The Cleveland Jewish News was named best non-daily community newspaper in Ohio, and its website, cjn.org, was selected as best website in Ohio for the second consecutive year in the Press Club of Cleveland’s 2019 All Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards. The CJN has been named the best non-daily community newspaper in Ohio in 2019, 2018, 2016 and 2015 and was runner-up in 2017.
Those top honors were among the 19 awards – 10 of which earned first-place accolades – the CJN earned from the Press Club in 2019. The awards were announced during a June 7 ceremony at the House of Blues in downtown Cleveland.
“It is truly humbling for our team to have our individual and collaborative works recognized in this fashion by our esteemed colleagues across the journalism world,” said Kevin S. Adelstein, publisher and CEO of the CJN and president of the Cleveland Jewish Publication Company.
“While we celebrate the individual achievement of those recognized, we know that it takes a village to maintain and grow each of our products. Our entire staff has its hands in everything we do. These awards are a testament to the professional and gifted team we’ve assembled and their commitment, drive and passion toward fulfilling our mission to our community, each and every day.”
In being named best non-daily community newspaper, judges said the CJN had “solid coverage with a balance of news, features, columns and lifestyle content all packaged with clean layout. Excellent work.”
In being recognized for having the best website, judges comments described an “exciting layout and easy navigation. The website allows for a nice overview along with being easy to drill down when necessary.”
The CJN placed first in the Digital Media – Newspaper Website category for cjn.org. “This site was more colorful, the photos were livelier and larger and the organization was neat,” judges remarked.
For the third consecutive year, the CJN placed first in the Non-Daily Newspapers – Section category for its local news coverage. Judges observed the CJN has a “good mix of features and local news.”
The CJN staff received first place in the Non-Daily Newspapers – Breaking News category for its coverage of “Pittsburgh #StrongerThanHate.” Judges said the coverage was “sensitive, timely, and comprehensive coverage of a tragedy that affected Jewish communities around the country.” CJN also earned top honors for Best Use of Multimedia category for “Pittsburgh #StrongerThanHate.”
The CJN won the Digital Media – Breaking News Single Story category for “Security quickly increased at area synagogues,” which appeared on cjn.org within hours of the Pittsburgh tragedy. “Covering extraordinary news events requires more than just great reporting – there are logistical problems to be managed as well. The Cleveland Jewish News handled both challenges with aplomb in covering the local reaction to the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. An excellent example of breaking news coverage,” judges said in noting the sensitivity of covering issues on Shabbat.
CJPC Lifestyle Editor Michael C. Butz captured five awards, including three first-place honors.
He earned first place in the Reviews/Criticism – Single Article category, an open category that includes reviews for movies, restaurants, television, books, music and arts, for “Call to Action: HEDGE Gallery’s ‘Don’t Be Still,’ which was written for Canvas magazine. Judges said, “Enjoyed reading this very much. Review made me want to immediately visit this exhibit. Well done.”
Butz won first place in the General Circulation Magazines – Features: General category for “Sandwich tzedakah,” which appeared in Jstyle magazine. Judges’ comments: “Very touching story, excellent storytelling and writing.”
He also received first place for Photography – All Others: Studio Photography category for an image that appeared in “Cookie Dough Craving,” which appeared in Jstyle.
He took second place in the General Circulation Magazines – Features: Art category for “Change Agents,” which was published in Canvas. Judges said, “Good survey of a wide range of artists, capturing a current snapshot of their careers.”
Butz placed third in the General Circulation Magazines – Food category for “Twist on tradition,” which appeared in Jstyle.
Amanda Koehn, former staff reporter and now Columbus Bureau Chief, received second place in the Non-Daily Newspapers – Features: General category for “Cleveland conversion connection.” Judges remarked, “I really liked this article. I think it needed a few more quotes to underline what a process it is.”
She also placed second in the General Circulation Magazines – Features: General category for “Repairing (literally) the world,” which was published in Jstyle.
He also took third place in the Best in Ohio – Headline Writing category for the following headlines: “Couple catches curling club camaraderie,” “Finally, Chief Wahoo is out at the old ballgame,” “Menorah lit at Nationwide Arena before Flames extinguish Blue Jackets,” “Seasons come and Seasons go” and “Weight! Judaism can help you shed unwanted pounds.”
Staff Reporter Alyssa Schmitt was third in the Non-Daily Newspapers – Features: Personality Profile category for her profile of retiring Jewish Federation of Cleveland President Stephen H. Hoffman, “Hoffman set to pass the torch as Federation president.” Judges said "the article captured Mr. Hoffman’s legacy to his community very well.”
