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Shuffle, Shuffle, Step

Three Plays by Samuel Beckett

VARIETY	LA WEEKLY	LOS ANGELES TIMES
BACKSTAGE WEST	DAILY BREEZE	REVIEWPLAYS.COM

ALPHA CO presents THE BETROTHED

REVIEWS

Los Angeles Times	Backstage West

2006 so far...

VARIETY:
 
Shuffle, Shuffle, Step: Three Plays by Samuel Beckett
 
(Theatre/Theater; 29 seats; $15 top)
 
A Theater Z, in association with Theatre/Theater, presentation of three one-act plays by Samuel Beckett. Directed and designed by R.S. Bailey.
 
Rough for Theater
A - Billy Hayes
B - Jeff Murray
1 Footfall
May - Mary Dryden
Voice - Nicolette Chaffey
Krapp's Last Tap
Krapp - R.S. Bailey
 
By JULIO MARTINEZ

Theatre/Theater inaugurates its seventh Los Angeles-based legitlegit house in 24 years with a bleak but facile perusal of three short works by one of the 20th century's most elusive scripters, Samuel Beckett. Helmer R.S. Bailey, the first American invited by Beckett to work with him, captures the playwright's stark, minimalist, deeply pessimistic view of human nature and the human condition. In an eerie exercise in underachievement, Bailey's competent thesps immerse themselves in the jagged sounds and rhythms of Beckett's desolate folks, sublimating any flicker of human aspiration.

The short opening works, "Rough for Theater 1" and "Footfalls," focus on the underbelly of human interaction. Each offers a sliver of the extreme negativity people are capable of when trapped in relationships.

More a work-in-progress than a viable stage play, "Rough for Theater 1" is an exercise in emotional torture, as a wretched, blind street beggar (Billy Hayes) is confronted by a vociferous cripple in a wheelchair (Jeff Murray). As each maneuvers to serve his own self-interest, their life-scarred psyches obliterate any possibility of them uniting for their common good.

With a more realized concept, "Footfalls" impressively distills the lifelong adversarial relationship between a grown daughter (Mary Dryden) and her heard but unseen mother (Nicolette Chaffey). Dryden's May personifies the never-ending friction of their relationship by scraping her feet across a stone floor as she methodically paces back and forth, periodically responding to the disapproving voice of mom. Dryden counterpoints the tragedy of May's existence by performing a hopeful little pirouette each time she turns to retrace her dogged steps.

"Krapp's Last Tape""Krapp's Last Tape" focuses on one cathartic evening in the life of a 69-year-old recluse (Bailey), a desolate soul who has never been able to carry though on any of his life's goals. Krapp's failures are underscored by the spools of recorded tapes he has painstakingly labeled and chronicled through the years.

The tapes represent a spoken diary of his life; Bailey creates a tantalizing pas de deux between Krapp's current state of mind and his more youthful recorded persona. Bailey impressively communicates Krapp's rage, torment and sadness as he listens to a tape, recorded 30 years earlier, describing a moment on a boat with a girl "in a shabby green coat" when he could have made a decision that would have changed his life.

Bailey's stark production design, complemented by the empathetic lights and sounds of Ammil Garrison and Michael Shiver, respectively, offers the properly austere setting for the jaundiced efforts of a playwright who had little faith in humankind.
 
Lighting, Ammil Garrison; sound, Michael Shiver. Opened, reviewed Jan. 6, 2006; runs through Feb. 11. Running time: 1 HOUR, 50 MIN.

BACKSTAGE WEST:
Shuffle, Shuffle, Step: Three Plays by Samuel Beckett
January 12, 2006
By Dany Margolies

It's a solid cast, tidily directed, performing three lesser-known one-acts by one of the 20th century's playwriting gods. And so we're fairly satisfied, sitting there, observing and thinking and possibly feeling. But on opening night, toward the end of Krapp's Last Tape, there was a moment when the actor, his character's anger boiling over, pulled at the reel of tape and struck the hanging lamp above his head. The light swung slowly, changing the shadows on the actor, seeming to change the perspective through which we saw him. It is either extraordinarily detailed direction-as seems to be the case with much else here-or a happy fortuity that the actor allows to continue and seems to relish. In either case it's extremely fine skill, as here the actor and director are the same: R. S. Bailey.

