Now you see him ... and now you see him.

The Olney Theatre Center has concluded its nearly year-long search for an artistic director by hiring -- (drumroll, please) -- Jim Petosa, who has held the identical job at the Montgomery County performing arts complex for the past 15 years.

Petosa initially announced in June 2007 that he would leave the theater center at the end of the current season, in part to devote more time to Boston University, where he is stage director of the school's Opera Institute. Recently, the board asked Petosa to reconsider his decision to step down. 

In a news release, Petosa says that his decision to remain at Olney was influenced by the recent hire of Amy Marshall as Olney's new managing director.

"I am energized by the Board's unexpected invitation to continue as Artistic Director," he says. "It is a new chapter in the life of this theater." 

(Photo courtesy of The National Players)

Posted by Mary McCauley at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Two artists associated with Oprah's presentation of The Color Purple returned to their gospel roots Sunday in brief appearances at Bethel AME.

Fantasia, the American Idol winner turned pop singer turned stage actor who portrayed Celie in the Color Purple on Broadway, brought the capacity crowd at the 11:30 a.m. service to their feet with "Jesus Be a Fence Around Me,'' and "The Lord Is Blessing Me Right Now,'' two traditional gospel songs most churches and choirs know.

A red-haired Fantasia made a point to tell the audience about how gospel is still a part of her life.  Her grandmother and mother, who were with her at Bethel, are ministers.

"Most of you know I'm a church girl,'' she said to the capacity audience at the church on Druid Hill. "Every now and then I have to give some praise.''  
 

Continue reading " Fantasia gives gospel performance" »

Posted by Karlayne Parker at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

The exodus of managing directors from local theater companies continues.

Sara Rutstein, the second-in-command of Everyman Theatre, announced her resignation earlier today. Her last day will be July 31, departing shortly after Michael Ross leaves a similar post at Center Stage. Signature Stage in Arlington, VA., also lost Sam Sweet, its longtime managing director, earlier this fall.

Like Ross, Rutstein doesn't have another job lined up, though she has told friends she'd like to find a position better utilizing her recent MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

"I will always cherish my time at Everyman and I have high hopes for its future," she says in a news release. "The staff is exceptional, and the work the company produces is first-rate. It is simply time for me to explore different career possibilities and move on to new challenges."

Continue reading "Rutstein leaves Everyman" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Don't call the moving trucks quite yet.

Everyman Theatre initially announced plans to relocate to the Town Theatre on the West Side in the fall of 2009, but the troupe's move has been pushed back. 

For the next two or three years, the actors will continue to perform in the intimate, black box venue at 1727 N. Charles St. Artistic director Vincent Lancisi says that tax credits and paperwork are delaying the relocation until 2010 or 2011.

"When I began this process, experts told me that building a new theater would take more time, and cost more money, than I ever thought possible," Lancisi says.

Posted by Mary McCauley at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

THEATER REVIEW | These Shining Lives by Melanie Marnich, which opened last night at Center Stage, is as one-sided as the face of a watch.

The drama is based on a landmark workers discrimination lawsuit filed by female employees of the Radium Dial Company in northern Illinois in the 1930s. When the women began working at the factory painting radium numerals onto watches, it seemed like an ideal job -- high pay for comfortable, undemanding work.

But when the women began to fall ill with undiagnosed ailments, the company abandoned them.

Marnich chooses to focus on four friends, and how the radium poisoning affected each one of them. She idealizes the women, their home lives and the halcyon early years of their employment.  The sole representative of the company is depicted as an amoral, lying, bribing weasel.

But, no marriage is as unfailingly loving and supportive as the one Marnich depicts between the protagonist, Catherine Donohue, and her hunky, steelworker husband, Tom. No job, however stimulating, is so perfect that the workers can't find something to complain about.

And, I suspect that no company deliberately sets out to murder its workers -- though, when it discovers that it is doing so, it may criminally cover up the inconvenient evidence.
   

Continue reading "No sparkle in Center Stage's latest, 'These Shining Lives'" »

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The Baltimore Playwrights Festival has announced the lineup for its 2008 season, which runs this summer from June 26 through Aug. 31.

The venerable festival, now in its 27th season, will champion the work of at least 12 playwrights and 13 plays. (A slate of one-acts set to run in August hasn't yet been announced.) The shows will be produced at local theaters throughout the Baltimore area.

