struggling with secrets, their contrast with the big-hearted, steadfast Simon tugs at the hearts and minds of those of us watching the play unfold, and steers us to understand the necessity of confronting the bleakest chapters of American history.

Director Eric Peterson shows sensitivity and skill, moving the actors and action along at a steady pace, no small accomplishment with this prolix yet simmering script. Carl Sprague’s set design, at once wistful and brutal, captures the time, place, and history of this America very well indeed. (There is one problem that I hope he will solve: when an actor exits through an upstage door, he is in plain view of the audience when the door is closed and the actor walks through a curtain offstage.) David V. Groupé’s lighting design and Cory Wheat’s sound design conspire potently to create a menacing thunderstorm that underscores the upheaval within the play. The costumes designed by Ursula McCarty seem utterly authentic, and serve the play very well.

I found it jarring, to put it mildly, that a recording of Pete Seeger singing “We Shall Overcome” erupted as the cast appeared for their curtain call. I imagine Peterson was attempting to communicate that to this day, African-Americans in our country have not nearly achieved full civil rights; that is sadly true. But I would suggest that after sitting through two intense acts of a show that takes place in 1865, right after the Civil War, the audience is intelligent and sensitive enough to grasp the current parallels. Moreover, Pete Seeger’s version of “We Shall Overcome” is firmly grounded in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. Hearing it at the close of The Whipping Man robs us of our suspension of disbelief, our participation in an intimate event from 150 years ago. I think a song from that period would have served the play as well as Parker’s soul-stirring performance of “Go Down Moses” did.

As Simon declares in the play, “You lose your faith by not asking questions.” The act of questioning is a central tenet of Judaism, but the statement has a universal resonance. I would suggest that we also lose our freedom by not asking questions, and therein lies one more example of the importance of the gift Lopez has given us with this play.

The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez, directed by Eric Peterson, runs July 13-22, 2018, at the Oldcastle Theatre Company, 331 Main Street in Bennington, VT. Scenic design by Carl Sprague, lighting design by David V. Groupé, sound design by Cory Wheat, costume design by Ursula McCarty. CAST: Justin Pietropaolo as Caleb, Herb Parker as Simon, and Brandon Rubin as John.

Tickets $12 for students with ID; $39 general admission; $50 premiere seating; $65 VIP seating. For additional information or reservations call 802-447-0564 or visit the theatre’s website: www.oldcastletheatre.org.

    REVIEW: “The Whipping Man” at Oldcastle by Roseann Cane In the days following the end of the Civil War, a young Confederate soldier named Caleb (Justin Pietropaolo) painfully makes his way into his once-grand Richmond family estate to find the place in ruins.

[larryland]

by Gail M. Burns

From his perch in 1986, Neil Simon looked back to 1947 and wrote a play about the future. All the characters in Broadway Bound, the final installment in his quasi-autobiographical trilogy of plays about the Jerome family, is teetering on the verge of the precipice of change. The young people, sons Eugene (Anthony J. Ingargiola) and Stanley (Robbie Rescigno), are reaching eagerly for their future, filled with the promise of romance, adventure, and success as comedy writers. Their father, Jack (Jason Asprey), is about to leave his wife and family, something their mother, Kate (Sarah Corey), knows and may or may not be ready for. And Kate’s father, Ben (Richard Howe), is clinging to his life in Brooklyn as his wife prepares to move to a retirement community in Florida.

It is a joy to see Ingargiola return to the Oldcastle stage after his thoroughly winning portrayal of Huck Finn in last season’s musical Big River. His Eugene is kind and caring. He has a believable brotherly bond with Rescigno’s much more aggressively ambitious Stanley, and a truly warm rapport with Corey as his mother. The scene late in the play where Kate recounts her teenage adventure of running off to the Paradise Ballroom (when she should be sitting shiva) in order to dance with movie star George Raft requires Ingargiola to listen with love and wonder as he gains a deeper understanding of Kate as more than just his mother. That is not an easy trick to do. And when they dance – Eugene says later that he couldn’t hold his mother close because the moment was just too intimate – there is magic on the stage.

Which brings us to the delicate subject of casting. Corey is a fine actress and she gives a wonderful performance, but she is too young to play Kate. There is a time to play a role like Kate, and you need to live a while to earn that right. It took me about half an hour to be able to put this problem out of my mind and accept her as the 50-something matriarch. That I did accept her and was able to move past the age issue is a tribute to her talent and commitment to this role, but there are so many fine actresses of the right age – Oldcastle regular Christine Decker springs instantly to mind – for whom meaty roles like this are hard to find, that I still question director Eric Peterson’s choice.

