St. Louis News Blog

​This week the Rep opens its Studio Series with Secret Order, a fictional drama that lifts the veil on behind-the-scenes maneuverings at a prestigious Manhattan cancer clinic. In the tradition of the best studio offerings, Bob Clyman's play deals with a series of thought-provoking ethical issues. Our protagonist is a brilliant young cell researcher -- and how often do you see that in the theater these days? For those in search of substantive drama, the three-play Rep Studio Series tends to be one of the surest bets in town.

Jay Morthland

Echo Theatre Company stages Fugitive Songs

​Here's another bet: The premiere of a musical is being offered by Echo Theatre Company, which does not have an extensive track record in staging musicals, premiere or no. But sometimes passion trumps experience, and everyone at Echo seems to be passionate about Fugitive Songs, a song cycle that, according to the press release, spotlights people on the run and offers "a new sound for a restless America." That new sound is being provided by Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen, two up-and-coming theater composers who've begun to create a buzz for themselves in Manhattan. This week at least, they are temporary fugitives from the labyrinth that can make a production in New York so elusive; a previous incarnation of Fugitive Songs debuted last year off Broadway, but has since been completely retooled. Everything about Fugitive Songs sounds unusual and of-the-moment -- a moment for which St. Louis viewers are the beneficiaries.

If you're not a gambler, perhaps Fiddler on the Roof at Mustard Seed will be more to your liking. This account of Tevye and his daughters has been a part of the landscape ever since it debuted on Broadway in 1964. It is of course a mainstay at the Muny. So what can tiny Mustard Seed offer that hasn't been seen before? For one thing, intimacy. It might be a refreshing change to actually see the faces of the inhabitants of Anatevka.

It used to be that a rite of passage for every theater company was to stage Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Times have changed. Now that rite of passage seems to have passed on to The Rocky Horror Show. This week the NonProphet Theater Company takes its best shot. Consider yourself alerted. Or warned, as the case may be.

wustl.edu

​I'm still on a high from the joint Black Rep/Washington University Performing Arts Department production of the epic musical Ragtime. In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to fill out a comment that appears in this week's Riverfront Times review. I quote theater composer Stephen Schwartz, who describes Ragtime as "a great musical, a classic musical." What I did not have space to run -- either in this week's review or six years ago in a conversation with Schwartz -- was the second half of his comment. Schwartz, of course, is known as the composer of Godspell, Pippin and Wicked. He is less remembered as the lyricst of a 1986 musical titled Rags, which closed after four performances. Set on Manhattan's  Lower East Side in 1910, Rags, like Ragtime, deals with the immigrant experience. What Schwartz also said during our conversation in 2003 was, "It wasn't until I saw Ragtime that I realized what we had done wrong in Rags."

​Unity Theatre Ensemble is this area's stealth company -- except when they're performing. Then it's everything they can do to keep the roof nailed down. But publicity is not their strong suit. Music is. Until their Cotton Club Revue got nominated for four Kevin Kline awards earlier this year, many people had not even heard of them. But we sure heard them at the Kevins; their Cotton Club excerpt rocked the Loretto Hilton. This week and next they're back doing what they do best, playing the Ivory Theatre with a revue about Billie Holiday titled Lady Day at the Boston Bistro. It promises to be a rousing evening. Take earplugs and expect to sway.

Alex Wild

Don't be sucked in by the toy soldiers; Helver's Night is for grownups

​So far as openings go, it's a quiet week. The only new show is Upstream Theater's production of the U.S. premiere of Helver's Night, a Polish play by Ingmar Villqist -- though it will hardly be quiet, for it is a play about brutality, intolerance and despair. Its backdrop is the totalitarianism that was beginning to suffocate Europe in the 1930s. The play, which has been translated by Upstream artistic director Philip Boehm, should run approximately 70 minutes without an intermission.

Meanwhile, many shows conclude their runs this weekend, including the sassy The Secretaries at Echo, the Tom Lehrer revue Tomfoolery (scroll down) at West End, Macbeth (scroll down) at St. Louis Shakespeare, the absurdist Bald Soprano at Saint Louis University and The Belle of Amherst, an ode to Emily Dickinson, at Insight.