In Krapp's Last Tape the elderly Krapp listens to a recording of himself, "the stupid bastard I took myself for 30 years ago," focusing on one segment when he recounts trying to make love in a boat. Let's leave all the meaning up to the scholars. This 45-minute piece passes quickly, yet it lets the audience do so much: appreciate the craft, ponder the text, suffer the draining emotions.

Bailey also adeptly directs the other two one-acts, playing in repertory with Krapp. In Footfalls, May shuffles across the stage-nine steps, one half-turn, nine more steps, another turn-talking to someone she calls Mother (beautifully voiced by Nicolette Chaffey), "revolving it all, it all in my poor mind." Mary Dryden plays May with ghostly frailty, Dryden not imposing on us her decisions of who May is and what she is doing.

In Rough for Theatre One two men--one blind and one lamed-meet on a "street corner in ruins." They discuss compensating for each other's disabilities, then engage in the ultimate power play. Billy Hayes plays the blind character A, barefoot and filthy, sawing at a decrepit violin; Jeff Murray plays character B in a wheelchair made of a shopping cart to look rather like a throne. The two actors seem magnetized to each other, giving huge amounts of energy, focusing deeply, struggling for their characters' lives because they are not unhappy enough to die.

Beckett wanted no bows for the actors; the company gives itself none. Too bad. In this case the actors more than deserve them.

Presented by and at Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. "Footfalls" and "Krapp's Last Tape," Fri. 8 p.m.; "Rough for Theatre One" and "Krapp's Last Tape," Sat. 8 p.m. Jan. 6-Feb. 11. (323) 466-3134.

Recommended!
LA WEEKLY: SHUFFLE, SHUFFLE, STEP

Theatre/Theater inaugurates its capacious new venue with this bill of one-acts by Samuel Beckett, under R.S. Bailey's well-calibrated direction. All three plays embrace familiar Beckettian themes: loss, alienation, the toll of decay, and the seeming futility of existence. Rarely produced, Rough for Theatre One, much like Waiting for Godot, is a tale of an encounter, here between blind A (Billy Hayes) and the wheelchair-bound B (Jeff Murray) on a desolate street corner. Clearly, these two slovenly wretches are made for each other, but their association is equal parts depravity and need. Cosiderable power is generated by Beckett's sparse, biting, but often humorous prose that reveals the shared attraction and repulsion at the core of this strange meeting. Both performances are carefully modulated between grotesquery, comedy and pathos. Footfalls is a hauntingly beautiful piece based upon the death of the playwright's mother. May (Mary Dryden) has devoted herself to her cruel, aged mother and is reduced to pacing hypnotically back and forth on stage, while periodically engaging in an eerie, reflective interior monologue. Bailey does a fine acting turn in the title role of Krapp's Last Tape. Gray-haired, wheezing and decrepit, Krapp is on the downside of life at 69. Caught in the merciless tentacles of doubt and despair, he is reduced to listening to a tape from 39 years ago that chronicles a love affair and a time "when there was still a chance of happiness." Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m. (Krapp's Last Tape will be presented at every performance; Footfalls, Fri. only; Rough for Theatre One, Sat. only) ; thru. Feb. 11. (323) 466-3134. Written 01/12/2006 (Lovell Estell III)

January 13, 2006
LOS ANGELES TIMES

THEATER BEAT
Theatre Z's 'Shuffle' gets Beckett right

By F. Kathleen Foley, Special to The Times

If not done precisely, Samuel Beckett's works can be purgatorial, as anyone who has suffered through botched Beckett can tell you. Fortunately, director-designer R.S. Bailey, who worked with Beckett on a 1977 production of "Krapp's Last Tape" in Berlin, avoids the obvious pitfalls in "Shuffle, Shuffle, Step," the inaugural production of Theatre/Theater's handsome new space on Pico Boulevard. Produced by Theatre Z in honor of Beckett's centennial year, the three short Beckett plays in "Shuffle" are strikingly austere and meditative, with flashes of gallows' humor as faint as the shadow of a noose on an overcast day.

