Ice Maidens

A World Premiere by Stan Peal
Directed by Scott Dixon
Commonweal Theatre
(November 1, 2008)

First of all, Ice Maidens is much more interesting than Commonweal’s plot synopsis suggests. While it is true that its about a young woman returning for a visit to her Minnesota home and her estranged family, and it is true that her younger sister did fall through the ice and drown when they were girls and that unsettled guilt over the accident haunts each member of the family causing the young woman’s estrangement from her family, I still wasn’t expecting this play. The synopsis conjures up an earnest young women, perhaps fresh from therapy or a spiritual healing, attempting to embrace and reconcile with her past. But I knew this image was all wrong the moment Lisa comes on stage and sticks her head in the hole in what looks like ice and. . .well, I don’t want to spoil the scene for you.

Lisa and her boyfriend are not the middle class, Prius driving, 30-ish, professionals that I expected. Instead they turn out to be. . . .   And not only that, they’re also . . ., and they’re headed to California to tour with a group of . . . .   I’m starting to see why the Commonewal’s plot synopsis looked so bland; these revelations need to be made from the stage. Perhaps the impact of Lisa’s arrival to her family’s home is best summed up by 16-year-old Mandy who calls her prodigal sister “scalding, like an iron.”

Kimberly Maas, Hal Cropp, and David Harmann rehearse a scene from Ice Maidens. (Photo: Commonweal)

The scalding Lisa, played by Kimberly Maas, and her Atlanta boyfriend, Wes (Mike Davidovich), enter into the Minnesota lake town that is just settling into the refreshing repose of November. It is the time of year when the ground begins to solidify with the frost, offering welcome stability. Writer Stan Peal has filled Ice Maidens with these types of metaphors. The cold refreshes Lisa and awakens a lost part of her. She begins the play “scalding,” tough and angry (and Maas is remarkably tough), but the cold softens her, melting her tough exterior.

But Maas’s character is not the only one who needs melting (or is it freezing?). Lisa’s mother Joanne (Susan D’Autremont) clings to her own ice out of fear of facing the past. Her obvious avoidance of her prodigal daughter is simply chilling. At a pivotal point in the play, when other family members are beginning to soften towards each other, D’Autremont distracts herself by worrying about the impending melting of the polar ice caps. Ice Maidens is rich with metaphors and images that include the ballerina spirit of the drowned sister, the transforming stories of evangelical Christianity, the opening of fragile souls in a Karaoke bar, and the freeing precision of skateboarding and figure skating.

It’s quite possible that Ice Maidens simply has too many metaphors and images “in play.” The ice dam is threatening to take out the bridge (the metaphors are contagious—I can’t help but pile them on). But if the metaphors threaten to implode the play, the characters are jumping up and down on thin ice (there I go again); they too are all “in play.” It seems that every character has a confession to make about the pivotal day when six year old Stephanie plunged through the ice. And every character is in need of his or her own redemption.The coincidences push against the ice dam that holds the play together and combine with the metaphors to make tremendous demands on the play’s ability to ultimately resolve and fulfill.

But the ice only bends and the dam holds, thanks to the will and the skill of the playwright. Peal’s script and director Dixon’s quick pacing keep the play moving forward, sometimes poignantly superimposing two small scenes over the top of each other. Ice Maidens is also extremely funny. The fluid clash of sincerity and cynicism, of heat and cold, provide unexpected levity. And while the underlying family drama is difficult, the characters are having fun, too; after all, there’s Karaoke on Sunday and Wednesday nights in Silver Lake, Minnesota.

Ice Maidens is a strong play and a brilliant production, and Peal and the Commonweal have every right to be extremely proud of it. But it’s also a work in progress, and I’m guessing that more changes will come over the short November run. A few of the irresistible metaphors may have to be saved back for another play. For example, the singing metaphor may be too predictable, like a sugary TV sitcom, distracting from the central them of redemption through cold and ice. And the final scene leaves everyone just a little bit too happy—all the metaphors consummated, all the characters redeemed. Perhaps I simply don’t trust a happy ending; perhpas I’ve lived in Minnesota too long.

While a world premiere brings focus on the play and the playwright, the acting company does a tremendous job of bringing Peal’s play to life. The evolving relationship between the sisters, Kimberly Maas and Stef Dickens, is particularly strong. While Maas has somehow transformed herself into the street tough Lisa, Dickens has somehow moved from the hardened prostitute of this summer’s Man of La Mancha into a very believable teenaged figure skater, complete with pink leg warmers. Kit Mayer and Jason Underferth have again used a simple set and lighting design to beautifully create the indoor and the outdoor, the real and the surreal, helping those of us in Southeast Minnesota embrace the refreshing return of the cold.

Ice Maidens runs through November 16.
Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

November Nights: The World Premiere of Ice Maidens

by Stan Peal
directed by Scott Dixon

The Commonweal continues its commitment to staging new works with the world premiere of Stan Peal’s Ice Maiden. The play, which was commissioned by the Commonweal, received a staged reading at the theatre last fall after Peal spent a year of “intermittent weekends” in Lanesboro working with the company. Next week it will receive a full production on the Commonweal stage for a two-week run.

Peal left Minnesota in 2001 to found the Epic Arts Repertory Theatre in Charlotte, North Carolina, but he remembers the cold. Peal uses the cold as a positive metaphor, as something “welcoming and invigorating. . . .Cold is usually a negative metaphor in plays,” says Peal. “I wanted the cold and ice to be positive and explore the idea of a baptism by ice—to see how the cold can purify and bring new life.”

Commonweal Artistic director Hal Cropp believes Peal has succeeded with this exploration and has captured something of Lanesboro. “The script is very much evocative of our region,” says Cropp. It is “filled with glorious imagery and vivid characterizations. I think the story, and Stan’s unique voice will ring true to our community.” The Commonweal bills the play as a moving, humorous, and ultimately heartfelt story.

The plot of the play involves a young woman visiting her Minnesota home. The visit stirs up memories of her sister falling through the ice and drowning during a childhood lake crossing. This memory has driven the young woman away from her home and away from her family, testing Peal’s metaphor of ice and cold as purifying and redemptive elements.

The collaboration between Peal and the Commonweal has been fruitful. Peal describes this collaboration in muted terms, noting that the collaboration is a reminder that the “playwright is not an isolated artist” and at some point the playwright must “let go and send the play through the collective process unique to the Theatre.” Peal feels that the Commonweal company “seems to have a particular sensitivity to the gradual curve of this shake-up process.”

Director Scott Dixon sees the “shake-up process” a little more turbulently: “it’s like handing that new car over to people who will abuse the hell out of it. The director, the designers, the actors—they pull at the seams, twist it as hard as they can, try everything they can think of to break it down before building it back up again.” In the end, Dixon muses, “When a script withstands that kind of workout, then you know you’ve got something.”

Ice Maidens runs November 1 – 16 with Previews October 30 and 31.

Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

John Hasler Theater fall comedy Don’t Hug Me

by Phil Olson

The Jon Hassler Theater is entering the second week of its fall production of Phil Olson’s musical comedy Don’t Hug Me. Here is JHT’s description of the play:

Don’t Hug Me takes place in Bunyan Bay, Minnesota. It’s the coldest day of the year and cantankerous bar owner, Gunner Johnson, wants to sell the business and move to Florida. Clara, his wife and former Winter Carnival Bunyan Queen, wants to stay. Bernice Lundstrom, the pretty waitress, wants to pursue a singing career. Her fiance, Kanute Gunderson, wants her to stay home. It’s a battle of wills, and when a fast-talking salesman, Aarvid Gisselsen, promises to bring romance into their lives through the ‘magic’ of karaoke, all heck breaks loose!

It’s Fargo meets The Music Man (without the blood or the trombones).

Don’t Hug Me runs through November 16

Visit the John Hassler Theater for schedules and tickets: Jon Hassler Theater

Commonweal Earns International Ibsen Award

The Commonweal Theatre (Lanesboro, MN) has received a prestigious scholarship award from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture worth $45,000 USD (NOK 250,000). The award is in recognition of the Commonweal’s consistent work promoting the spirit of Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright whose work spans the late 1800s, is regarded as the father of modern, western drama. The Commonweal’s Hal Cropp and Adrianne Sweeney are representing the Commonweal in Oslo at the International Ibsen Awards Conference The award was to be presented Friday.

The scholarships are meant to recognize community-based arts organizations that use Ibsen’s work as “grounds for personal exchange in easily recognized issues concerning all cultures. . .[to] discuss challenging human problems.” With the award, the Norwegian ministry intends to recognize and encourage organizations that focus on “artistic issues in form and content where artists are given the opportunity to communicate something other than what public media is already filled with at any given time.”

The Commonweal is recognized for the entirety of its work, including its six-play season with 200 annual performances, it’s New Play Series that has yielded 12 world premiers, and its annual Ibsen festival. The Ibsen festival is highlighted each year by a production of one of Henrik Ibsen’s plays. The Commonweal staged Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in 2008 and plans to produce Hedda Gabler in 2009.

Jerome Yorke and Stef Dickens in the Commonweal’s Peer Gynt. (photo: Commonweal)

The Commonweal’s Artistic Director Hal Cropp indicated that the scholarship money will be used to enhance the Commonweal’s Ibsen Festival, particularly the Commonweal’s project “Bringing Ibsen to the Rural Midwest.” The award also increases the ties between the Commonweal and the Norwegian National Theater where Ibsen had served as resident playwright.

“The great long term thing for me and for the company is the ability to get to know, and to begin to have conversations with the Norwegian National Theatre, and explore the possibility of getting the Commonweal to go over there and them to come over here on an exchange,” Cropp said.

Along with the Commonweal, the Ministry of Culture presented scholarships to three other organizations: Center for Asian Theatre, Bangladesh; Pen Afghanistan, Afghanistan; and herStay, Norway.

Sources:
Minnesota Public Radio: Lanesboro theater receives international recognition
Ibsen Awards: Scholarships for International Ibsen Projects announced

Penumbra staging August Wilson’s Fences

With much of the Twin Cities buzz on the Guthrie’s production of Little House on the Prairie, not to mention a certain St. Paul convention group coming to town, Penumbra’s production of Fences could easily slip by unnoticed. But for this season, Fences tops my list of must-see Twin Cities theater.

Fences, Wilson’s second major play, followed closely on the heels of his ground breaking Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. It was first staged in 1985 at the Yale Repertory Theater with James Earl Jones playing Troy Maxon, and it moved to Broadway in 1987. It won the Pulitzer for Drama in 1987.

The play would also become the second play in Wilson’s ambitions 10-play cycle which chronicles the the lives of African Americans in the 20th Century. Each of the 10 plays is set in a different decade of the Century with Fences representing the 50s. Wilson wouldn’t realize that he was writing the cycle until his next play, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, yet some of the themes and motifs that would characterize the later plays are already present in Fences. For example, Fences introduces a mentally disabled man to stand as a flawed truth teller, chorus, and priest. Troy’s brother Gabriel, living with the consequence of his WWII head injury, is the first of many flawed and sometimes crazy griots that find their way into Wilson’s cycle demanding accountability to a shared community and history.

But what makes Fences so remarkable is the powerful central character of Troy Maxon and his damaged relationship with his son. Troy is both larger than life, serving the role that Arthur Miller might call a modern day tragic hero—highly respected by his friends and family—and heartbreakingly human in his failings.

Penumbra Theatre, which has previously staged all 10 of Wilson’s major plays, is in the second year of a commitment to produce Wilson’s cycle over 5 seasons. Wilson lived in St. Paul and was a company member of Penumbra during the time Fences was written and continued an artistic connection to Penumbra until his death in 2005 at 60. Theater patrons in the upper Midwest are beneficiaries of this unique relationship between company and playwright.

Fences
Penumbra Theatre
Directed by Lou Bellamy
August 21 through September 21
Visit the Penumbra for schedules and tickets: Penumbra Theatre

Twin Cities Reviews of Fences:

Star Tribune’s Rohan Preston: Fences is intimate, powerful
Pioneer Press’ Dominic P. Papatola: Penumbra knocks one out of the park with Fences
City Pages, Quinton Skinner: Home Run

Twin Cities review of Little House on the Prairie

Pioneer Press reviewer Dominic P. Paptola took Little House to task in Earnest ‘Little House’ can’t overcome its many shortcomings.
Star Tribune reviewer Graydon Royce was a bit kinder in his A purple-sky, golden-wheat ode to frontier America.

Little House on the Prairie
Guthrie Theatre
Directed by Francesca Zambello
July 26 - October 19
Visit the Guthrie for schedules and tickets: Guthrie Theatre

Pericles, Prince of Tyre

by William Shakespeare, directed by Rick Barbour
Great River Shakespeare Festival Apprentice and Intern Company
(July 23, 2008)

Once again the Apprentice Company has provided Winona with another top-notch production in the back waters of the summer Shakespeare Festival. After nearly two months of providing support for the festival's main plays, the group of largely college-aged actors, technicians, and administrative interns took center stage with one of Shakespeare's lesser known romances.

Presented in three-quarter round in Winona State's black box theater, with minimal costuming, sets and props, the company presented the episodic tale of a young noble's search for adventure and romance. During the journey, Pericles gains, and devastatingly loses, title, wife, and daughter. The play is similar to A Winter's Tale (which GRSF performed in its first season) with its final joyous reunion that is clouded by melancholy questions over the years of suffering and the uncertain future.

The play utilizes a narrator—a poet named Gower—to help tie together the acts which move through several kingdoms through a span of more than 15 years. Ricardo Valencia does a marvelous job as Gower, bringing to life lengthy speeches that could easily have dragged down the action of the play. Instead, the interludes felt like natural and necessary elements in the play.

The acting in the production is uniformly strong. Because of the multiple scenes and abundance of characters that populate these scenes, nearly all of the actors play multiple parts, yet no scene or character shows any sign of a let down. It seems as if each scene was treated by the company as if it were pivotal to the entire play. This attention to detail is remarkable considering the short time the company had to bring the production together and the size and complexity of the play itself.