In the Best in Ohio categories and the digital media categories, the CJN competed against all daily, non-daily and alternative newspapers and trade, business and general circulation magazines.
More than 841 entries were received from journalists in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo and other cities around the state. Press clubs from Florida; Idaho; Los Angeles; Milwaukee; New Orleans; Orange County, Calif.; San Diego; San Francisco; southeast Texas; Syracuse, N.Y.; and western Pennsylvania judged the entries in the 41st annual contest.
Howard Sackler's Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning play “The Great White Hope” offered a dramatization of the real life struggles – the demonization, the racism, the ridicule – of boxer Jack Johnson after becoming the first African American heavyweight champion of the world at the start of the 20th century.
Originally staged in 1967, the drama was a gargantuan production that featured 63 actors playing 247 roles in 20 scenes that jump counties and countries over the course of three and a half hours. The show boldly and uncompromisingly took to the stage at a time when the civil rights movement took to the streets.
Marco Ramirez's “The Royale” – premiering in 2013 and currently being staged by the Cleveland Play House as the main event of this year’s New Ground Theatre Festival – explores the personal demons Johnson encountered on his way to that championship fight.
The storytelling is comparatively sparse and intimate, stripped down to one act, five actors and a boxing ring. And it is given an expressionistic theatricality that doesn’t so much serve to display the state of racism in this country as subtly remind us just how deeply ingrained it is in the American psyche.
The show is spartanly staged in the round, where performers roam about and around the circular ring in dramatic silhouette as if frozen in time and space, courtesy of lighting designer Alan C. Edwards and scenic designer Jason Ardizonne-West’s vision and craftsmanship.
Heightened speech dominates the play’s dialogue, where it takes the form of the internal voices and surreptitious exchanges in the clutch by our fictionalized Jack Johnson, named Jay (Preston Butler III), and fellow boxer Fish (Johnny Ramey), as well as an occasional rhapsodic monologue by Jay’s trainer Wynton (Brian D. Coats) and sister Nina (Nikkole Salter). There's also the clipped play-by-play accounts of the boxing matches by promoter Max (Leo Marks).
The boxing itself is gracefully and stylistically pantomimed, with hits represented by percussive hand claps and foot stomps by the initiator and understated reactive physicality by the recipient. By shifting the emphasis from the violent impact of the strikes to the running narrative that describes the sweet science and thought process behind them, the boxing more easily becomes metaphoric, the epic racial significance of the championship fight is accentuated, and everything is given added weight – including the athletic but undersized Butler as Jay.
Liberated of the historical Johnson’s larger-than-life demeanor, Butler expertly displays Jay’s contemplative nature in addition to his competitiveness as he wrestles with the profound personal and social consequences of his championship bout.
The sparring partner, trainer and promoter are characters typically given little dimensionality in most plays about pugilism, including “The Great White Hope.” But Ramey, Coats and Marks, respectively, find depth and purpose in all that they do in these roles. Add dignity and resolve to this list of qualities regarding Salter’s fine performance as Jay’s sister Nina, who is saddled with reminding him of the personal consequences of a fight that Jim Crow America is not yet ready for.
Everything is propelled forward and given emotional punch by director Robert Barry Fleming, who does not give the audience an opportunity to exhale during this intense, highly sensorial production.
And so, fighting out of the Outcalt Theatre in Playhouse Square, with 20 professional performances all of them a knockout, give it up for this heavyweight drama. “The Royale.”
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
That’s what Emperor Joseph II said about Mozart’s comic opera “The Marriage of Figaro.” He was not alone in this criticism, for many of Mozart’s reviews called attention to his tendency to write “overloaded and overstuffed.”
The same can be said for contemporary playwright Steven Dietz’s plays, an example of which (“Last of the Boys”) was on display at none too fragile theater last season.
“Too many words” is a particularly applicable description of the theater’s current offering, Dietz’s “Bloomsday,” which borrows its theme, temperament and a fair share of text from the posterchild of impenetrable, rambling prose – James Joyce’s 265,000 word tome “Ulysses.”
The play is getting a most delightful, thoroughly engaging production under Katia Schwarz’s velvet-gloved direction and bare-boned scenic design.
Its story, in short, is about a middle-aged man (Tom Woodward) who goes back to Dublin 35 years after he met a young girl leading a “Ulysses” literary pub crawl who he never forgot, regrets never pursuing, and wishes to find. He does, but she is her younger self (Brooke Turner). And his younger self also shows up (Nicholas Chokan). So does her older self (Derdriu Ring). Rather than revisiting a city, he inexplicably revisits a moment in time and gets to relive – as do we all – the longing beautifully captured in Joyce’s words: “Wait. I wanted to. I haven’t yet.”