You like Stephen Sondheim?

www.webster.edu

Company's coming!

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There was a lovely ambiance last weekend in the old mall corridor at Crestwood Court. Three plays were opening within just a few doors of each other. People would spot friends and call out, "What are you going to see?"

"Portrait of My People at Avalon. What about you?"

"The Last Memory of an Ol' Brownie Fan at First Run."

Then they'd encounter a third friend en route to The Secretaries at Echo. St. Louis had a real Theater Row, with all the energy of a theater row. All three shows continue this weekend, so if you're headed to Crestwood Court be on the lookout for people you know.

October is a jampacked month. In addition to the holdovers, there is a tremendous range among this week's new offerings, which include the season's first university productions. I'll say it yet again: The college shows often provide the best deals -- and the most satisfying quality -- in town.

The Webster University Conservatory of Theatre Arts opens the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical Company, which was a groundbreaker when it premiered in 1970. People were not accustomed to a musical with such an ephemeral plot; much of the piece is akin to an extended variety show. Company likely won't feel quite so revolutionary today, but the Sondheim score will sound as fresh as ever. The production is in the capable hands of director David Caldwell and musical director Neal Richardson -- the same duo that has done marvelously compatible work at Webster with such musicals as Violet and A New Brain. (Through October 11 at the Loretto-Hilton Center, 130 Edgar Road, Webster Groves. Tickets are $12, $6 for students and seniors.Call 314-968-7128 or click here.)

Speaking of groundbreaking...

www.westendplayers.org

Vatican ragtime: West End Players Guild engages in TomFoolery

​The arrival of Caryl Churchill and Stephen Sondheim makes for an arresting weekend of theater. Each will be represented by one of their most popular works from the 1980s.

Top Girls, Churchill's play about sexual politics, will be staged by Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble. Although the script was first staged at London's Royal Court Theatre nearly 30 years ago, in 1982, for first-time viewers it will doubtless seem fresh, immediate and somewhat confusing. And why wouldn't it, when the characters in this all-female drama include historical characters from the past, characters from fiction, even the subject of a Brueghel painting? All bets are off when you attend a Churchill play. The wisest thing to do is to simply let the piece roll over you and hope that your antennae are open to a new kind of theater experience (or "theatrical endeavor," as she once described her writing). You might be pleasantly surprised by how much of the piece you "get."

Whenever I hear that someone is going to stage Into the Woods, I wonder how the actors will move. The original 1987 Broadway staging of this Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine riff on classic fairy tales was especially charming, thanks in large part to Lar Lubovitch. The celebrated choreographer had helmed a dance company in New York City for decades but had never worked in the Broadway theater until he was asked to join Into the Woods -- not to choreograph it but to give it a sense of flow. That's precisely what the Broadway version had that no other staging, likeable though they all are, has quite matched: It flowed. No one walked if they could skip; no one skipped if they could glide. It was as if the entire evening was staged on a moving carpet.

The 2009-'10 theater season officially kicks in this weekend with the opening of the Rep season. Amadeus, Peter Shaffer's 1979 drama about one man's attempt to bring down God, is sure to provide sumptuous sets and costumes and lots of thrilling Mozart music (played not too loudly, please). But there's another offering this weekend that, on its own modest level, is highly intriguing. The Theatre Guild of Webster Groves opens a two-week run of Samuel Taylor's rarely seen romantic comedy, Sabrina Fair.

www.theaterguildwg.org

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Have you ever seen Sabrina Fair? No, not the 1954 Billy Wilder film adaptation Sabrina. We're talking stage here. Chances are you haven't -- and in large measure because of the movie.

Whitney Curtis | stagesstlouis.org

Oh, craps! Guys and dollars!

​Had you been a Tony Awards voter in the early 1950s, would you have voted for Guys and Dolls, which debuted on Broadway in November 1950 (and which opens a four-week stint at Stages St. Louis this weekend), or for The King and I, which opened four months later? Tough call.