And just to tie the play in to the main stage productions, Pericles, in his late play euphoria, gives his daughter in marriage to a man he doesn't know. Here it seems Pericles has not heeded the example of the Kings whose daughters he himself had wooed as a younger man, confronting the audience with a stark reminder that women, even women revered for virtue, have a limited voice in who or what they will become. But that is an ongoing discussion the twenty-first century is having with Shakespeare, and I'm sure GRSF will visit it again.

Pericles plays Thursday at 7:00 and Friday at 3:00 in the Winona State University's Performing Arts Center Black Box Theater.

Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

July Has Become Theatre Month in Southeast Minnesota

These next two weeks may be the busiest theatre weeks of the year in Southeast Minnesota. With the exception of the Jon Hassler Theater, which just finished its summer production, all of the area professional theatres have two or more shows scheduled, and most of them are offering related activities, conversations and performances. In addition, Minnesota has an abundance of community theaters; I've listed a few area productions below, but to be sure, this is only a partial listing.

Please check with the individual theaters for dates, times, and ticket information.

Commonweal Theatre, Lanesboro, Minnesota

Harvey by Mary Chase (Minnesota Theatre Review)
Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman (Minnesota Theatre Review)
Thursdays - Mondays, through October 25
Schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

Great River Shakespeare Festival, Winona Minnesota

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (Minnesota Theatre Review) (Preview: Problem Plays)
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (Minnesota Theatre Review)
Tuesdays - Sundays, through July 27
Schedules and tickets: Great River Shakespeare Festival

GRSF Apprentice Acting Company

Pericles, Prince of Tyre by William Shakespeare
July 22 - 25
Schedules and tickets: Great River Shakespeare Festival

Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre, St. Mary's Page Theater, Winona, Minnesota

Little Shop of Horrors by Ashman & Mencken (opens July 10)
The Foreigner by Larry Shue (opens July 17)
Thursdays - Sundays, through August 3
Schedules and tickets: Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre

Gilmore Creek Children's Theatre

Mouse Expedition by Erin Malcolm and Brian Blankenship
Five performances July 19 - August 2
Schedules and tickets: Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre

Community Theatre

Rushford Area Society for the Arts

The Sensuous Senator by Michael Parker
directed by Daryl Lanz
July 16 - 18 7:30 p.m.
July 19 - 20 2:00 p.m.
Rushford-Peterson High School, Rushford, Minn.
Tickets: 507-864-7525
www.rushfordrasa.org

Ye Olde Opera House

Cinderella by Rodgers and Hammerstiein
Directed by Kay Cross
July 16 - 20 8:30 p.m.
Ye Olde Gray Barn, Hwy 44 East of Spring Grove, Minn.
Tickets: 507-498-JULY
www.yeoldeoperahouse.org

Rochester Repetory Theatre Company

Glass Half Full: 10 Minute Plays
Directed by Becci Berg & Kent Griffin
July 17 - 19; 24 - 26 8:00 p.m.
Rochester Repertory Theatre, 103 Seventh St. N.E., Rochester, Minn.
www.rochesterrep.org

Fountain City Players

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Rupert Holmes
Directed by Judee Brone
July 23 - 26 7:30 p.m.
July 27 2:00 p.m.
Fountain City Auditorium, 42 North Main Street, Fountain City, Wis.
Tickets: 608-687-7481

The Taming of the Shrew

by William Shakespeare, directed by Alec Wild
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 9, 2008)

Alec Wild has returned to the Great River Shakespeare Festival with a splash of welcome creativity to offer one of the finest productions yet from the 5-year-old company. Wild and the production company present Italy’s Padua as a sort of circus of mimes, clowns, and minstrels who keep watch over a collection of brightly colored visitors to the city. The entire cast—including the principles—remains onstage for most of the play, populating the steel-truss towers that serve as trapeze supports, prop storage, and repositories for the varied tools of sound effects. Much of the action is exaggerated, utilizing Three Stooges-type physical comedy with feigned violence and pratfalls punctuated by bells, drums, and whistles. Characters supplement the stage action with facial expressions and poses designed to include the audience in the conspiracy. From the very beginning, the audience understands that this will be a production that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Taming of the Shrew abandons the GRSF tradition of starting its plays with the entire cast onstage for a choreographed prologue and instead sends out the lone Biondello (played by Zachary Michael Fine) who, relishing his time in the spotlight, makes several false starts before launching the anticipated prologue.

Carla Noack in The Taming of the Shrew Directed by Alec Wild (Photo: Jared Brown)

The GRSF staging of Taming certainly emphasizes the comedic aspects of the play, and certainly, Shakespeare is witty, cleaver, and playful in this work. But as the recent commemoration of comedian George Carlin should remind us, there is often humor in pushing concepts that make us uncomfortable. And Shakespeare’s play about the roles of men and women in courtship and marriage in the early 1600s likely pushed the envelope. The play poses several tenets of accepted social order: a quiet, obedient women is far preferred to one who uses her tongue and thinks for herself. Marriage arrangements are basically financial exchanges between men. Men have a right and a responsibility to make sure their wives and daughters conform to accepted social norms. Had these norms been universally accepted in 1600, Shakespeare, like Carlin, would have had little use for them as comedic devices.

Earlier I wrote about some of the problems for a modern audience with the concept of a husband “taming” his wife (see Problem Plays: Taming of the Shrew). The physical comedy takes some of the edge off this taming, but so does the stature of the characters playing the roles of tamer and shrew. Carla Noack as Katherine is taller than Christopher Gerson’s Petruchio and would not be a pushover in a physical match. So when Katherine allows Petruchio to dictate her behavior, she does not simply do it out of fear. While she has come to realize that she may not eat or see her family without giving in to Gerson’s Petruchio, she has also come to respect and possibly love Petruchio. Helping further take the edge off the taming, Gerson’s taming is pulled off in part by dumb luck. Despite his confident words, Gerson lets the audience know that his strategy is a bluff, and he certainly seems as surprised as the others when Katherine so quickly chooses to be tamed. And choice seems to be the key here: if the audience believes that Katherine is making a choice to put her lot in with Petruchio—Noack certainly plays Katherine this way—then the transformation seems a little less like brain washing and coercion. But even with fine performances by Noack and Gerson, that is still a bit of a stretch.

The Taming of the Shrew plays in repertory with The Merchant of Venice through July 26.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Man of La Mancha

by Dale Wasserman (book), Joe Darion (lyrics), Mitch Leigh (music). Directed by Hal Cropp
Commonweal Theatre (July 7, 2008)

The Commonweal’s summer offering, Man of La Mancha, matches the company’s creative production and acting with a strong and popular musical comedy. The result is a play that builds on this season’s earlier production of Peer Gynt: fast-paced story telling with a small cast that not only portrays multiple characters, it creates the scenes, manufactures important props, plays the chorus, and even handles the orchestra duties. The play is immensely funny and subtly thought-provoking. The cast, director Hal Cropp, and the production team are to be congratulated on a top-notch production.