Talented Julie Lewis will be represented by two offerings this year. Her full-length work Jarvis Legend's Borrowed Skin will be presented by the Theatrical Mining Company from June 26-July 13. And her short play Foundation and Mettle will be part of a slate of compact works presented by Vagabonds Theatre July 18-Aug. 3. 

Continue reading "Baltimore Playwrights Festival 2008 lineup" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

The most delicious surprises in the theater are the ones that sneak up on you. So, in honor of April Fool's Day, here are five plays with plot twists that you won't see coming. Some of the surprises are gasp-inducing, some are scary, and a few generate more of an inner jolt.

The following list (in no particular order) is by no means exhaustive. I'd love to know which plays you'd nominate for our first annual Gotcha Awards:

Continue reading "Five Plays for April Fool's Days" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Baltimore has a new community theater troupe, and it will emphasize new work by, for and about women.

The Strand Theater will have an open house April 20 at its new, 65-seat space on North Charles Street. This summer, the company headed by local director Jayme Kilburn will stage its first production, Tim Paggi's "Nonstop Realism." The show will be performed July 10-27 as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival.

Kilburn says a local businesswoman who interested in revitalizing the Station North District is donating the space and the cost of the renovation. (The troupe's benefactor wishes to remain anonymous.) The theater at 1823 N. Charles St. -- one block north of Everyman Theatre and the Charles -- also will provide a performing home for other small, cash-strapped arts groups.  

Continue reading "'Strand Theater' is Baltimore's newest troupe" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Despite everything it has going for it – a tuneful, poignant Lerner & Loewe score, a story line that blends romance, tragedy and idealism – Camelot never has been an unqualified critical success.

The story about the creation of the Knights of the Round Table and the love triangle among King Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot simply has proven too complex for even a 2.5-hour musical. After all, the source on which the show is based, T.H. White’s great novel The Once and Future King, is nearly 700 pages long.

For the national touring production, currently running at the Hippodrome Theatre, Alan Lerner’s son, Michael, has revised the script in an attempt to remedy its flaws. Unfortunately, his treatment robs the story of much of the story’s emotional resonance. Even more disappointing, Lou Diamond Phillips delivers a wooden performance as Arthur.

And that’s a shame, because few stories have as much potential for capturing an audience’s imagination and pulling on its heartstrings. Camelot is about the noblest of aspirations, the struggle to harness our destructive impulses and enlist them in aid of a higher cause. The romantic triangle among Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot is compelling precisely because the personal drama mirrors the larger struggle. Arthur’s battle to subdue the evil in himself is a small example of his effort to make might serve right, to make the strong the defenders of the weak.

Continue reading "'Camelot' lacks some emotional resonance" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

From Sun reporter Jennifer Choi ...

After more than seven years as the artistic director of Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, James Kinstle bids adieu on April 30.

During his tenure at the company, Kinstle helped expand its budget and k-12 education program and increased the number of works produced. During his tenure, the organization became the first Maryland theatre company to receive a National Endowment for the Arts Shakespeare in American Communities grant, for its coming production, The Winter’s Tale.

After his departure, Kinstle plans to teach theatre-related classes and seminars in school and business settings, consult for other theatrical companies, and return to acting—he’ll play Petrucchio in Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s summer production of The Taming of the Shrew.

Above: Sun file photo of James Kinstle

Posted by Tim Swift at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

One of my pet peeves as a theater critic is shoddily staged shows for kids. Why should kids' theater have sets made of cardboard, and performers with the acting skills to match?

Troupes moan continually about the graying of their audience, so you'd think that they'd try to instill a love of the art form in the younger generation, instead of turning-them off with second-rate productions. Children invariably know when they're being condescended to.

The Kennedy Center just announced its lineup for kids for the 2008-09 season. One show in particular, The Trumpet of the Swan, may well be an example of how to do it right. 

Continue reading "The problem with children's theater" »

Posted by Mary McCauley at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Hairspray, the musical with a heart as big as its beehives, took four major prizes at the Laurence Olivier Awards last night.