So which show went home with the Tony?

They both did. In those days shows were grouped by year, not by season. So Guys and Dolls, the sassy adaptation of two short stories by the ever-irreverent Damon Runyon, won the Tony in 1951 and was neatly sandwiched between two Tony Award-winning Rodgers and Hammerstein stalwarts: South Pacific (1950) and The King and I (1952).

That original G and D stage adaptation is itself a storied production. Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, a book primarily by Abe Burrows. Direction by George S. Kaufman and choreography by Michael Kidd. Legends all. I've always loved talking to those who were in any way linked to that original staging. When I worked at CBS, Alan Alda told me about how he accompanied his father Robert Alda (the original Sky Masterson) to most Saturday matinees, and this fourteen-year-old would watch in wonder from the wings, reveling in every brassy minute. Although Alda fils would be claimed by television, he is still stagestruck and returns to the stage on a regular basis.

Those who look forward to a weekly fix of musical theater may be disappointed that the Muny summer has ended, but we're not done with musicals just yet. Two musicals open this week and one is closing.

disney.go.com

​Clearly the flashiest, most publicized opening is Mary Poppins at the Fox. Even as the show continues to sell out in New York, the national company arrives in St. Louis complete with its two original Broadway stars, Ashley Brown and Gavin Lee. It used to be that the stars of a Broadway show felt an obligation to tour. But now the New York runs are briefer. (Most stars are unwilling to sign up for more than six months, and then it's off to the next movie.) So the Disney organization was smart to add some star power to the tour, thus elevating it to the level of an event.

I'm looking forward to the musical not because I'm a fan of the 1964 film but rather because the production was co-directed by Sir Richard Eyre, a British director of infinite fascination. Among his many credits, Eyre took a dull play titled Compleat Female Stage Beauty and transformed it into Stage Beauty, one of the more intriguing films of recent years. Surely he will bring an original eye to Mary Poppins.

It is perhaps the most felicitous opening line ever written:

"If music be the food of love, play on."

In this very first sentence, Shakespeare sets the elegiac tone that dominates Twelfth Night, which opens this week at St. Louis Shakespeare. Again. Although through the centuries critics have never elevated Twelfth Night to the upper tier of the Bard's major comedies (a lofty perch reserved for A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It), audiences must love it. Here in St. Louis over the past decade I think it has received more local productions than any other play (including High School Musical).

painting by Francis Wheatley (1771-2) | Wikimedia Commons

Take it away, Wikipedia: Fabian (far left) encourages Viola/Cesario (second left) to fight Sir Andrew Aguecheek (second right), encouraged by Sir Toby Belch (far right), because Viola is accused of wooing Olivia, whereas Andrew wishes to woo her instead.

​There is so much going on here, a director can take the script in any number of directions. Most stagings emphasize the mistaken identity when Viola disguises herself as a male page, only to find him/herself the uncomfortable object of the Countess Olivia's misguided affection. And that's always fun. But I think the play's lasting significance is to be found in the conflict between Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's Rabelaisian wastrel of an uncle, and the severe Malvolio, a humorless prig who cannot laugh or even smile. Because Malvolio loathes what he cannot understand, his menacing presence threatens Sir Toby's very existence.

There's something for everyone among this week's openings.

www.stagesstlouis.com

​Kids are apt to be amused by Alice in Wonderland, this summer's musical for children at Stages St. Louis. You're not likely to see this show on Broadway or at the Fox. Based on the 1951 Disney animated movie (which in turn of course was based on the Lewis Carroll fantasy Alice's Adventures Under Ground), it was created by Disney Theatricals strictly to capitalize on the unquenchable thirst for children's theater. I don't think Alice has ever enjoyed a truly successful stage adaptation anywhere anytime, but that hasn't stopped people from trying. At least this new adaptation has some catchy songs from the cartoon ("I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date"). And at 55 minutes, it's 20 minutes shorter than the film on which it is based -- which can only be a plus. Alice opens August 5 and runs daily (except Monday) at 11 a.m. through August 16.

