Review of JOSEPH AND THE TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT

Fioella had thoroughly enjoyed the Georgetown Palace's production of Joseph and his colorful attire a couple of years ago and looked forward to a second viewing in the company of nephew Barrett and his wife, and she was not disappointed. In fact, Fio thought the musical was better this time around than its predecessor, at least the first act of it. The opening was much better staged, with Sabrina Mari Uriegas totally owning the role of the Narrator, and after the Sunday school kids cleared off the stage, the show was non-stop action--one fast-moving musical number after another. Fiorella, who's trod the musical boards herself, was totally in awe of all of them, and by "them," she means a company of forty.

Steve Williams as Joseph was top-notch. The minute he started singing, Fio got the shivers, the thrilling kind.

The show was well put-together. The two-person camel worked, the costumes worked, the simple stage setting worked, and the the band was right on, although, as usual, the acoustics were too loud, and Fio had to stick a finger in her more sensitive ear.

Fiorella's only disappointment was that the brothers' "regret scene" in the second act was not played in a noir setting complete with red berets and striped shirts like it was in the first show.  Minor suggestions would be to lave the lily-white chests of the male actors with a darker body make-up and to cut the length of the final reprise.

Busy Bee

This will be a busy day. Wednesdays are always busy for Fio because that's when she drives into Austin, which means she's scheduled to the hilt. Her lista amarilla (yellow list) is instructing her to start with a visit to her CPA, where she hopes to learn how to simplify her tax preparations and get advice on handling hijo menor's (younger son's) student loans. Then Fio will scoot across town to meet up with friend Paula at Dan's Hamburgers and find out if she and her husband can join Fio and Husband for a Palace Theater production of West Side Story. Then Fio will drive up the street for a business appointment at 1:00. Finally, she will head down to the periodico (newspaper) office and hand over chocolate and copies of her political poems to Serena, who guided her through her commercial debut.

At home, Fiorella will devote herself to her current book, pack away one more box of Christmas ornaments, and maybe work on her mura de rocas (wall of rocks), then settle down for another episode of El Color de la Pasion. Did she tell you that it's turned out that Nora Gaxiola has just learned that her father is not Alsonso Gaxiola, but Alfredo Suarez?

Ape Angst

Tarzan was a dud.  There's no other way to describe the  play that Georgetown's Palace Theater mounted this past month, and Fio wasn't the only one to think so.  For the first time in the ten years that she and Husband have been patronizing the Palace, the audience did not give the actors a second curtain call--yep, no standing ovation.

It wasn't the cast's fault.  They acted their hearts out, maybe trying to compensate for the trite, forgettable songs or for the play itself, which was a litany of ape angst.  Yes, Tarzan played like it had been written by a PETA extremist.

Fio had expected something different--a romp, in fact--a fun show with a lot of catchy tunes that both children and adults could enjoy.  Instead, it was a philosophical treatise on the nobility of apes as opposed to the shallowness and venality of man.

Everything was abstract.  The play started with a  full stage of actors dressed in white leotards leaping around and waving diaphanous aqua tablecloths at the audience.  Fio thought they were supposed to represent the Greek fates, but a quick look at the program told her they were ocean waves, although what ocean waves had to do with the story was never explained.

Next we saw a set that looked like a Wagner production out of Bayreuth in which half-naked monkey children played happily together until a leopard made off with the baby of the gorilla head honcho and his mate, both of whom expressed their philosophical sorrow in song.  Then, in an overhead scene, we saw Tarzan's parents die during a storm at sea. (Aha!  The ocean waves!) The bereft ape mother, of course, took Tarzan to her bosom, defending him against her mate with another angsty song.

Weirdness followed weirdness, like the antics of the over-the-top male drama-queen ape, the African flora stripping Jane down to her bloomers, the stage hands walking through the action scenes, the over-abundance of suspension wires, the apes moving like knuckle-dragging chimpanzees rather than the gorillas they were supposed to be, the big production numbers that periodically erupted, and the kinky blond wigs that the Tarzans (child and adult) wore--wigs that Fio kept hoping would fall off.