The title of the play references an Irish “holiday” that commemorates that day in 1904 – June 16 – when Joyce had his first romantic encounter with his muse and future wife, Nora Barnacle. That is also the day the entirety of “Ulysses” takes place and the celebration is named after the novel’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom.
The characters in Dietz’s play are similarly rich, complex and deliciously drawn. The script is saturated with crisp verbal exchanges, charming comicality and no shortage of heartbreak. And yes, I said yes, I will yes, there are plenty of words. But they are good ones and the performances by this exceptional cast have audiences hanging on each of them.
Woodward wears Robert’s unending ache on his sleeve while managing to relay all the delightfully ironic humor to be found in his character’s distaste for Joyce’s novel. His everyman sensibilities and tendency to listen to, and register, every word being spoken on stage makes him terribly and immediately endearing.
Endearing also describes Turner’s portrayal of young Caithleen. It is hard to imagine that the playwright envisioned the character more irresistible and impulsive than what we witness on this stage. Turner’s Caithleen is a perfect manifestation of Robert’s romanticized memory.
Best of all, she captures the smarts, sass and undercurrent of despair that Ring so marvelously brings to bear as the character’s older self, Cait. But Ring allows that despair to surface upon occasion and then just as quickly dissipate, which is mesmerizing and adds so much to the storytelling.
Chokan’s emotional and physical depiction of Robbie is less effective at matching Robert’s recollections of his younger self. But everything he does is honest, contributes to the gentle poetry that drives this play, and nicely sows the seeds of the young love and resultant regret that will metastasize and haunt his character for the next three decades.
Director Schwarz finds all the right pauses in the play, which allows the audience to breathe, reflect and marvel at the work before us. She is so effective in her efforts that the play’s rather fantastical element of time travel fades inconspicuously into the background to allow Dietz’s words and these fine performances to take center stage.
This production is a fine example of what none too fragile does best – strip a show to its core to reveal all its charms.
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
There are hundreds of variations of the romantic fairy tale “Cinderella,” the story of a girl who is mistreated by her stepmother, saved by her fairy godmother and lived happily ever after with a prince.
Well, 345 variations in Europe alone and from predominantly male authors, if you trust a 19th century anthology that traced the story’s lineage from the work of Charles Perrault in 1697 to that of the Grimm Brothers in 1812. Add to the mix the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Walt Disney and so many other modern Americans.
In 1997, the story was given a make-over aimed at pre-teenage girls by novelist Gail Carson Levine. Her “Ella Enchanted” featured an intelligent, free-spirited young heroine who was given the gift of obedience by a foolish fairy unaware of the consequences, and who managed through her wit and will to free herself from its effects and her step-family’s torment.
The novel inspired a 2004 live-action film of the same name that seemed similarly inspired by “The Princess Bride,” “A Knight’s Tale” and other films taking place in a medieval time but infused with modern-day sensibilities, current references, and a contemporary sense of humor.
The film, in turn, inspired Karen Zacarías and Deborah Wicks La Puma to pen a new musical version of “Ella Enchanted,” which is a very mediocre work being given an absolutely amazing staging by Dobama Theatre.
The musical, like the film, offers a predictable story told through a plodding script as relayed by a slew of one-dimensional characters hamstrung by the limitations of the fairy tale genre and the work’s creators. It places goofy antics over theater art, coupled with an unmemorable and uninspiring score.
And yet this production soars due to director Nathan Motta’s fairy godmother-like conjuring of a grander artistic vision, a magical cast and a miraculous production team.
While the film’s $30 million budget offered an abundance of CGI, none of it is as enchanting as scenic designer Douglas Puskas’ construction of a charming stone bridge at center stage whose archway doubles as Ella’s hearth, Marcus Dana’s lighting that adds immense drama and dimension to the play’s proceedings, T. Paul Lowry’s animated images of big skies and sweeping landscapes that are projected on a rear screen and other imagery projected on the proscenium, and Jeremy Dobbins’ marvelous soundscape that underscores and humorously accents the onstage activity. Every performer and stagehand is adorned in costumer Colleen Bloom’s fairy tale fare.
Collectively, these designers transport the audience to an inviting and enchanting world set for storytelling.
In the film “Ella Enchanted,” actress Anne Hathaway as the titular character muddles through as best she can considering the inanity she is asked to perform by the screenwriters. Natalie Green in the role is absolutely charming and breaks free of the caricature she’s been handed. While the script lacks heart and soul, Green supplies them in spades with acting marked by its authenticity and vocals that make her songs better than they are on the page. The score is performed by a small but stellar corps of musicians under Jordan Cooper’s direction.