Asprey, however, is perfectly cast. His portrayal of the genuinely tortured Jack is haunting and powerful. There are no laughs in this role. Jack is a man who sees his future clearly, and he hates it, but he knows it is inevitable. He will leave. He must leave. And he knows that it will hurt Kate and Stanley and Eugene, and him. That hurt will shape all of their future paths in life. The second act scene between Jack and his sons is frightening and heart-breaking as Asprey takes all of Jack’s self-loathing out on his sons, ruining their moment of triumph and leaving them reeling.

The role of Ben offers a little bit of the comic relief that Simon provides so easily through his older characters – most notably in The Sunshine Boys – but Ben is not an aging cantankerous comic. He is a man who has worked hard and done his best by his wife, his daughters, and his grandchildren and has come to a point where he is scared of what comes next. Moving to Florida is one step closer to…what comes after retirement? What comes after your 70s? Maybe your 80s, maybe not. Howe gives a solid performance offering real insights into a character who could just be a geriatric punch line.

Rescigno provides the real comic energy in the play. Stanley is well past the age when he wants to be living at home with Mom and Pop. He knows he has talent and ambition, but Simon makes it clear that even while he can’t wait to get to his future, he finds the prospect of change as daunting as the rest of the family. Rescigno carries the frenetic scenes where Eugene and Stanley struggle to come up with their audition sketch for their big break in radio.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

There is a sixth character, Kate’s sister, Ben’s other daughter, Blanche (Amy Gaither Hayes), whose second husband has surprised everyone by becoming quite rich and installing Blanche and her two daughters on Park Avenue. Blanche is the one who is ready and financially able to move her parents down to Florida, a climate that will be beneficial to her mother’s health, and Ben’s refusal to accept her “charity” and join his wife perplexes her.

Blanche and her daughters are key characters in Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first play in this trilogy, which is also set in Jack and Kate’s home, and I understand Simon’s interest in completing their story arcs, but unless you have a chance to see these two plays in close proximity, those aspects of her scene are awkward.

Set designer Carl Sprague has cleverly reworked his set for Oldcastle’s production of A Comedy of Tenors, which ran immediately before this production, and it works surprisingly well. There are well defined areas for the living room, the dining room, and Eugene and Stanley’s bedrooms upstairs. …Tenors is a six door farce which leaves the Jerome’s dealing with about two doors too many in their house, but Peterson, Sprague, and the actors make it work.

Ursula McCarty has crafted another fine set of costumes. Except for Blanche’s Park Avenue finery, the Jerome’s are not a stylish bunch, and her costumes clearly define the period and the socio-economic strata of the household.

Creating clearly audible sound that emanates from a radio and synchs with on stage dialogue is not easy and Cory Wheat’s sound design executes it well. My only problem with David V. Groupé’s lighting design was the jarring transitions when Eugene broke the fourth wall to act as narrator. Something much more subtle and less blinding would have been more effective.

I see a lot of plays – many of them very well written and many much more innovative in style and structure than Broadway Bound – but I have to say that it is a pleasure to attend the work of a playwright who just knows how to do it. Who knows how to create three-dimensional characters you care about, who knows how to structure scenes and advance plot, and who writes in clear, lucid language that flows. This is what is called a Well-Made Play, and with this fine cast it is just a joy to behold.

Broadway Bound by Neil Simon, directed by Eric Peterson, runs September 29 – October 15, 2017, at the Oldcastle Theatre Company, 331 Main Street in Bennington, VT. Set design by Carl Sprague; lighting design by David V. Groupé; sound design by Cory Wheat; and costume design by Ursula McCarty. Stage Manager Gary Allan Poe. CAST: Sarah Corey as Kate, Richard Howe as Ben, Anthony J. Ingargiola as Eugene, Robbie Rescigno as Stanley, and Jason Asprey as Jack. Radio voices provided by Gary Allan Poe, Timothy Foley, and Jody June Schade. The show runs two and a half hours with one intermission. For tickets and more information visit http://oldcastletheatre.org/ or call 802-447-0564.

REVIEW: “Broadway Bound” at Oldcastle by Gail M. Burns From his perch in 1986, Neil Simon looked back to 1947 and wrote a play about the future.

[larryland]

Oldcastle Theatre Presents "Broadway Bound"

Oldcastle Theatre Presents “Broadway Bound”

Oldcastle Theatre‘s 46th regular season comes to a close with Neil Simon’s warm and wonderful comedy Broadway Bound opening Friday September 29th and running through October 15th. Simon, America’s favorite playwright, has authored several autobiographical works such as Chapter Two and Barefoot in the Park. Broadway Bound tells the interwoven stories of Simon and his brother Danny’s beginnings as…