During intermission, Fio and Husband compared notes with their guests.  Nephew Barrett commented on the pace of the show, comparing it to a two-hour movie that should have been over in thirty minutes.   His wife said she'd always thought apes interacted with each other physically rather than by exchanging deep, complicated thoughts in song.

Apparently the rest of the audience felt the same way because the applause was sparse--polite at best--but then, it's hard for venal, shallow humans to get involved in a play about the angst of the apes.

Xanadu

Fio and Husband attended the opening night of the Georgetown Palace Theater's  presentation of Xanadu, a musical based on the 1980s film about a roller-skating Greek muse who falls in love with a hippie artist on the Venice Beach boardwalk.

Opening nights are usually plagued with glitches, but not this time.  The double- and triple-cast actors were terrific, Kyle Kirkhoff and Sara Burke, the leads, were the definition of perfection, while second leads Scott Shipman and Gazelle Garcia have voices to die for.  Fio was especially drawn to dancer Leslie R. Hethcox, whose every move was grace.

The costumes were right on, the sparse sets worked, and the choreography was a knock-out.

But Fio didn't like the play, which reminded her of the over-the-top playlets she wrote in high school. And she didn't like sitting in the third row with first nighters yelling in-jokes back and forth before the play began, after it ended, and during intermissions. And she had a headache.  And she doesn't like the director, who never answered her request for a tour of the theater when WHERE THE HEART LEADS was in the works.

But, other than those things, the show was okay.

Theatrical Triumph

Fiorella was a spy last night.  She'd sent a nice letter to Georgetown's Palace Theater several weeks ago explaining that she wanted to give it a plug in the book she is currently writing, but needed to set up a a one-hour tour for accuracy.

No reply.  Fio bitched.

Friend Suzy told her that there was a cast party backstage every opening night which the audience could attend so Fio showed up at Shrek's debut last night. She started taking notes the second she passed through the door.  During intermission she walked up to the balcony and found the light booth.  After the show she followed the cast up the steps onto the stage and out the back door to the auxiliary building where she peered into restrooms, dressing rooms, storerooms, and the green room.
She asked questions about the construction of the stage.

Then she packed up and drove home.

Hah!  Fio thwarted you, Palace Theater!  And don't think she's going to give you a shout-out in her book either! Besides, Shrek sucked!

Guys and Dolls Review

It was with high hopes that Fiorella accompanied Husband to the Palace Theater's production of Guys and Dolls.  Fio loves the show, especially since she played General Cartwright in a production many years ago in an Austin civic theater.  But the characterization of General Cartwright fell short, and the production didn't hang together either.

Everything was too loud.  Fio has long insisted that actors do not need personal voice amplifiers in a venue as small as the Palace.  Using them means that the band has to be amped up too.  In fact, it seemed at times the actors and the band were in a contest--and the band was winning.

But enough about that.  Let's move on to the costumes, which were a weird anachronistic mix, and the sets and staging, which Fio thought were pretty good.  However, nothing could save that long, dull New York street scene that opened the production, and throughout the play, the pacing seemed uneven--so fast one missed important turning points or so slow one started watching the byplays instead of the major action.

The male dance numbers were really good, but when the whole cast was out on the floor, too much was going on.  Again--where should one look?  And where the heck was the theater's premier choreographer, Jessee Smart?

Not only did General C's characterization seem off, but Fio thought Sarah was too strident.  Maybe the director was trying to update the play, but Sarah would have fared better as a softie than an angry feminist.  And there was NO, absolutely NO chemistry between her and Sky Masterson.

Minor problems that were irritating: Sarah's golden wig that looked like a wig, flubbed dialogue, ill-fitting costumes, what seemed to be bald spots in Sky's hair, Nicely-Nicely's mike crackling, a spindly ninth grader cast against type as Big Julie, and the band frequently being out of tune with each other (tenor sax?).