Tina Stump as the careless fairy godmother, Amy Fritsche as the evil stepmother, Eugene Sumlin as Ella’s weak father, Kelly Elizabeth Smith as the mean step-sister, Neely Gevaart as the stupid step-sister, and Joshua McElroy as the endearing Prince push and tug at their characters' defining characteristic to generate humorous, engaging and rich performances. The acting is imbued with brilliant touches of innovation (look for Fritsche’s roaming beauty marks) and improvisation (listen for Gevaart’s clever asides). Ensemble members Arif Silverman and Madeline Krucek, who take on a variety of small and potentially inconsequential roles, turn everything they do into something interesting that adds a layer of pleasure to this production.
Additional characters, such as giants and other mythical beings, are created through Robin VanLear’s delightful puppetry. Motta seamlessly weaves these creations into the fabric of this production as if they were cast members.
In the cinematic Disney version of “Cinderella,” it’s possible for a plain yellow pumpkin to become a golden carriage and a plain country bumpkin and a prince to join in marriage. But the true bibbidi-bobbidi-boo to be found in Dobama’s rendition is the turning of something middling into something magical.
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3 or visit cjn.org/Abelman. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
“In an innovative, tradition-defying rethinking of one of the greatest comedies in the English language,” begins a satirical article in a recent posting on theonion.com, “Morristown Community Players director Kevin Hiles announced Monday his bold intention to set his theater's production of Shakespeare's ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in 16th-century Venice.”
"I know when most people hear ‘The Merchant Of Venice,’ they think 1960s Las Vegas, a high-powered Manhattan stock brokerage, or an 18th-century Georgia slave plantation, but I think it's high time to shake things up a bit," Hiles said.
Despite Great Lakes Theater’s propensity for re-envisioning classic works, it too has gone the risky route of staging the theater version of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice” in the time, place and spirit in which it was penned and published over 200 years ago.
The play, like the novel, tells the story of the five British Bennet sisters, whose mother is driven to marry them off to affluent suitors in the hope of assuring their financial security. This is a scenario dutifully accepted by each of the girls save Elizabeth, the second eldest. When the headstrong Lizzy meets the wealthy and handsome Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, she finds him arrogant and unattractive, and he is equally unimpressed with her. They bicker, they throw elegant barbs at one another and, of course, they fall in love by the end of the final Act.
In the playbill, director/co-adapter Joseph Hanreddy calls “Pride and Prejudice” a “perfectly written novel” and treats it as a sacred text for this production. His and J.R. Sullivan’s script works hard at maintaining the work’s narrative voice and calls for fairly bare-boned staging so as not to detract from Austen’s precise prose.
Designers Linda Buchanan (scenic) and Paul Miller (lighting) have created one stationary set for all the play’s action, from which Laura Welsh Berg, as Lizzy, rarely leaves and never for long.
The set consists of a gorgeous half-circle of floor-to-ceiling wood panels divided by pillars across the rear of the thrust stage. Only a few period chairs and tables are brought in and out by servants to represent halls in luxurious estates while simple costume changes – many a matter of removing a frock designed by Martha Hally or putting on a shawl – occur onstage. Scenes change as effortlessly as the turning of pages.
Such economic staging keeps Austen’s words the focus of our attention but offers rather understated theatricality. Hanreddy’s quick pacing helps keep things lively, as do stellar performances turned in by this cast which have been refined during the show’s summer engagement at sister theater The Idaho Shakespeare Festival.
Stand-out performances include Andrew May as the ever-anguished patriarch of the Bennet clan, whose comic timing is impeccable. He is nicely matched by the over-the-top histrionics of Carole Healey’s Mrs. Bennet.
Daniel Millhouse as the carefree playboy Charles Bingley, Jodi Dominick as his snobbish sister Caroline, and Eric Damon Smith as the ridiculously self-centered Mr. Collins give particularly impressive performances as well. While Berg as Lizzy and Nick Steen as Mr. Darcy are saddled with Austen’s unambiguous depictions, they do a wonderful job of letting the characters’ romantic arc take its course.
The show’s austerity may not be to everyone’s liking and, as Morristown Community Players director Kevin Hiles learned, “audiences may be taken aback initially by the lack of Creole accents.” But Jane Austen fans will likely be delighted by this production.
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3 or visit cjn.org/Abelman. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
In much the same way tabbies are attracted to shiny things and rendered dopey by a hit of catnip, audiences will be drawn to and stupefied by the supersaturated stagecraft of Disney’s “Aladdin.”
The show, which is based on the hit 1992 animated film of the same name, is now on tour and performing at Playhouse Square.