While their younger brothers and sisters are trying to make sense of the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter, teenagers will surely gravitate to Forest Park for the final production of the Muny season. Like Alice, the cross-dressing Hairspray is possessed of a somewhat surreal quality. No surprise there, seeing as how the source material is a slightly seditious film by John Waters. The show, which is making its Muny debut, takes us back to 1962, which is now viewed with nostalgia as the last year of innocence before President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 turned that innocence helter skelter. It probably wasn't all that innocent (what year ever was?), but -- like Dirty Dancing and The Flamingo Kid, which both play out in the summer of 1963 -- the summer of '62 provides a pristine backdrop for "coming of age" stories. The Muny production promises to restage Jerry Mitchell's frenetic choreography, which is always a pleasure to see.

We have some long titles opening this weekend. You Know I Can't Eat Buffalo Meat When There's a Terrorist on the Loose from First Run Theatre is the unknown quantity, but then that's the point of productions at First Run. They're all, like this play by Mario Farwell, world premieres. First Run is a gambler's theater that draws its audience from those who are willing to take a risk on the previously unseen. I can't tell you the plot of Buffalo Meat. But if titles mean anything, it sounds as if Farwell's play would like to do for our generation what Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb did for the Cold War 1960s.

www.lyceumtheatre.org

You Can't Take It With You, whose title is only half as long but twice as familiar, opens Saturday night at the Lyceum Theatre in Arrow Rock. Despite the fact that Arrow Rock is about as rural a locale as you can find, and this venerable Depression-era Kaufman and Hart comedy is set in corporate Manhattan, this is a perfect fit for the Lyceum, for both play and theater resonate with history. And by the way, if you only know this play from the 1938 Frank Capra movie version, you don't know this play.

Wouldn't it be nice if our local theater folk could figure out a way to stagger their openings so that all the companies could get their fair share of attention. But it never happens that way. Too often it's feast or famine. This week we have five new openings, five shows competing for the same space. So let's parcel some out.

Whitney Curtis | stagesstlouis.org

You are getting very sleepy: David Schmittou as Man in Chair in The Drowsy Chaperone

Two delightful musicals receive their local debuts this week, both for extended four-week runs. The Drowsy Chaperone, which opens at Stages St. Louis, offers a loving spoof of a vintage (albeit fictional) 1928 operetta. Highlights from this imaginary show (aptly titled The Drowsy Chaperone) play out in the fantasy of a shy musical theater buff who serves as our host. When done right, the show is as much fun for the viewers as for the actors onstage.

muny.org

After two solid offerings in 42nd Street and Annie, the Muny returns on Monday from its self-imposed Fourth of July hiatus with a one-week run of Meet Me In St. Louis.

Based on the 1944 movie that starred Judy Garland (which in turn was based on a series of short stories by Sally Benson), the stage adaptation is an odd duck. When it debuted at the Muny in 1960, the sheer excitement of a world premiere "right here in St. Louis" blinded a lot of viewers to the fact that the intimate nature of the story is not ideally suited to the vast Muny stage.

But even before seeing this week's staging, I'm willing to bet that it will be an improvement over the Muny's last production in 2004 -- for the simple reason that it would be almost impossible to be worse.

After more than a month of robust activity, it feels as if the local theater scene is about to take a brief hiatus. Blues in the Night at the Black Rep and Little Shop of Horrors at Stages are both closing this weekend. After this weekend The Lady from Dubuque returns to that netherworld where Edward Albee's heroines hang out between engagements. The much-lauded Opera Theatre season winds down on Saturday.

Meanwhile Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings at Act, Inc., charming though it is, takes a breather this weekend so that the little-known Heroes, the second play in this summer's Act, Inc. season, can join the repertory.

www.actinc.biz

Act, Inc. is a lovely summer theater noted for its sweetness and gentility. While other local companies strive to be edgy, Act, Inc. revels in the past. They're much more excited by rediscovering a play written a century ago than in something new. They also delight in staging plays about theater. Drama at Inish and Noises Off were two of their most delightful offerings in recent years.