The success of Man of La Mancha starts with a tried-and-true musical comedy which has seen constant performances since its 1965 Tony Award winning Broadway premiere. But its pedigree dates back even farther, borrowing the title character and its episodes from the classic seventeenth century Spanish novel, Don Quixote, written by Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of an eccentric who sets out to recapture the honor of a long-gone, romanticized era of knights. The episodic novel’s huge success came from its witty ability to lampoon the conventions of popular legends and romance stories, perhaps in the same way that Monty Python lampooned the King Arthur legend in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When Dale Wasserman selected the episodes to include in his 1959 television drama, he not only had the pick of time-tested story lines from one of the pioneering books in world literature, he had a main character in Don Quixote whose lunacy and idealism has long been ingrained in western culture.

The drama takes place entirely in a prison where Cervantes awaits trial before the Spanish Inquisition. But first, his fellow inmates charge Cervantes with being honest, a bad poet, and an idealist. For these crimes, they threaten to take his meager possessions and destroy his manuscript. Desperate to save the manuscript, Cervantes and his servant enact scenes from the life of Don Quixote as a form of defense. With the aid of a few rough props and costumes that he has brought with him, Cervantes transforms into Don Quixote, and his fellow prisoners are enlisted to play the other characters. Their reluctance to join this charade drains away as they become interested in the story and forget the endless tedium of their life in prison.

In the Commonweal’s production, the musical becomes a sort of “non-musical.” While the play features as many songs as most musicals, and the actors do a fine job of singing these songs, the songs seem to naturally fit the story being told on stage; the songs do not upstage the story. I suspect that this is partly due to the play—in Don Quioxte’s world, it could be natural for someone to break out into song—and partly due to choices made by the Commonweal. First, the play does not use an orchestra (or an orchestral recording), so the transition from dialog to song does not include an orchestral swell and a corresponding amplified singer—the actors are able to enter into a song without breaking character. The actors provide the minimal accompaniment. Rick Nance’s character moves to a partially hidden piano for most songs. Additionally, the actors contribute poly-rhythmic instrumentation using muted hand claps or improvised percussion instruments such as rugged eating utensils or rough stage furniture. (Later, David Hennessey told me that Musical Director Stephen Houtz based the rhythms on flamingo). Kimberly Maas occasionally adds accordion for texture and Eric Bunge tells part of a story on guitar. Even “The Impossible Dream” seems like a natural continuation of the theme, not a show-stopping “number.”

The Commonweal’s eight actors rarely leave stage during the 95-minute single act play, moving to the shadows when they are not directly involved in the action. Having one scene to tell a story of this magnitude places a huge burden on the set, blocking, and lighting. Kit Mayer’s seemingly simple set design evokes an iron-cold underworld of lawlessness and despair that physically and emotionally extends beyond the stage’s perimeter. The transitions from dungeon to country-side adventure are created largely by Jason Underferth’s effective lighting design.

Individual performances—and there are many good ones—are overshadowed by the company in this play. Eric Bunge completely transforms into the elderly Quixote character with the aid of a very simple mustache and goatee. Troy Iverson is fun to watch as Quixote’s squire Sancho, and Stef Dickens is brilliant as Quixote’s Lady Dulcinia, as she moves from acceptance of her tough lot in life through confusion and anger at being thought a lady to finally embracing Quixote’s hope and optimism. Her emotional journey reflects the journey of the entire ensemble. But the play’s success is ultimately carried off by the pacing and energy of this ensemble and their ability to spontaneously create the world where the idealism of the foolish knight, Don Quixote, and his unlikely squire, Sancho Panza, seem possible.

The Man of La Mancha plays in repertory with Harvey through October 25.
Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

The Merchant of Venice

by William Shakespeare, directed by Paul Barnes
Great River Shakespeare Festival (July 3, 2008)

“Unsettling” was the word that both cast and audience kept using in the post production conversation to describe The Merchant of Venice after Thursday’s performance at the Great River Shakespeare Festival. The plot line that follows the Jewish moneylender Shylock took up most of the conversation. Jonathan Gillard Daly’s portrayal of Shylock is polarizing in the story and mesmerizing to the audience. Daly takes Shakespeare’s caricature of a Jew—godless, money-grubbing miser—and dominates the scenes that he is in. The performance is reminiscent of Daly’s powerful Richard III, but rather than being driven by Richard’s lust for power, Shylock seeks only a single revenge to help ease the pain of a lifetime of slander and injustice.

The evidence of this anti-Semitic slander is abundant, leaving it hard to find a hero amongst the characters the audience is meant to root for. We want Antonio (the merchant of the title, played by Michael Fitzpatrick) to clear his debts, yet his refusal to see Shylock as human and his harsh “mercy” at the end of the play taint our enthusiasm for him and his friends. We are certainly relieved at the turn of events that save Antonio, but we aren’t exactly cheering along with the actors on stage.

A Jew would have been rare in Shakespeare’s London, perhaps as exotic as a Prince from Morocco. So one would guess that Shakespeare’s audience would not have had much reason to question the evil caricature of Shylock, and it likely did cheer his final humiliation. But the play also offers evidence that Shakespeare didn’t believe the black and white, Christian and Jew dichotomy he created. In a well known speech, Shylock proclaims his humanity: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (III.i.64-66). And in several places in the play, Shakespeare uses Shylock to highlight the questionable actions and values of Christians. But even with these devices at work, the anti-Semitism is dominant. Director Paul Barnes’ decision to leave the text unaltered, to not soften the racism to suit the times, certainly demonstrates his respect of the intelligence of GRSF’s audience. But ironically, leaving the text alone means that we are seeing a significantly different play than Shakespeare’s original audience.

Jonathan Gillard Daly as Shylock in the GRSF production of The Merchant of Venice. (Photo: GRSF)

Another example of this not-so-subtle racism comes in another plot line, where suitors to the rich and beautiful Portia must pass a lottery to win her hand. Before Bassanio (Antonio’s good friend, played by Zachary Michael Fine) arrives to try his luck, two other suitors—The Prince of Morocco (Donte Fitzgerald) and the Prince of Aragon (Bob Fairbrook)—try theirs. These two scenes provide comic relief as both suitors, decked out in culturally exaggerated costumes, speech, movements, and actions, fall prey to their own vanity. But Portia’s comment upon the departure of the saddened Prince of Morocco changes the audience’s perspective of a brilliantly written comedy sketch.

A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go.
Let all of his complexion choose me so. (II.vii.78-79)

This comment forces a contemporary audience to wonder if its own relief and amusement over Morocco’s failed choice was, after all, based on race. Again Barnes doesn’t let us off the hook; we have to wrestle with the uncertainty inherent in the text.

Unsettling can also be used to describe the final plot development which is clearly intended as humorous. Portia (played by Tarah Flanagan) and her maid (Carla Noack), disguised as men, have induced their new husbands to offer their respective wedding rings as tokens of appreciation for having saved Antonio. When the men return, the women chide the men for so easily parting with their rings. While the trick is clearly funny, it is also clearly manipulative. Portia uses the opportunity to place separation between her new husband Bassanio and his best friend Antonio, and in a sense, to change the ground rules for their marriage. Portia initially sets the ground rules for their marriage in a more traditional manor just after Bassanio has passed the lottery:

Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours
Is now converted. But now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o’er myself, and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours—my lord’s!—I give them with this ring,
Which when you part from, lose, or give away,
Let it presage the ruin of your love,
And be my vantage to exclaim on you. (III.ii.166-174)

Even before the fiasco with the ring, Portia has shown little willingness to submit or even share power with her new husband. While freely giving over her purse to Bassanio, she continues to direct her servants and orchestrates the events that will resolve the play. But it would be hard to find fault with Portia if she is not yet willing to give over her house to Bassanio—Bassanio has done little to prove that he deserves it. He has spent his youth flitting from one adventure to another, exhausting his own fortune and borrowing heavily from his friends. In the play, he is finally choosing to get serious and take responsibility for his debts. His responsible plan: borrow more money and play a lottery to win a wealthy heiress.