Most folks probably know the story from the film, though it originated as a medieval Persian folk tale popularized in the 18th century by an English-language text titled “Arabian Nights.” Aladdin, a street urchin, finds a magic lamp containing a genie. He uses its powers to disguise himself as a wealthy prince to impress the Sultan, win his daughter, and avoid the clutches of the Sultan’s evil advisor.
On tour as it was on Broadway, Bob Crowley’s visually ravishing scenic design overwhelms the senses with its colorful swirling silks, shining sequins, layers and layers of scenery, and majestic backdrops dramatically lit by Natasha Katz. A stage filled with such riches serves to effectively distract from the Disneyfied fable’s formulaic plot, cookie-cutter characters and occasionally inspired but mostly forgettable score by Alan Menken.
The saccharine script is generously seasoned with Magic Kingdom self-references, topical mentions and groan-worthy puns to help keep adult heads in the game while their kids sit in a stunned state of hyperglycemia.
Circumventing the layers of fly-in scenery and set pieces is an abundant supply of Casey Nicholaw’s eye-candy choreography, performed in Gregg Barnes’ gorgeous midriff-baring and sparkle-coated costuming by a hard-bodied ensemble amidst streamers that come shooting off the stage. All this is wonderfully accompanied by a sizable touring orchestra enriched by plenty of local musicians, all under the direction of Brent-Alan Huffman.
Oh, and there’s a carpet that flies across a moonlit star-filled sky during “A Whole New World” that defies explanation.
In short, “Aladdin” is chock-full of Vegas aesthetics, Disney magic and big-budgeted theatrical slight-of-hand.
And audiences will purr with delight.
Patrons unimpressed by all the big-tent bedazzling will find solace in some truly fine performances led by a shamelessly hammy and thoroughly endearing Michael James Scott, who has successfully exorcised anything remotely Robin Williams from the role of Genie.
And as archetypical as the roles of Aladdin and Jasmine might be, Clinton Greenspan and Isabelle McCalla make them personable and, through tone and temperament, a little more dimensional and interesting than the script dictates. The same goes for Aladdin’s buddies, played wonderfully by Zach Bencal, Philippe Arroyo and Jed Feder, who nearly steal the show during the delightful if overproduced “Somebody’s Got Your Back.”
The dastardly Jafar and his sidekick Iago, played with delicious malevolence by Jonathan Weir and over-the-top comic flair by Jay Paranada, respectively, provide the play’s prerequisite conflict.
Everyone on and behind the stage work hard and are exceptionally eager to please.
Alas, there’s very little here to engage the mind or inspire the soul. But that is not the point of productions like this. The proof is in the purring.
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
Howard Sackler's Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning play “The Great White Hope” offered a dramatization of the real life struggles – the demonization, the racism, the ridicule – of boxer Jack Johnson after becoming the first African American heavyweight champion of the world at the start of the 20th century.
Originally staged in 1967, the drama was a gargantuan production that featured 63 actors playing 247 roles in 20 scenes that jump counties and countries over the course of three and a half hours. The show boldly and uncompromisingly took to the stage at a time when the civil rights movement took to the streets.
Marco Ramirez's “The Royale” – premiering in 2013 and currently being staged by the Cleveland Play House as the main event of this year’s New Ground Theatre Festival – explores the personal demons Johnson encountered on his way to that championship fight.
The storytelling is comparatively sparse and intimate, stripped down to one act, five actors and a boxing ring. And it is given an expressionistic theatricality that doesn’t so much serve to display the state of racism in this country as subtly remind us just how deeply ingrained it is in the American psyche.
The show is spartanly staged in the round, where performers roam about and around the circular ring in dramatic silhouette as if frozen in time and space, courtesy of lighting designer Alan C. Edwards and scenic designer Jason Ardizonne-West’s vision and craftsmanship.
Heightened speech dominates the play’s dialogue, where it takes the form of the internal voices and surreptitious exchanges in the clutch by our fictionalized Jack Johnson, named Jay (Preston Butler III), and fellow boxer Fish (Johnny Ramey), as well as an occasional rhapsodic monologue by Jay’s trainer Wynton (Brian D. Coats) and sister Nina (Nikkole Salter). There's also the clipped play-by-play accounts of the boxing matches by promoter Max (Leo Marks).
The boxing itself is gracefully and stylistically pantomimed, with hits represented by percussive hand claps and foot stomps by the initiator and understated reactive physicality by the recipient. By shifting the emphasis from the violent impact of the strikes to the running narrative that describes the sweet science and thought process behind them, the boxing more easily becomes metaphoric, the epic racial significance of the championship fight is accentuated, and everything is given added weight – including the athletic but undersized Butler as Jay.