This weekend Act, Inc. opens its two-play season with an obscure Noel Coward work. Coward wrote Waiting in the Wings at the end of his life. Set in a retirement home for aging actresses, this script might be lesser Coward, but it is borne out of a lifetime of familiarity with the characters it dramatizes. Its original 1960 staging in London was not successful, and the play has been pretty much overlooked ever since. Ten years ago it belatedly opened on Broadway as a star vehicle for Lauren Bacall and Rosemary Harris -- which proved to be a bad idea, since the play is not about star power. Apparently the celebs overwhelmed the fragile piece.

www.actinc.biz

There are no stars at Act, Inc. But there are ten local actresses of (to put it politely) various ages. Among them is Dorothy Farmer Davis, who some years back gave a luminous performance in Coward's Relative Values at the Kirkwood Theatre Guild. If the ensemble follows Davis' lead and doesn't try to shake the stuffings out of every line, Waiting in the Wings might prove to be yet another Act, Inc. love letter.  

Of shorter duration...

K's Theatrical Korps is a plucky little company in south St. Louis that keeps its own counsel. K's often tackles shows that would give other community theaters the heebie-jeebies. This weekend the company is opening a two-week run of the infamous 1971 musical Follies, in which a crumbling Broadway theater becomes a metaphor for the loss of innocence that we experience as we grow older. This is harsh material for a musical, no matter how elaborately it is presented, and the original Broadway Follies was not a commercial success. Yet Follies has developed its own history and lore. It regularly receives major revivals around the world.

Sometimes these revivals take the form of staged concerts that only focus on Stephen Sondheim's elegant score. But the show does have a script -- in fact, it has a couple -- written by James Goldman. When Follies was first produced in London in 1987, Goldman almost completely rewrote his libretto. I once had occasion to talk to him about why he did that.

Like ships that pass in the night, this week some theater companies are concluding their seasons as others are just revving up. It makes for an unusually eclectic mix.

www.circusflora.org

Circus Flora makes June fly by in Grand Center

St. Louis Actors' Studio wraps up its second season with a homegrown play. Outside the Lines is a one-act drama by Gerry Mandel. Set in "a Midwestern city," the story dramatizes the plight of a Bosnian woman who tangles with the powers at city hall over her daycare center. In recent months Mandel has been working with the six-actor cast and director Sara Renschen to give the piece an organic feel. Last May Actors Studio took this same workshop approach to an original script called Snapshots; the result was edifying.

On a somewhat grander scale -- at least in terms of numbers -- Clayton Community Theatre is staging an adaptation of the popular C.S. Lewis novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The fabled Narnia will come to life in a grandiose production employing a cast of 48 actors. CCT tends to offer more substantive fare than some of the other local community theaters. Of late they've staged plays by Edward Albee, Peter Shaffer and Tennessee Williams. That alone makes this a company worth monitoring.

This week June will be bustin' out all over -- to the sound of music.

www.siteforrent.com

When the Muny kicks into gear in late June, we'll have a new musical almost every week for two months. But this week will see four musicals. Certainly the most publicized is the return engagement of Rent, which begins on Tuesday at the Fox. This show's appeal has always eluded me. But as Daniel Webster once said of Dartmouth College, "There are those who love it." So this week is for them. On this go-round the 1996 musical is titled Rent: The Broadway Tour, owing to the inclusion in the ensemble of three original cast members -- Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp and Gwen Stewart. I'm sure they won't seem a bit too old for their roles.

Locally, the Black Rep has a tradition of closing its season with a musical. This year it's the single-minded revue Blues in the Night with jazzy, sometimes bawdy, tunes like "Reckless Blues," "Wild Women Don't Have the Blues" and "Wasted Life Blues." So you know what you're getting before you go in.

Which cannot be said for a first-timer heading to Jason Robert Brown's audacious and lovely two-character exploration of a marriage, The Last Five Years, which is being presented by New Jewish Theatre.