Fiorella wondered if the problem was that the play is outdated, that Damon Runyan doesn't have it anymore.  But then she found herself singing the songs all the way home--songs like "Fugue for Tinhorns," "Bushel and a Peck," "Luck Be a Lady," and, her favorite, "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat."   Maybe there's hope for Gays and Dolls yet, "somewhere, somehow...."

Boffo!

How long has it been since Fiorella's given an all-positive review of a production at Georgetown's Palace Theater?  But it turned out there was a reason she had problems getting tickets four weeks beforehand and had to settle for ones much closer to the stage than she and Husband prefer.

Yes, the miracle has happened.  The show was Cats, and it was uniformly fabulous.  Of course, it started with one leg up because of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's music, exciting from the first screaming seventh.  And the cast didn't hurt--fabulous voices, fabulous dancers, fabulous directing, unbelievable pacing.

Cats is an ensemble show, a series of numbers dramatizing poems from T S Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats loosely tied together by a weak plot, but what made it work was the direction and choreography. Fio had seen Cats before, on the big Bass stage, but it was even better when the approximately thirty actors were all crowded together onto the Palace's much smaller stage   

What a catharsis. Fiorella laughed and cried, then applauded and applauded and applauded.

Review: The Music Man

The best thing about the Georgetown Palace Theater's production of The Music Man was a little boy named Diego Rodriguez (Winthrop Peroo), who brought to life an audience which had been for the most part according the musical polite applause till he took over the stage.

Not trying to dis the adult leads--as usual, the vocals were great-but the  production seemed mediocre, from the opening in the railroad car--which would have benefited from a roll of scenery passing behind it and some clickety-clacks--to the unimaginative dance numbers.  The costumes seemed charmingly period, but the scenery looked cheap.  Staging was sometimes distractingly awkward. The full-chorus numbers were quite good when they were disciplined, but amateurish when too much independent action vied for the audience's attention.

But maybe it's the musical itself..  Maybe Music Man is tired.  Fio was.

Buddy at the Palace

Fio googled it, and Buddy Holly's life was a lot more fraught and complicated than Buddy, the Buddy Holly Story, portrays it.  The musical, now playing at Georgetown's Palace Theater, is really a tribute to the music of  the '50s which uses a storybook version of Holly's life as its vehicle.  The songs, of course, are what everyone is there for, as with Beehive--and just as people who attended Singin' in the Rain expected dancing.

And it's a good thing too, because  most of the cast was GREAT musically, but only competent as actors.  It's Fiorella's old complaint--they were declaiming rather than acting.  Ah, where is Stanislavsky when you need him?
 
There were, however, three stand-outs.  The first was Jacqui Cross, who imparted a joi de vivre to her roles that outshone everyone else on stage.. The second was set designer Barbara Jernigan, who made canvas look like cinderblock and brick..  And Fio loved the red lights in the recording studio and  the spotlights hanging off the proscenium.  The third stand-out was an accident. Justin Wright, playing a hip-swinging Richie Valens,  ripped out the crotch of his tight, tight pants during his energetic number.  In the great stage tradition, Wright and the cast covered as if it had all been part of the show.  At that point every character on stage was energized.

Okay, why is Fiorella so much more aware of "being" the character than she used to be?  She thinks it's because romance writing has tilted more and more toward "deep point of view," a sort of Stanislavsky of the literary world, and your Fio's tilted along with it.

She wants to not just observe, but to experience..  

Size Counts

Fiorella and Husband gussied up last night and took Fio's brother and his wife to dinner and the local theater. The Palace's production of Evita had garnered rave newspaper reviews so Fio was looking forward to being wowed from the outset.

She wasn't, but she hung on gamely, thinking maybe she was subconsciously comparing this Evita to the one she'd seen a road company perform in UT's Bass Hall years ago. Or maybe she'd just been expecting too much because of the over-the-top reviews.

But, no. The singers were great, especially Kirk Miller as Juan Peron, Steve Williams as Che Guevara, and Ann Pittman as Evita, although she couldn't quite reach the sexy lower pitches. The ensembles were fantastic. The opening of the second act was mesmerizing.