Liberated of the historical Johnson’s larger-than-life demeanor, Butler expertly displays Jay’s contemplative nature in addition to his competitiveness as he wrestles with the profound personal and social consequences of his championship bout.
The sparring partner, trainer and promoter are characters typically given little dimensionality in most plays about pugilism, including “The Great White Hope.” But Ramey, Coats and Marks, respectively, find depth and purpose in all that they do in these roles. Add dignity and resolve to this list of qualities regarding Salter’s fine performance as Jay’s sister Nina, who is saddled with reminding him of the personal consequences of a fight that Jim Crow America is not yet ready for.
Everything is propelled forward and given emotional punch by director Robert Barry Fleming, who does not give the audience an opportunity to exhale during this intense, highly sensorial production.
And so, fighting out of the Outcalt Theatre in Playhouse Square, with 20 professional performances all of them a knockout, give it up for this heavyweight drama. “The Royale.”
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
That’s what Emperor Joseph II said about Mozart’s comic opera “The Marriage of Figaro.” He was not alone in this criticism, for many of Mozart’s reviews called attention to his tendency to write “overloaded and overstuffed.”
The same can be said for contemporary playwright Steven Dietz’s plays, an example of which (“Last of the Boys”) was on display at none too fragile theater last season.
“Too many words” is a particularly applicable description of the theater’s current offering, Dietz’s “Bloomsday,” which borrows its theme, temperament and a fair share of text from the posterchild of impenetrable, rambling prose – James Joyce’s 265,000 word tome “Ulysses.”
The play is getting a most delightful, thoroughly engaging production under Katia Schwarz’s velvet-gloved direction and bare-boned scenic design.
Its story, in short, is about a middle-aged man (Tom Woodward) who goes back to Dublin 35 years after he met a young girl leading a “Ulysses” literary pub crawl who he never forgot, regrets never pursuing, and wishes to find. He does, but she is her younger self (Brooke Turner). And his younger self also shows up (Nicholas Chokan). So does her older self (Derdriu Ring). Rather than revisiting a city, he inexplicably revisits a moment in time and gets to relive – as do we all – the longing beautifully captured in Joyce’s words: “Wait. I wanted to. I haven’t yet.”
The title of the play references an Irish “holiday” that commemorates that day in 1904 – June 16 – when Joyce had his first romantic encounter with his muse and future wife, Nora Barnacle. That is also the day the entirety of “Ulysses” takes place and the celebration is named after the novel’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom.
The characters in Dietz’s play are similarly rich, complex and deliciously drawn. The script is saturated with crisp verbal exchanges, charming comicality and no shortage of heartbreak. And yes, I said yes, I will yes, there are plenty of words. But they are good ones and the performances by this exceptional cast have audiences hanging on each of them.
Woodward wears Robert’s unending ache on his sleeve while managing to relay all the delightfully ironic humor to be found in his character’s distaste for Joyce’s novel. His everyman sensibilities and tendency to listen to, and register, every word being spoken on stage makes him terribly and immediately endearing.
Endearing also describes Turner’s portrayal of young Caithleen. It is hard to imagine that the playwright envisioned the character more irresistible and impulsive than what we witness on this stage. Turner’s Caithleen is a perfect manifestation of Robert’s romanticized memory.
Best of all, she captures the smarts, sass and undercurrent of despair that Ring so marvelously brings to bear as the character’s older self, Cait. But Ring allows that despair to surface upon occasion and then just as quickly dissipate, which is mesmerizing and adds so much to the storytelling.
Chokan’s emotional and physical depiction of Robbie is less effective at matching Robert’s recollections of his younger self. But everything he does is honest, contributes to the gentle poetry that drives this play, and nicely sows the seeds of the young love and resultant regret that will metastasize and haunt his character for the next three decades.
Director Schwarz finds all the right pauses in the play, which allows the audience to breathe, reflect and marvel at the work before us. She is so effective in her efforts that the play’s rather fantastical element of time travel fades inconspicuously into the background to allow Dietz’s words and these fine performances to take center stage.
This production is a fine example of what none too fragile does best – strip a show to its core to reveal all its charms.
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
There are hundreds of variations of the romantic fairy tale “Cinderella,” the story of a girl who is mistreated by her stepmother, saved by her fairy godmother and lived happily ever after with a prince.
Well, 345 variations in Europe alone and from predominantly male authors, if you trust a 19th century anthology that traced the story’s lineage from the work of Charles Perrault in 1697 to that of the Grimm Brothers in 1812. Add to the mix the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Walt Disney and so many other modern Americans.
In 1997, the story was given a make-over aimed at pre-teenage girls by novelist Gail Carson Levine. Her “Ella Enchanted” featured an intelligent, free-spirited young heroine who was given the gift of obedience by a foolish fairy unaware of the consequences, and who managed through her wit and will to free herself from its effects and her step-family’s torment.