The production itself seems top notch. The lighting and staging are both simple and elegant, helping the audience move from the streets of Venice to the court of Belmont to the Venetian courtroom. The three young attendants to Portia (Orion McCullough-Smith, Christopher Bernard, and Mitchell Essar) sing a lovely passage put to music by Daniel Kallman. The acting certainly meets the high quality that we’ve come to expect from the festival. Along with Jonathan Gillard Daly as Shylock, Tarah Flanagan’s Portia controls both the court and her home of Belmont, and Chris Mixon plays a memorable Gratiano, the type of friend you’d rather didn’t come along when meeting your future spouse. Doug Scholz-Carlson seems to have taken over the role of company fool, and here he does a particularly nice job fooling with words as Lancelot Gobbo.

The Great River Shakespeare Festival’s The Merchant of Venice is certainly more thought provoking than satisfying. While a comedy—it abounds in weddings—the humor is often overshadowed by the many unsettling aspects of the play itself. And rather than simply transport an audience to a romantic Venice, the play forces us to explore our own experiences with racism. There may not be another way to honestly play The Merchant of Venice.

The Merchant of Venice plays in reperatory with The Taming of the Shrew through July 27.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Problem Plays: The Taming of the Shrew

The Great River Shakespeare Festivals 2008 offerings include two plays that are often described as “problem” plays. These type of problem plays use stereotypes or social attitudes that might seem offensive to contemporary audiences. Both of the GRSF plays this summer, The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice, have seen periods where theater companies refused to stage them. Luckily, both plays receive regular productions as theaters and audiences welcome the opportunity to enjoy these important works, often by finding ways to confront or diffuse the racism or sexism that contribute significantly to their plot development. I am excited that GRSF has brought these two plays to Southeast Minnesota this summer, and I look forward to seeing them both.

The Plot

The Taming of the Shrew is a Shakespearean comedy, which means an audience can expect a plot driven by coincidence and chance, characters in disguise, clownish characters, and a happy ending replete with multiple marriages. Shrew does not disappoint.

Baptista, a rich gentleman, has two daughters of marriageable age. The younger daughter, Bianca, has attracted several competing suitors, while Katherine has none. Baptista decides that he will not entertain any suits for his younger daughter until a match is found for his older daughter who has a reputation as a “shrew.” This declaration sends the suitors on a search for someone crazy or desperate enough to marry Katherine—a task they view as impossible, even with the generous dowry and their own bounty added to the mix.

Enter the clownish gentleman from Vienna, Petruchio, who not only willingly takes on Katherine, her sizable dowry, her future inheritance, and the payments from Bianca's suitors, but undertakes the seemingly impossible task of “taming” her.

The Problems with the Text

Carla Noack as Kate and Christopher Gerson as Petruchio in the Great River Shakespeare Festival’ The Taming of the Shrew. (Photo: GRSF)

While the play is very funny and very clever, the humor can be dampened by the sexist portrayal of marriage and women in the text. It should make us squirm a bit—and I suppose it might have made some early 17th Century Londoners squirm too. Some scholars point out that the abundance of surviving treatises and sermons dictating the proper role of women in marriage and society suggests that many women were not exactly embracing the role of obedience and servility in the early 1600s.

• Katherine is called shrew and devil and freely described as curst and rough. But like derogatory terms used for women today—terms such as bitch, slut, whore, and feminazi—the terms are difficult to define, and they are nearly impossible to refute because of their ambiguous meaning, illogical application, and malicious intent. The function of these words is to bully women into silence and conformity.
• Another troubling aspect of the play is that the daughters are not allowed any voice in who they will marry. Even though Bianca has many suitors, her father chooses without consulting Bianca. And in this case, Baptista chooses the highest bidder. One of the suitors, Lucentio, utilizes a two-prong strategy to try and win Bianca. He devises a way to secretly spend time with Bianca while his servant negotiates the financial deal with the father. But the disguised meetings with Bianca are simply for sport; only the financial deal holds any weight in marriage considerations. Another suitor, Hortensio, also disguises himself to meet directly with Bianca. But he fails to enter into negotiations with the father and, therefore, has no chance.
  
  Katherine's marriage is also arranged between suitor and father. But here it is the father (and Bianca's suitors) who makes the payments. Both daughters are traded as property by father and suitors. Petruchio even puts it in words on his wedding day:
  She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
  My household stuff, my field my barn,
  My horse my ox my ass my anything. (III.ii.220-222)
  
• A final problem is with the main comic device of the play—the “taming” of Katherine. Petruchio marries Katherine with the assurance that he can turn her from curst devil into a model wife, mild and obedient. His methods are those of a falconer taming a wild bird—and Shakespeare uses rich metaphors from falconry throughout:
  My Falcon now is sharp and passing empty
  And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged,
  For then she never looks upon her lure. (IV.ii.159-161)
  
  
  He captures her, removes her from her native place, refuses her food and sleep, then makes sure she knows that she can only get food and clothing through him. And before allowing her to return to her native home, she must accept his word as truth—even going so far as to embrace an old man as a young girl and calling the sun the moon. While the falconry metaphor is brilliantly written, this brainwashing is chilling when applied to a human being.

Playing to a Contemporary Audience

Katherine finally is allowed to speak for herself at the end of the play, and her words lay out the ideal for a loving, obedient wife—a final speech that leaves the play's characters astonished in admiration at her transformation and leaves the reader/audience cringing. It seems to me that this scene can only work for a contemporary audience if a couple of things happen. One, the audience buys into the “shrew” conceit and accepts that Katherine is better off in her new reincarnation. A more likely strategy is to play Katherine so large that she is seen as an equal to Petruchio, despite the limited text Shakespeare gives her to define herself. If the company can achieve this portrayal, the final speech can be viewed as a truce or understanding between equals who hold each other with mutual respect and love.

The text of the play seems starkly oppressive (and I'm contemplating the play entirely from the text here), but the play in production can be very different. Actors, directors, and designers are able to make choices that allow the audience to enjoy Shakespeare's keen wit while allowing Katherine to have a voice. The choice of Carla Noack as Katherine in the Great River Shakespeare Festival's production is a good indication that Katherine's voice will be heard. I expect that most theater companies who undertake this play will find ways to make the play work for an audience without asking them to accept a view of women as property to be exchanged between men.

The Taming of the Shrew plays in reperatory with The Merchant of Venice through July 27.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org

Summer Theatre Season in Full Swing

Summer theatre in southeast Minnesota is in full swing with four professional companies staging eight different productions. This weekend marks the opening of the fifth season of the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona with a free after-play concert by Chicago rhythm and blues artist James Armstrong at Levee park (Saturday, July 28). The Jon Hassler Theater's summer offering, The Good Doctor, started in mid June, and The Commonweal's production of Harvey started the summer season in late May. The Gilmore Creek Summer Theater begins the second week of July with the creepy musical The Little Shop of Horrors. In its second season, Gilmore Creek has added a children's selection to their two-play summer series.