Sir John is back in town. The portly Sir John Falstaff is surely the most beloved of all Shakespeare's comic foils. A liar, braggart and coward -- no wonder he makes audiences happy. He's the perennial know-it-all who seems to have everything going for him until he slips on a banana peel.

www.taverntrove.com | wikimedia.org

This Falstaff might have gone well with that Falstaff

Falstaff is best known as a featured player in two of Shakespeare's history plays. But for the next three weeks he will be swaggering through Forest Park as the principal lout in The Merry Wives of Windsor, this summer's offering from Shakespeare Festival St. Louis.

We'll have more to say about the actual production in next week's RFT. But in the abstract, this lesser comedy (no major critic has much good to say about it) might be ideally suited to SFSL. Unlike the better-known classics, Merry Wives is a show without expectations. Falstaff should fit right in with wine and cheese and belly dancers and sword swallowers. The entire experience should be agreeably merry.

A Chorus Line, the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning show about dancers who share their hopes, dreams and innermost secrets while auditioning for a musical, was the sensation of the 1975-'76 theater season. When it closed in 1990 after more than 6,000 performances, it was the longest-running musical in Broadway history. Nearly two decades later, it is now the longest-running American musical in Broadway history. Three mega-musicals -- The Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Les Misérables -- have outlasted it.

Paul Kolnik (www.achorusline.com)

When A Chorus Line received its first Broadway revival three years ago, once again it was warmly embraced by audiences and ran for another profitable 759 performances. Now the touring production of that revival is on view at the Fox Theatre. There's nothing very "mega" about A Chorus Line. Seventeen hopefuls stand in line at a cattle-call audition and tell their stories. Yet despite its simplicity -- perhaps because of its simplicity -- A Chorus Line is capable of moving an audience to laughter, tears and goosebumps. Its very humanity elevates theatergoing to an event.

It's easy to be cynical about revivals. Five years ago Marvin Hamlisch, who wrote the show's still-thrilling music, told RFT that he was "absolutely sick" of revivals.

After the deep darkness that has pervaded area theaters during the past few weeks -- most notably with heavyweight dramas by Brecht, Büchner and Kafka -- the first lilting notes of an impending musical summer can be heard. This weekend (through May 9) the Kirkwood Theatre Guild concludes its production of Damn Yankees.

Kirkwood Theatre Guild

When it made its debut in 1955, Damn Yankees was only the second show from neophyte producer Hal Prince, who would emerge as the most prolific producer-director in the American theater. Prince's first show, which opened a year earlier, was The Pajama Game. Both musicals were based on unlikely subjects -- a labor union strike in The Pajama Game, the Faust legend applied to baseball in Damn Yankees -- yet they both ran for more than a thousand performances.

You know you want you some Riverdance: In the opening "Reel Around the Sun," the stage throbs with a kind of orgiastic splendor.

Some musicals continue to tour long after they've worn out their welcome. The orchestra grows thinner on each repeat visit, and the productions seem a little further removed from our initial memories. But I would expect Riverdance, which returns to the Fox this weekend for five performances between Friday and Sunday in what is being billed as the "farewell performances," to evoke its full frenzy.

First developed in 1994 as a seven-minute interlude to showcase Irish musicians, dancers and singers while the judges' votes were being tallied on the Eurovision Song Contest (think American Idol), the piece was such an instant success that it quickly grew into a full evening. The expanded piece premiered in 1995 in Dublin. But Riverdance earned its designation as an international phenomenon when it traveled to New York City and played Radio City Music Hall in March 1996. From that time on, the journey has never stopped.

Riverdance is very much composer Bill Whelan's triumph.

It's as if the weight of the world has descended on St. Louis theaters.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services

Wash. U. senior Kaylin Boosalis as Mother Courage

This weekend Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children plays on at Washington University, to be followed next week by BB's The Good Person of Setzuan in an unusual co-production with St. Louis Actors Studio. Amid all this levity, Georg Buchner's Woyzeck (which, despite its many virtues, is hardly a barrel of laughs) continues at Upstream Theater.