The novel inspired a 2004 live-action film of the same name that seemed similarly inspired by “The Princess Bride,” “A Knight’s Tale” and other films taking place in a medieval time but infused with modern-day sensibilities, current references, and a contemporary sense of humor.
The film, in turn, inspired Karen Zacarías and Deborah Wicks La Puma to pen a new musical version of “Ella Enchanted,” which is a very mediocre work being given an absolutely amazing staging by Dobama Theatre.
The musical, like the film, offers a predictable story told through a plodding script as relayed by a slew of one-dimensional characters hamstrung by the limitations of the fairy tale genre and the work’s creators. It places goofy antics over theater art, coupled with an unmemorable and uninspiring score.
And yet this production soars due to director Nathan Motta’s fairy godmother-like conjuring of a grander artistic vision, a magical cast and a miraculous production team.
While the film’s $30 million budget offered an abundance of CGI, none of it is as enchanting as scenic designer Douglas Puskas’ construction of a charming stone bridge at center stage whose archway doubles as Ella’s hearth, Marcus Dana’s lighting that adds immense drama and dimension to the play’s proceedings, T. Paul Lowry’s animated images of big skies and sweeping landscapes that are projected on a rear screen and other imagery projected on the proscenium, and Jeremy Dobbins’ marvelous soundscape that underscores and humorously accents the onstage activity. Every performer and stagehand is adorned in costumer Colleen Bloom’s fairy tale fare.
Collectively, these designers transport the audience to an inviting and enchanting world set for storytelling.
In the film “Ella Enchanted,” actress Anne Hathaway as the titular character muddles through as best she can considering the inanity she is asked to perform by the screenwriters. Natalie Green in the role is absolutely charming and breaks free of the caricature she’s been handed. While the script lacks heart and soul, Green supplies them in spades with acting marked by its authenticity and vocals that make her songs better than they are on the page. The score is performed by a small but stellar corps of musicians under Jordan Cooper’s direction.
Tina Stump as the careless fairy godmother, Amy Fritsche as the evil stepmother, Eugene Sumlin as Ella’s weak father, Kelly Elizabeth Smith as the mean step-sister, Neely Gevaart as the stupid step-sister, and Joshua McElroy as the endearing Prince push and tug at their characters' defining characteristic to generate humorous, engaging and rich performances. The acting is imbued with brilliant touches of innovation (look for Fritsche’s roaming beauty marks) and improvisation (listen for Gevaart’s clever asides). Ensemble members Arif Silverman and Madeline Krucek, who take on a variety of small and potentially inconsequential roles, turn everything they do into something interesting that adds a layer of pleasure to this production.
Additional characters, such as giants and other mythical beings, are created through Robin VanLear’s delightful puppetry. Motta seamlessly weaves these creations into the fabric of this production as if they were cast members.
In the cinematic Disney version of “Cinderella,” it’s possible for a plain yellow pumpkin to become a golden carriage and a plain country bumpkin and a prince to join in marriage. But the true bibbidi-bobbidi-boo to be found in Dobama’s rendition is the turning of something middling into something magical.
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3 or visit cjn.org/Abelman. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
“In an innovative, tradition-defying rethinking of one of the greatest comedies in the English language,” begins a satirical article in a recent posting on theonion.com, “Morristown Community Players director Kevin Hiles announced Monday his bold intention to set his theater's production of Shakespeare's ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in 16th-century Venice.”
"I know when most people hear ‘The Merchant Of Venice,’ they think 1960s Las Vegas, a high-powered Manhattan stock brokerage, or an 18th-century Georgia slave plantation, but I think it's high time to shake things up a bit," Hiles said.
Despite Great Lakes Theater’s propensity for re-envisioning classic works, it too has gone the risky route of staging the theater version of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice” in the time, place and spirit in which it was penned and published over 200 years ago.
The play, like the novel, tells the story of the five British Bennet sisters, whose mother is driven to marry them off to affluent suitors in the hope of assuring their financial security. This is a scenario dutifully accepted by each of the girls save Elizabeth, the second eldest. When the headstrong Lizzy meets the wealthy and handsome Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, she finds him arrogant and unattractive, and he is equally unimpressed with her. They bicker, they throw elegant barbs at one another and, of course, they fall in love by the end of the final Act.
In the playbill, director/co-adapter Joseph Hanreddy calls “Pride and Prejudice” a “perfectly written novel” and treats it as a sacred text for this production. His and J.R. Sullivan’s script works hard at maintaining the work’s narrative voice and calls for fairly bare-boned staging so as not to detract from Austen’s precise prose.