Though the total number of awards racked up -- four -- fell short of the record-setting 11 nominations, the show took such major prizes as best musical, best actor for Michael Ball's star turn as Edna Turnblad; best actress for Leanne Jones' portrayal of tubby teen Tracy Turnblad; and best supporting performance for Tracie Bennett as Tracy's racist nemesis, Velma Von Tussle.

Hairspray was inspired by Baltimore bad-boy John Waters' movie of the same name about a plucky teen who single-handedly strikes a blow for plus-sized rights, integrates a television dance program, and wins the heart of a handsome hunk.

The show picked up eight Tony Awards in 2003 and last summer, was turned into a hit film musical starring John Travolta as Edna.

Posted by Mary McCauley at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

It's ironic and sad that August Wilson's 20th Century -- the monthlong festival of his plays that just opened at the Kennedy Center -- may be priced out of reach for many of the great playwright's fans.

The festival is important because it is the first time that all 10 of Wilson's plays have been produced in the same place, and in a short period of time -- albeit as staged readings. Wilson's so-called "century cycle" chronicles the African-American experience during each decade of the 20th century. For the most part, his characters are struggling economically, though in his final work, Radio Golf, they are comfortably ensconced in the upper middle-class.

Chances are that the real-life versions of Wilsons's characters -- an ex-con selling stolen refrigerators, drivers of ramshackle taxi-cabs -- couldn't afford to attend even one reading, let alone all 1-.

Unlike most shows, which offer a range of prices, seats for August Wilson's 20th Century cost $65 a pop, regardless of where you sit. There is no discount offered for the series, so series Wilson fans can expect to lay out $650.

The Kennedy Center does have programs in place to help some groups of citizens. Students can purchase tickets for a very reasonable $10. Senior citizens, people with disabilities, members of the military and those living on a fixed annual income of less than $9,800 can buy half-price tickets.

But $32.50 still is an awful lot of money for someone making less than $10k a year; other shows at the Kennedy Center have tickets going for as little as $29, or just $14.50 for a half-price ticket.

And, frankly, I don't see someone making the grand sum of $12,000 or even $20,000 annually springing for a $65 ticket, no matter how big a fan of Wilson he or she may be.

So, here's a call to the well-heeled: Does anyone want to donate a block of tickets to the Kennedy Center to benefit the working poor?

Posted by Mary McCauley at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Posted by Mary McCauley at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Get out your hankies. Tickets for Cry-Baby, the new John Waters-inspired musical, go on sale to the general public on Sunday.

Previews at the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway, begin March 15. Ticket prices for all previews will top out at $54, to coincide with 1954, the year in which the show is set, according to Playbill, with some seats in the rear mezzanine costing $35.

But once Cry-Baby officially opens on April 24, prices for the best seats will skyrocket to $120.

Much of the cast assembled for the world premiere last November in La Jolla, California, seems to be intact, with newcomer James Snyder playing the title role of Wade Cry-Baby Walker, the Drape from the wrong side of the tracks who falls for the society girl Allison Vernon-Williams, portrayed by Elizabeth Stanley.

The big name in the cast is Harriet Harris, a Tony Award-winner who plays the character of Allison's uptight grandmother -- a role much expanded from Waters' original film.

The La Jolla premiere received mixed reviews. It will be interesting to see if the creative team has found a way to make the two leads a bit less saintly and more complex.  

Los Angeles Times Photo of James Snyder from Cry-Baby

Posted by Mary McCauley at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Don't get  me wrong -- being a theater critic is very possibly is the world's greatest job, and I thank my stars every day that I somehow landed this position. But it is not without hazards in the line of duty.

I was in New York on a recent weekend, taking in a play of August: Osage County, and in the lobby, I ran into Vinnie Lancisi, Everyman's skilled, devoted artistic director. As we were chatting, a man came up and introduced himself to Vinnie as Jeffrey Hatcher -- the playwright who wrote the adaptation of The Turn of the Screw running at Everyman through this weekend.

It was an awkward moment. I reviewed TTOTS recently, and, while I liked the production, I didn't care for the adaptation, which I found somewhat ham-handed. Vince introduced me by name, but tactfully did not state my affiliation.

I took a deep breath and said to Jeffrey Hatcher, "You wrote Three Viewings didn't you? That's a terrific play.'" (It is.)