Jonathan Gillard Daly as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (photo: GRSF)

Here is a brief listing of summer offerings. Please check with the individual theaters for dates, times, and ticket information.

Jon Hassler Theater, Plainview, Minnesota

The Good Doctor by Neil Simon
Thursdays - Sundays, through July 13
Schedules and tickets: Jon Hassler Theater

Commonweal Theatre, Lanesboro, Minnesota

Harvey by Mary Chase
Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman
Thursdays - Mondays, through October 25
Schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

Great River Shakespeare Festival, Winona Minnesota

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Tuesdays - Sundays, through July 27
Schedules and tickets: Great River Shakespeare Festival

Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre, St. Mary's Page Theater, Winona, Minnesota

Little Shop of Horrors by Ashman & Mencken (opens July 10)
The Foreigner by Larry Shue (opens July 17)
Thursdays - Sundays, through August 3
Schedules and tickets: Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre

Gilmore Creek Children's Theatre

Mouse Expedition by Erin Malcolm and Brian Blankenship
Five performances July 19 - August 2
Schedules and tickets: Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre

Theater Tips: Lanesboro

Seating

The seating in the new Commonweal is general admission, which means patrons choose their seats on a first-come, first-served basis. (As a perk, season ticket holders are allowed into the theater first.) Because of the thrust seating, all of the seats are close to the stage, but I think the larger section directly facing the stage offers the best theatre experience. For example, I spent the first half of Harvey in the second row on the house left side of the stage. After intermission, I moved to a comparable seat in the center section and noticed a definite increase in "energy." I think the extra energy came largely from the actors playing more to the front of the room, but it also ccame from sitting in a section with more people (the side sections only have a few rows, while the center section has many.) Hearing others around me laugh increased my enjoyment of the play. At the Commonweal, patrons don't have to pay extra for the best seats, they just have to be timely.

Food

Lanesboro has several great restaurants, and eating before a performance is an important part of the Lanesboro theatre experience. With plays starting one half hour earlier (7:30 p.m.), it's a bit harder to make the trip to Lanesboro and still have time for a relaxing meal. This summer, several of the restaurants in town have made accommodations for the earlier time by staying open later on weekends. (In the past, the three bars were the only places to socialize after the plays.) While not an exhaustive list, the Vintage Restaurant (right next to the Commonweal) and Riverside on the Root both offer limited menus after the play. Additionally, Riverside often has live acoustic music on their outdoor deck. That means that theatre goers won't starve if they skip dinner to make the show, and they now have places to go after the play to extend the theatre experience.

Harvey

by Mary Chase, Directed by Alan Bailey
Commonweal Theatre (June 6, 2008)

Harvey is a play that asks its audience to reconsider the assumptions about what is normal and what is important in the day-to-day life of business and society. Its main character, Elwood P. Dowd, joins a long line of outcasts whose life outside of the mainstream stands as an indictment of the status quo: beats, hippis, punks, and freegans, for example. Dowd’s philosophy is simple and to the point: he’d rather be pleasant than normal. He refuses to conform to the social climbing efforts of his sister, Veta Louise, the financial world of his attorney, Judge Omar Gaffney, or the ponderings of renowned psychiatrist William Chumley. Dowd’s social resistance remains quite social and seems restricted to drinking in as many bars and clubs as possible with his pal, a giant invisible rabbit named Harvey and whoever he can get to join him.

Harvey follows what has become a staple Hollywood formula. A simple, childlike person allows those around him or her to come to terms with what is really important in life. And in case the audience has missed the message, a cab driver comes on stage in the last moments of the play to sum it up. Rain Man, Forest Gump and Stuart Little fit the same mold. It’s a feel-good formula, but Harvey doesn’t seem to have much fresh to add to the formula.

To be fair, Harvey pre-dates Forest Gump and the others by a couple of generations and may well remain a classic while the others fade. Written in the 1940s when the middle class and its values were being stretched to include the returning GIs and their quickly growing families, Harvey’s long run on Broadway, Pulitzer Prize, and the blockbuster movie starring James Stewart certainly suggest that it captured something essential and important in the 40s and 50s. Unfortunately, Harvey seems less like a challenge to the insipid values that inform our work and social life today and more of an interesting trip down memory lane.

While the story isn’t compelling, the acting is. It’s simply fun to watch Adrienne Sweeney as Dowd’s Sister compulsively and increasingly caress her fur stole as the tension rises and Stela Burdt, Dowd’s niece whose social life has been compromised by the imaginary rabbit, preen and flirt with her cat-eye glasses. Hal Cropp is perfect as the famous Freudian doctor, who, like most of the characters, suffers from his own neurosis. Mary Chase surely had fun tweaking the psychiatric establishment.

Eric Bunge’s “aw shucks” Elwood P. Dowd feels like Jimmy Stewart, which is probably necessary for this play. (I’ve never seen the Jimmy Steward movie, but the intermission buzz suggests that Bunge played the part just like Stewart.) The romantic tension between nurse Ruth Kelly (Jill Underwood) and the self-absorbed junior Psychiatrist Lymann Sanderson (Scott Dixon) add an interesting side story. Tom Berger’s set design, especially the sanitarium (Chumley’s Rest), and the choreographed set changes are worth the price of admission in themselves.

For those who have an attachment to Harvey the movie, and that surely includes a lot of summer visitors to Lanesboro, this Harvey will not disappoint. But others, like me, will leave the theater wondering why such a talented company would expend its efforts on this play.

Harvey plays in repertory with Man of La Mancha through October 25.

Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

Peer Gynt

by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Hal Cropp
Commonweal Theatre (May 9, 2008)

The audience at the Commonweal’s staging of Peer Gynt is tipped off right away that Peer Gynt will be different from the Ibsen plays staged in the past few years. First of all, the stage is not an interior of a turn of the century wealthy household. Instead, the empty stage suggests a rustic barnyard. Secondly, the program includes an insert with a 15-paragraph plot synopsis. But reading the synopsis is not required to follow the rather straight forward movement of the play: a young man, easily swayed by the pleasures of the world, sets off to find himself. This synopsis serves as a warning of the wild ride that Ibsen and the Commonweal have prepared.

The lanky Jerome Yorke plays the childishly impatient Peer who, on the one hand, follows every fancy that falls his way and, on the other hand, strives to be true to his guiding principle: “to thyself be true.” Driven by a belief that he is destined for greatness, Peer enthusiastically blunders through his self-absorbed journey, abandoning his mother and his true love to poverty and loneliness. His carelessness is illustrated by his willing amendment to his life principle for the opportunity to marry the lovely Troll Princess and the possibility of inheriting the Troll kingdom. “Be true to yourself-ish” becomes his new, troll mantra. Yet with all of Peer’s faults, Yorke’s Peer is charming and lovable throughout his clueless journey of lusting after women, wealth, piety, power, and respect.