That being said, the cast was too small, "small" being the operative word. This is small town and the actor/singer pool is small so cast members were easily recognized as their previous characters when they moved from part to part, which got annoying. Also the Palace stage is small, which necessitated several distracting methods of changing it around for different scenes. One thing that wasn't "small" was the volume of the stage mikes, which irritated more than Fio, judging by the comments she heard in the women's restroom.

The direction was also problematical. The cast members often stood around looking awkward, and there were too many detracting conversation groups, when what the heavily-stylized Evita needs is frozen tableaus. The dance sequences were hum-drum, with lots of circle dances, odd little hops, and throwing of hands up into the air. Fio misses former choreographer Jessica Kelpsch and her crackerjack routines.

The SRO audience reacted with polite applause after the big numbers and a perfunctory standing ovation at the end of the show, but Evita was not a wowzer. It was just too big a production for so small a theater.

Unimpressed

The best thing about The Wedding Singer, playing at Georgetown's Palace Theater, was the enthusiastic reaction of the teenagers sitting in front of us. But Husband and Fio were not that enthused.

The stage sets were great, as was the musical accompaniment (including Robbie's own strumming), the costumes were good, and the singing and dancing were fantastic--especially the dancing. This is civic theater, but there were no left feet. Choreographer Jessica Kelpsch's presentations, as always, were perfection itself, in double time.

That's one of the perks of local theater, spotting familiar faces in the line-up: Jessica, Sister Amnesia, and the uber-sexy Kenicke. But, in a play like Wedding Singer, which requires a large cast, it's also a drawback, because recognizable actors end up playing multiple parts. Thus Pete Munoz (Reuben), a bridegroom in the first scene, proposed to another woman a couple of scenes later, which triggered a "Who the Bleep Did I Marry?" reaction in Fio.

Fio has to hand it to them--the actors were extremely energetic, over the top, in fact, especially Sammy. His action and speech patterns were so loud and fast that Fio often had problems figuring out what he was trying to get across. In fact, sound was a problem throughout the production. Those d**n face mics. Some people needed them, some people overwhelmed them.

Fio does have a bone to pick with the silly stereotypes of the gay George and the geriatric grandmother, but Husband and the teenagers in front of us thought they were hilarious. MaybeFio's reaction is a clue to what she found lacking in the play: coherence. Wedding didn't hang together, and that's the fault of the playwright. George and Granny were cartoon characters in a realistic setting (at least as realistic as one can get with people bursting into song and dance every time one turns around). The story seemed to be a cross between Little Shop of Horrors and Grease.

Robbie did a great job, but Julia was top-notch. A pretty girl with good acting skills, she has a voice that sparkles. Linda was a real scene stealer. Husband liked Holly a lot too.

The cast worked hard, maybe too hard, but somehow the show didn't click with Fiorella. On the other hand, she didn't insist they leave at intermission.

Queen of B-O-R-I-N-G

You know the play's in trouble when the best part of it is an audience-participation bingo game being played during intermission.

Fio and Husband, almost forgetting they had reservations for The Palace's presentation of The Queen of Bingo Friday evening, had to really scurry to get to the theater on time. Then they ended up leaving after the first act. There was a reason no summary of the play appeared in the program--it had no plot.

The play started with "Sis," an attractive, well-groomed woman who appeared to be in her sixties, taking at least ten minutes to set up good-luck charms, large and small, on a bingo table in a wonderful stage setting of "the gym of St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Lovelady, Texas." FINALLY she was joined by her younger sibling, "Babe." Babe, who was supposed to be fifty-two, was being played by an actress so much younger that the costumer frumped her up and gave her a weird hairdo, which still didn't do the job: her voice and movements were much too young for a woman in her fifties.

You would think the action would start when Babe appeared, but it didn't. Just some clever remarks back and forth. No conflict. B-O-R-I-N-G.

The intermission bingo resulted in a member of the audience winning a frozen turkey from HEB. How appropriate.

Don't Miss It!