Either Mr. Hatcher hadn't read my Screw review, or he was diplomatic enough to pretend that he had not.

For what it's worth, I don't enjoy criticizing the end result of anyone's honest labor. I get no pleasure out of wounding talented and dedicated professionals. But, I do think The Sun's readers deserve candid evaluations of productions for which you are considering shelling out your hard-earned dollars.

Posted by Mary McCauley at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

"Hairspray's" world domination tour continues.

 The musical that celebrates big hair, big girths and big hearts, is a smash hit in London, home to the world's most discerning theater audience.

 When nominations were released today for the 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards -- England's equivalent of the Tonys -- 'Hairspray" had received a record 11 nods -- the most that any show has received in the awards ceremony's 32-year history.

In fact, the show inspired by John Waters' musical set in 1960s Baltimore, was nominated in practically every category in which it was qualified to enter, including best new musical, best director, actor, actress, supporting role (two nominations), costumes, choreography and sets.

Winners of the Oliviers, which honor the best in theater, opera and dance in Britain, will be announced March 9.

Posted by Mary McCauley at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Despite its soft and cuddly title, The Pillowman is anything but. Martin McDonagh's play is a gruesome and darkly funny look at artistic responsibility.

The Pillowman is receiving a satisfying production at Mobtown Players.

 The audience consisted of just six people the night I was there, perhaps because a play about brutal child murders isn't everyone's cup of tea. That's a pity, because The Pillowman is far more engrossing than its gory subject matter might indicate. McDonagh seems to be asking whether it is ever appropriate for an artist to censor his own imagination.

The plot is McDonagh's meditation on the question of whether violent works of art can themselves inspire real-life violence. The most famous example is John Hinckley Jr., whose attempt on the life of then-President Ronald Reagan was traced by his attorneys to his obsessive fascination with Martin Scorcese's landmark film Taxi Driver.

In The Pillowman, a writer named Katurian, who lives in a totalitarian state, is being interrogated by the police, who have noticed a disturbing similarity between short stories that he has written and a brutal series of child murders that have terrorized the town. The two main suspects are Katurian himself, or his mentally-deficient brother, Michal, who was himself brutalized as a child.

Several of Katurian's stories are retold in the course of the play; suffice it to say that one of the "gentlest," if that word can be used, is the story which gives the show its title. In it, a being made entirely of pillows attempts to persuade young children to commit suicide before they grow up and embark on the miserably unhappy fates that lie in store for them. "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" it is not.

McDonagh is fascinated by irony, and he is fascinated by everything about writing stories, including the amoral nature of the writer's imagination. One of the funniest bits of the play occurs when one of the detectives reveals that he himself has written a short story, and Katurian attempts to give the detective some helpful literary criticism.

The cast standouts are Dave Gamble and Noel Schively as the two detectives. Gamble has a fey elegance that only underscores his brutality; nonetheless, when discussing a personal tragedy in his own life, real pain clouds his face. Schively, as the ironically named Ariel (after Shakespeare's ethereal sprite) is always on the verge of exploding with a rage that flushes his face and tenses the sinews in his neck.

Michael Byrne Zemarel (Katurian) and Todd Krickler (Katurian's mentally-challenged brother, Michal) inhabit their characters less fully -- but then again, they have been cast in the two most difficult roles.

Director Alex Willis is quite adept at building an atmosphere of almost unbearable pathos and irony. She is less skilled at developing the black humor underlying every moment in the play -- a humor that makes the grotesque bits more bearable.

All in all, though, this is a production that deserves to be seen, if only for what it says about the dark and yet somehow wonderful potential of the human imagination. 

Posted by Mary McCauley at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Get out your hankies -- Cry-baby, a new musical based on the film by Baltimore bad boy John Waters, has announced that it will hold its world premiere on Nov. 6 at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.

Following the California tryout, the show tentatively is slated to debut on Broadway in late March, 2008 with the official opening scheduled for April. Casting has not yet been announced.

Cry-baby, which is set in 1954, is a send-up of teen melodramas. It follows the exploits of Wade "Cry-baby" Walker in his pursuit of truth, justice and rock 'n' roll.

Quick -- who portrayed Wade in the 1990 film? None other than that quintessential pop star-actor- heartthrob Johnny Depp.

Posted by Mary McCauley at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)