While Yorke portrays Peer, the other 5 actors portray everyone and everything else. The breadth of the characters that Jill Underwood, Irene ErkenBrack, Stef Dickens, Scott Dixon, and David Hennessey assume during the course of the play truly makes the entire work unforgettable. They appear as the drably dressed villagers in one scene and spew out of a trap door in another as the humorously hideous troll family. Later, with the help of a billowy cloth, the cast becomes the shapeless and ever-changing mythical creature known as the Boyd.

Perhaps the cloth itself should have received placement in the cast list. This simple, colorless cloth plays a small creek as well as a stormy ocean. With simple manipulation it becomes a pillow, a partition, a deathbed blanket, a shroud, the Boyd, and amazingly enough, the Sphinx.

Dixon’s grim portrayal of the Button Moulder—a devil at the crossroads character—and Dickens seductive portrayal of the Egyptian dancer Anitra relieving Peer of his worldly possessions are particularly memorable performances amid the numerous fine individual and collective character portrayals in Peer Gynt. While individual performances stand out, the success of this play is clearly a company effort; the creativity of director, cast, and production team carries Ibsen’s farcical early work. Yet amid all of the absurdity, Ibsen still finds room to explore the central questions about what it means to be human.

Peer Gynt runs through May 18.

Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

The Piano Lesson

By August Wilson, directed by Lou Bellamy
Penumbra Theatre, St. Paul, Minnesota
March 19, 2008

August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play begins with a 5:00 A.M. pounding on the door, but Penumbra appropriately begins its production a generation before Wilson’s 1936 setting with a brief, wordless sketch. A woman polishes the family piano which is decorated with folk art carvings and then encourages her young girl to play. This prelude ends with a freight train thundering through the set. This opening emphasizes that while the play takes place over the course of 5 summer days in 1936 Pittsburgh, its real story starts much earlier.

The present day tension of the play is between Berniece, who has moved north to Pittsburgh with her young daughter, and her brother Boy Willie. The overbearing Boy Willie plans to sell the family’s heirloom piano in order to buy land from the family that once owned their ancestors. He sees this as an appropriate way to use the family heirloom. He firmly believes that if he owns land, he will then have something tangible to pass down to his children—something his father and grandfather could not do.

Berniece has brought the piano north with her because it carries the symbolic heritage of her family. It had, at one time, been traded for her great-grandmother and grandfather (the price of the piano was 1 and 1/2 slaves—a mother and child). Carved on its surface are the images of this great grandmother and son, along with scenes depicting the sale and other events marking the family’s history. Berniece will not allow her brother to sell it. Through the course of the play, the audience learns the history of the piano and the family, a history that includes murder, loss, and a tradition of imprisonment that suggests the existence of a system of indentured servitude long after slavery’s abolition.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the play, Boy Willie and his friend Lymon share the stage with Boy Willie’s two Uncles: Doaker and Winning Boy. The younger men have recently served time in a prison farm—Parchment Farm. Many years earlier, the older men had served hard time in this same prison. Boy Willie and Lymon begin singing a work song they learned at the prison, and the older men join in the spirited song, mimicking the fall of the pick by stamping their feet and banging on the table. While this scene highlights the shared experience of these two generations of men—almost a shared rite of passage—the men one by one withdraw from the singing in a painful recognition of grief and loss until Boy Willie is left alone singing and slamming his hands on the table, unaware he is the only man remaining in the song, desperately beating back the demons that have marked his personal and family history.

This powerful rendition of this scene is evidence that Penumbra is the perfect place for Wilson’s drama: not only was Wilson a friend and company member, he shares Penumbra’s commitment to presenting the lives of black people and culture with all of its complexity on the American stage.

The Penumbra Theatre’s production of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize drama The Piano Lesson has been extended through March 30.

Visit the Penumbra for schedules and tickets: Penumbra Theatre

The Penumbra’s Gem of the Ocean to open on the Guthrie stage

by August Wilson, Directed by Lou Bellamy
Penumbra Theatre and Guthrie Theatre

Gem of the Ocean begins August Wilson’s journey through his 10-play cycle dramatizing black life in America in each decade of the 20th Century. Wilson was able to complete this ambitious cycle before his death in 2005. Penumbra Theatre, a long time collaborator of Wilson’s, will take this same journey, presenting all 10 of Wilson’s major plays in the next 5 years. Penumbra has previously performed eight of the 10, several of them more than once.

In the 2007-2008 season, Penumbra’s presented the Pulitzer Prize winning The Piano Lesson. They will end the season with Gem of the Ocean.

Gem of the Ocean, while the 9th play written in the cycle, serves as the opening to the cycle. It is set 1904 Pittsburgh and becomes a “prequel” of sorts, introducing characters and the ancestors of characters who will populate later plays. By the time he wrote Gem of the Ocean, Wilson had reached a clarity about his main themes and purposes for the cycle. The play is a powerful drama that captures the culmination of Wilson’s thinking about the black experience in America.

This regional premiere of Gem of the Ocean is a joint venture between Penumbra Theatre and The Guthrie and will be presented at the Guthrie Theater on the McGuire Proscenium Stage.

Gem of the Ocean runs April 25 - May 18.

Visit the Penumbra for schedules and tickets: Penumbra Theatre

John Hassler, Minnesota Novelist, Playwright Dies

Minnesota novelist and the namesake of Plainview’s professional theater Jon Hassler died earlier today. Hassler retired from his post as writer in residence at St. John’s University of Minnesota in 1997 and was instrumental in starting the The Jon Hassler Theater and Rural America Writer’s Center in Plainview, Minnesota where Hassler lived during his middle school and high school years. Hassler adapted several of his books for the Plainview stage, including Grand Opening, which is set in Plum Minnesota, a pseudonym for Plainview.

Hasler was the author of numerous novels, most set in Minnesota including, Staggerford, Simon’s Night, Grand Opening, North of Hope, and The Love Hunter. In addition to St. John’s University, he taught at Bemidji State University and Brainerd Community College. Hassler was 74. His death is reported in the St. Paul Pioneer Press online service.

Gunsmoke Monologues

I hadn’t thought about the recent surge in community theater productions at bars and taverns across the state as a concern for Minnesota Theater until a recent comment (from the limey) questioned the need for the theater exemption to the smoking ban. His (or her) solution to the problem of the loophole that the bars are exploiting is to eliminate the loophole for theaters as well. He asks why theaters need to use live cigarettes. Certainly cigarette props could be used in scenes that call for cigarettes.

While the limey raises some interesting questions, my thinking is moving in a different direction. First of all, I kind of admire the creativity and the gumption of bar owners finding and using the loophole, even though I am in favor of the law banning smoking in restaurants and bars. I guess at a very basic level I’m suspicious of laws that impinge on an individual’s activities. But I especially resist any government restrictions on the arts. It seems to me that a healthy Theater requires the freedom to express itself in whatever way is necessary. That includes using nudity, foul language, gunshots, violence, and cigarettes. Like any other prop, technique, or subject matter, cigarettes should be part of the tool bag for directors and producers.