Fiorella and Husband hustled Brother Bill and his wife and Friend Paula and her husband off to see the matinee performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Georgetown Palace last Sunday. Extra performances had been scheduled, which Fio assumed meant the show was a hit. But was it any good? When guests have driven in from Austin and Buda, one hopes the post-performance conversation does not center around what a loser the entertainment turned out to be.

Not to fear. The show was the best thing Fio's ever seen at the Palace, better even than Grease, with the fabulously sexy Kenickie that Fio and Friend Paula are still swooning over.

Except for an excerpt once on TV, Fio had never seen Dreamcoat before, although she knew it was based on the Biblical story of Joseph, he of the coat of many colors, who was sold into Egyptian slavery by his jealous brothers and, because of his Jungian skill at interpreting dreams, ended up as the Pharoah's head honcho, then gave his brothers a hard time when they sought succor in time of famine.

But Dreamcoat is a lot more than that. It's a fast-paced pastiche of musical take-offs, each one more shameless than the last, crowned with a performance by THE KING--over-tanned, shaven armpits, lacquered pompadour and all.

Every character was perfectly cast, for once. And the voices! The female narrator was absolutely fabulous, as was Joseph, and--well--everybody. Fio was especially struck by the gorgeous tenor of Joseph's father.

Kudos to director Mary Ellen Butler. Something was always going on somewhere, and nothing seemed pointless. Choreographer and lead dancer Jessica Kelpsch did herself proud.

And, oh--Fio forgot to mention the settings, props, and costumes, which were right on. She especially liked the prison bar shadows, the city lights, the corn girl outfits, and the dreamcoat itself.

Fio had a few qualms when the show first began--the Sunday School scene, as she interpreted it, seemed a bit fakey, but the second that was over and everything started moving, the action never stopped.

And blessing of all blessings, the actor's mikes were adjusted perfectly. For the first time ever, Fio understood every word, and didn't have to hold a finger over her good ear to protect what little hearing she has left.

Keep it up, guys! Guess we'll get season tickets again next year.

Now You See Him

Harvey hopped across into the twenty-first century a lot better than Fiorella had thought he would. In fact, he was charming.

Fio has vague memories of the movie and was afraid that all the lead actor would do was ape Jimmy Stewart's iconic performance. She also suspected the story, after all this time, would seem--well--silly.

But not to worry. The females in the play over-acted, emoting to the rafters, and the male high school post-grads were miscast, but Michael Rhea, who played Elwood P. Dowd, was perfection. Other stand-outs were Jim Mutzabaugh as Judge Gaffney and Jeff Shaevel as Dr. Chumley.

The costumes were great too. Fio especially liked Veta's outfit in the first act and Myrtle Mae's green number in the last act. The play hit Broadway in 1944, but whoever decided to set it in what Fio thinks was the early 1920s, made a good call.

Two little nitpicks: that stupid wig worn by Myrtle Mae and the poorly-painted portrait over the mantel. Fio found both of them distracting. She wanted to run up onto the stage and jerk that idiocy off MM's head, then grab a brush and fix the painting. (Uh, has Fio ever told you that in a past life she did portraits?)

Anyway, Harvey is playing at Georgetown's Palace Theater. Go see him--if you can.

Return of the Nuns

Nunsense II, now playing at Georgetown's Palace Theater, doesn't make much sense, but that's beside the point. It's fun.

The show never stops. How the small, five-member cast can keep up with all the singing, dancing, and joke-telling is beyond me. The energy was contagious and the audience gave the ensemble a well-deserved standing ovation. Each individual member of the group was strong, a real accomplishment for a small-town civic theater. Fio's favorite, as always, is Sister Robert Ann.

The Nunsense series is probably twenty years old now, and many of the jokes wouldn't mean anything to a young audience, but the average age of a Georgetown theater-goer is about sixty, so the audience caught most of the outdated references.

Fio's major gripe was that everyone was over-miked, which made the sound piercing. Husband turned down his hearing aids and Fio closed off her ears. Then there was this weird echo that occurred from time to time for dramatic effect. Husband's theory is that the community theater sound system salesman had stopped off in Georgetown and the Palace bought the whole works. But why? The Palace is a small theater with good acoustics. It shouldn't need a special sound system.