Designers Linda Buchanan (scenic) and Paul Miller (lighting) have created one stationary set for all the play’s action, from which Laura Welsh Berg, as Lizzy, rarely leaves and never for long.
The set consists of a gorgeous half-circle of floor-to-ceiling wood panels divided by pillars across the rear of the thrust stage. Only a few period chairs and tables are brought in and out by servants to represent halls in luxurious estates while simple costume changes – many a matter of removing a frock designed by Martha Hally or putting on a shawl – occur onstage. Scenes change as effortlessly as the turning of pages.
Such economic staging keeps Austen’s words the focus of our attention but offers rather understated theatricality. Hanreddy’s quick pacing helps keep things lively, as do stellar performances turned in by this cast which have been refined during the show’s summer engagement at sister theater The Idaho Shakespeare Festival.
Stand-out performances include Andrew May as the ever-anguished patriarch of the Bennet clan, whose comic timing is impeccable. He is nicely matched by the over-the-top histrionics of Carole Healey’s Mrs. Bennet.
Daniel Millhouse as the carefree playboy Charles Bingley, Jodi Dominick as his snobbish sister Caroline, and Eric Damon Smith as the ridiculously self-centered Mr. Collins give particularly impressive performances as well. While Berg as Lizzy and Nick Steen as Mr. Darcy are saddled with Austen’s unambiguous depictions, they do a wonderful job of letting the characters’ romantic arc take its course.
The show’s austerity may not be to everyone’s liking and, as Morristown Community Players director Kevin Hiles learned, “audiences may be taken aback initially by the lack of Creole accents.” But Jane Austen fans will likely be delighted by this production.
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3 or visit cjn.org/Abelman. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
In much the same way tabbies are attracted to shiny things and rendered dopey by a hit of catnip, audiences will be drawn to and stupefied by the supersaturated stagecraft of Disney’s “Aladdin.”
The show, which is based on the hit 1992 animated film of the same name, is now on tour and performing at Playhouse Square.
Most folks probably know the story from the film, though it originated as a medieval Persian folk tale popularized in the 18th century by an English-language text titled “Arabian Nights.” Aladdin, a street urchin, finds a magic lamp containing a genie. He uses its powers to disguise himself as a wealthy prince to impress the Sultan, win his daughter, and avoid the clutches of the Sultan’s evil advisor.
On tour as it was on Broadway, Bob Crowley’s visually ravishing scenic design overwhelms the senses with its colorful swirling silks, shining sequins, layers and layers of scenery, and majestic backdrops dramatically lit by Natasha Katz. A stage filled with such riches serves to effectively distract from the Disneyfied fable’s formulaic plot, cookie-cutter characters and occasionally inspired but mostly forgettable score by Alan Menken.
The saccharine script is generously seasoned with Magic Kingdom self-references, topical mentions and groan-worthy puns to help keep adult heads in the game while their kids sit in a stunned state of hyperglycemia.
Circumventing the layers of fly-in scenery and set pieces is an abundant supply of Casey Nicholaw’s eye-candy choreography, performed in Gregg Barnes’ gorgeous midriff-baring and sparkle-coated costuming by a hard-bodied ensemble amidst streamers that come shooting off the stage. All this is wonderfully accompanied by a sizable touring orchestra enriched by plenty of local musicians, all under the direction of Brent-Alan Huffman.
Oh, and there’s a carpet that flies across a moonlit star-filled sky during “A Whole New World” that defies explanation.
In short, “Aladdin” is chock-full of Vegas aesthetics, Disney magic and big-budgeted theatrical slight-of-hand.
And audiences will purr with delight.
Patrons unimpressed by all the big-tent bedazzling will find solace in some truly fine performances led by a shamelessly hammy and thoroughly endearing Michael James Scott, who has successfully exorcised anything remotely Robin Williams from the role of Genie.
And as archetypical as the roles of Aladdin and Jasmine might be, Clinton Greenspan and Isabelle McCalla make them personable and, through tone and temperament, a little more dimensional and interesting than the script dictates. The same goes for Aladdin’s buddies, played wonderfully by Zach Bencal, Philippe Arroyo and Jed Feder, who nearly steal the show during the delightful if overproduced “Somebody’s Got Your Back.”
The dastardly Jafar and his sidekick Iago, played with delicious malevolence by Jonathan Weir and over-the-top comic flair by Jay Paranada, respectively, provide the play’s prerequisite conflict.
Everyone on and behind the stage work hard and are exceptionally eager to please.
Alas, there’s very little here to engage the mind or inspire the soul. But that is not the point of productions like this. The proof is in the purring.
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3. 2018 Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