I recently attended the St. Mary’s University production of When You Coming Back Red Ryder? The play is set in an early 70s roadside dinner. I believe the decision to use cigarettes in the play certainly helped create the overall scene. Yes, they could have eliminated the cigarettes, left them unlit, or used fake cigarette smoke, but I don’t think any of those would have been near as effective as the real cigarettes. Smoking, talking, and eating are the main activities of the patrons of a 70s roadside dinner. The play was enhanced by the use of real cigarettes, just as it was enhanced by real sausages frying on a greasy grill and a very realistic gunshot (though admittedly, not a real bullet).

I’m sure the state of Minnesota will do something to address the Gunsmoke Monologue issue. But in the meantime, this may be an opportunity to expand the interest in theater. When people willingly step on a stage, no matter how small, and call themselves actors, no matter how tongue-in-cheek, there’s a good chance that some of them may be living out some desire for a life on the stage. The Monologues aren’t theater, but they might be workshops.

As for the limey’s request that Minnesota Theater take a stand on the issue, here is the official stand:

Minnestota Theater does not review community theater productions, works in progress, or theater workshops. Minnesota Theatre will consider listing upcoming community theater productions, including Gunsmoke Monologues, if the pertinent information is submitted in a timely manner.

Commonweal Season Begins in April

Each year as I attend the Commonweal’s annual holiday production my enjoyment of the play is followed by the sad realization that I’ll have to wait until February for the next season’s opening. A couple of things changed that experience this winter/spring. First of all, I waited until the last weekend to see the Commonweal production of Inspecting Carol, and a winter storm prevented me from attending. So rather than feeling melancholy about having to wait two long months for the return of professional theater, I was mad at myself for waiting until the last minute and missing December’s offering. The other change is that the wait for the Commonweal’s Ibsen production is longer this year: Peer Gynt doesn’t open until April 26 (with previews starting April 18). The Ibsen festival will take place May 2 - 4.

In a meeting with local business owners last summer (as reported in the Preston Republican-Leader), Executive Director Hal Cropp and Managing Director Erick Bunge explained the condensed season (April - December rather than February - December) from several angles. First of all, with the new, larger theater, the Commonweal has the ability to fill more seats with fewer performances. By shortening the season, the company is trying to keep from overextending itself by having too many performances for its audience base. Presumably, fewer performances will save costs as the company cautiously incorporates the new expenses of owning and paying for a new building.

Cropp also pointed out that the Ibsen production is not always well attended beyond the opening week. And because much of the Commonweal’s audience must travel to get to Lanesboro, bad weather can further impact attendance as the picturesque roads that wind their way to Lanesboro can quickly turn treacherous. Ultimately, the theater’s board hopes that, for now, starting the season in late April will better financially serve the theater with larger, more predictable audiences.

It always seemed appropriate to consider Ibsen in February when the snow and darkness reflect Ibsen’s Norway. But Ibsen didn’t necessarily see his dramas as emanating from near the Arctic Circle. In the Introduction to his translation of Peer Gynt, Rolf Fjelde identifies a change in Ibsen’s work which dates to his first crossing of the Alps three years before writing Peer Gynt. Fjelde sees Ibsen metaphorically leaving the “Gothic North” with its “grinding poverty in cheerless, wintry towns,” to enter the “Mediterranean South.” Ibsen describes this Alps crossing as a turning point: “a wonderful soft brightness, shining like white marble, was suddenly revealed to me and was destined to set its stamp on all my later production, even if that production was not all beauty.”

Just as the revelation of a warmer south set Ibsen on the path of writing Peer Gynt and most of the Ibsen canon, perhaps the Ibsen Fest’s move to spring will allow us to look at Ibsen in a different light. But just to be sure, I’m not going to wait until the last weekend to see Peer Gynt; I don’t want to get snowed out again.

Peer Gynt

By Henrick Ibsen, Directed by Hal Cropp
Previews: April 18
Runs April 26 - May 18

2008 Commonweal Season

Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen
Harvey by Mary Chase
Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman
(A new American work, to be announced)
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
New times:
Plays now run Thursday - Monday
Evening curtain: 7:30
Matinee curtain: 1:30

Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre

Upcoming Performances: Taxes and Greeks

The Fountain City River Players turn their attention toward tax day while both Winona Universities turn towards the Greek. Vivian Fusillo directs Medea at Winona State in early April while Steven Bouler directs Euripedes’ Iphingenia at Aulis later in the month.

April 2 - 6 Love, Sex, and the I.R.S.: A Comedy in Three Acts

By Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore, Directed by Judee Brone
Fountain City River Players
7:30pm April 2 - 5; 2:00pm April 6
Fountain City Auditorium
42 N. Main St.
Fountain City, Wisconsin
(608) 687-7174.

April 3 - 5 Medea

Directed by Vivian Fusillo
Winona State Department of Theater and Dance
Winona, Minnesota

From WSU Online Calandar:

Medea is a story of betrayal, revenge and murder from Greek mythology.

Medea is a woman who has given up her home and family in Corinth to help Jason and the Argonauts capture the Golden Fleece. Upon their return to Corinth, Medea and Jason wed and have two sons. However, Jason is unable to resist when Creon, the king of Corinth, offers his daughter to Jason if he will divorce and banish Medea, who is suspected of being a barbarian sorceress. Jason agrees in hopes of one-day becoming king. Medea is given one day to leave Corinth, and one day is all she needs to exact her revenge.

Medea is intended for mature audiences.

Visit the Winona State Theater and Dance Department website for schedule and ticket information.

April 18 - 21 Iphigenia at Aulis

By Euripides, Directed by Dr. Steven Bouler
St. Mary's University Department of Theater Arts
Winona, Minnesota

Description from St. Mary's Page Theater website:

The Greek fleet waits in the bay of Aulis in readiness to launch an attack on Troy, but the wind suddenly drops and the ships stand idle. The army blames its leader, Agamemnon, who, in danger of losing his command, is told by the oracle the only solution: sacrifice his teenage daughter, Iphigenia, to the gods, in return for a favorable wind and ultimate victory. As relevant today as it was over 2,000 years ago, this contemporary translation of Euripides’ Iphigenia (set prior to the Iraqi War) explores patriotism, war fever, and how far a leader will go to secure a military victory in the East.

Visit the Page Theatre website for schedule and ticket information.

When You Comin’ Back Red Ryder?

by Mark Medoff
Directed by Dr. Gary Diomandes

Starting off the 2008 Southeast Minnesota theatre calendar, St. Mary’s Department of Theatre Arts presents Mark Medoff's 1973 play When You Comin’ Back Red Ryder? February 28 - March 3 at the Academy Theatre, Valencia Arts Center.

This fast-paced drama by Medoff starts off innocently enough with a group of people going about their daily lives at a small New Mexico diner. The arrival of a too-friendly tourist quickly turns antagonistic, then violent, and the staff and customers suddenly find themselves held hostage by an armed madman. As they fight him and play out his demands, their brittle lives shatter, and no one escapes unscathed.

See St. Mary's Campus Notes for more information.

Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
Friday, Feb. 29, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 1, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 2, 2008 - 3 p.m.
Monday, March 3, 2008 - 7:30 p.m.
Academy Theatre, Valencia Arts Center
1164 W. 10th

Visit the Page Theatre website for schedule and ticket information.