Also, the singers seemed to be having a problem from time to time with pitch. Husband, more musically attuned than Fio, said that they weren't quite making the necessary key changes. All Fio knows is that the chorus in the opening number of the second act ("Angeline") sounded like squalling cats.

But it doesn't matter. Fio came out of the theater singing to herself and even dancing a little, so Nunsense served its purpose.

Christmas ANNIE

Fio and Husband drove off through the winter darkness Friday night to see ANNIE at Georgetown's Palace Theater. The show was an enjoyable respite from the pressures of the holiday season. Sometimes constructing glittering deer, climbing the ladder again and again to adjust a recalcitrant cardboard bird, and discovering the dog has eaten all the candy canes gets a little old.

The cast was huge, although it was fun to spot the same actors showing up as different characters from time to time. To complicate matters, there were three different casts, probably because of the large number of children involved. Fio has no idea which cast she saw because she forgot to bring home her program, but she was impressed that the girl who played Annie, who has to carry the show, didn't flub a single line, sang on pitch, and kept her smile going.

Of course, everyone's favorites were the character roles, like Rooster and Lily. Fio adored the Hannigan-Rooster-Lily "Easy Street" combo.

In the back of her mind, Fio was still running the movie, which was richer than the play. First off, Carol Burnet owns the Miss Hannigan role, and there's little any actress can do to take it any further. Second, the movie added in other iconic characters, like Punjab and The Asp. Third, the movie featured dog Sandy, while the play uses him only for two scenes, then drops him like he's been carted off to the pound.

The theater was stuffed, SRO, which was a bit claustrophobic, but Fio survived. About a third of the audience gave the play a standing ovation, but Fio and Husband remained in their seats. ANNIE was enjoyable, nice holiday fare, but not spectacular.

Eco-unfriendly

Fiorella and Husband drove into Georgetown to catch the Palace Theater's production of Little Shop of Horrors. Fio saw the movie version of it on TV a couple of years ago and thought it was charming. She was really looking forward to seeing the show on stage, especially since the Palace usually does such a bang-up jobs with musicals. The Producers and Grease were fantastic.

Little Shop of Horrors wasn't.

It's not that it was bad--more like mediocre. And apparently word had gotten around because the theater was only half full for the Friday night performance Fio and Husband attended. And the applause was NOT deafening.

The play was better than the actors. The most obvious problem was the female trio that glues the whole production together. They did a great job vocally, and not a single hip swing was out of sync, but only one of them was animated. The second one was so-so, and the third one displayed a poker face during the whole production. The glue didn't hold.

A second problem was the disparate acting styles being used. Some actors just stood around as if not sure what to do, while others were over-animated. Was there a director in the house?

For Fio, the over-the-top style Matthew Burnett used--in all seven (eight?) of his characters--became irritating. He didn't lose himself in the roles as much as the show lost itself in him. Sure, the audience loved it each time he came on in a new guise (but with the same strutting postures he used as Carmen Ghia in The Producers) but that meant the show was about him, not about Audrey I or Audrey II or poor, pitiful Seymour.

Speaking of Seymour, Clifford Butler has a GLORIOUS voice--but was it the right voice for nerdy Seymour?

And why was everyone being miked in so small an auditorium? Fiorella spent most of her time with her finger against her super-sensitive left ear because the sound was at blasting cap level.

The play is musically fascinating in the use of duets, trios, other multiple-voice arrangements. Also, Fio was surprised to learn that the original ending was much darker than the movie, which concluded with the death of Audrey II (the carnivorous plant), and with Audrey I and Seymour marrying and living in the idealized home she had imagined (but with little Audrey IIs popping out of the ground in front of their picket fence). In the stage version, the plant eats its namesake. Then Seymour, realizing the plant has swallowed everyone that matters to him, leaps into the carnivorous maw himself. All Fio could think of was Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Oh, Fio should say that the very last scene featured the four digested victims singing a warning song that ended: DON'T FEED THE PLANT!

As if we can even water them during this drought!