Appropriately, Bailey plays Krapp in the closing play. One of Beckett's most celebrated characters, the elderly, isolated Krapp continually replays his own tape-recorded diary - a litany of missed opportunities and lost love. Although Bailey's cherubic and youthful appearance is somewhat at odds with his sadly attenuated protagonist, it's a touching, cautionary tale, well-rendered.

Finely calibrated also is the middle play, "Footfalls," performed by Mary Dryden as May, and Nicolette Chaffey as the voice of May's offstage mother. Dead-eyed and affectless, May paces the same nine steps, back and forth, while her mother querulously repeats, "Will you never have done?" Whether they are the pointless peregrinations of a madwoman or some desperate attempt at expiation, May's actions - and Dryden's performance - are affectingly enigmatic.

The show opens with "Rough for Theatre I," a precursor to Beckett's masterwork, "Endgame." Billy Hayes plays A, a blind street musician in a bleak wasteland. In a vaulting, Shakespearean turn, Jeff Murray portrays B, domineering and disabled, whose attempts to exploit A explode into violence. Vivid and larger-than-life, Murray elucidates the poetic beauty of Beckett's elusive text in the strongest performance of this rewarding evening.

"Shuffle, Shuffle, Step," Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. ("Footfalls" will be performed Fridays only, "Rough for Theatre I" will be performed Saturdays only.) Ends Feb. 11. $15. (323) 466-3134. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

THE DAILY BREEZE

On stage: Beckett's voice heard in 'Shuffle, Shuffle, Step ...'

BY JIM FARBER
RAVE!

During his lifetime, Samuel Beckett, the father of theater of the absurd, was meticulously demanding about how his plays were to be performed.

A craftsman of unusual specificity, he conceived the details of his creations at a level that many might find, well, absurd: such as the exact sound a pair of slippers should make as they slide across the floor; and the precise manner in which a finger moves in space as it activates a tape recorder.

"After I'm dead," he reportedly said, "I don't care what people do."

R.S. Bailey, director of "Shuffle, Shuffle, Step: Three Plays by Samuel Beckett," (which opened Jan. 6 at L.A.'s Theatre/Theatre), worked directly with Beckett in Berlin in 1997. As a result, Bailey brings to these three short plays a sense of authenticity, as if the master was speaking directly to his audience from the grave.

It is this sense of bloodline connection, combined with the skill of a fine ensemble of actors, that makes "Shuffle, Shuffle, Step" a compelling dramatic experience.

Of the three plays, "Krapp's Last Tape," which stars Bailey as the obsessed antihero, Krapp, is by far the best known. Beckett's grim portrait of a bitter old man who lives like a badger in his den and relives the past through a series of recorded birthday messages, is iconic.

"Footfalls," which depicts the gradual destruction of a woman who has sacrificed her life to care for her invalid mother, is known, but hardly familiar.

The real surprise is "Rough for Theatre I," a fascinating study that may have laid the groundwork for the characters of Hamm and Clove in "Endgame." For some reason, Beckett never allowed the play to be performed during his life -- so it is a resurrected treasure.

All three plays were performed on opening night. But for the rest of the run, unfortunately, audiences will have to chose between seeing "Krapp's Last Tape" either with "Footfalls" or "Rough for Theatre I." It's a tough choice since the latter two are fascinating, rarely seen works, both superbly performed -- the former by Mary Dryden, the latter by Billy Hayes and Jeff Murray.

In "Rough for Theatre I" the lights come up on the bent, disheveled figure of a blind man (Hayes) who scrapes tunelessly on a dilapidated fiddle. His scraping, however, is sufficient to draw an equally crumpled, wheelchair-ridden old man (Murray) from his lair. What transpires is a fascinating, push-pull, claw-and-scratch study in evolving mutual dependency.

A desire to experience any form of human contact, combined with a basic need to survive, drives both men to overcome their fear, until the man with eyes that can see, and the man with legs that can move test out the possibilities of a symbiotic relationship. Hayes and Murray are compelling as these two adversarial would-be allies.

"Footfalls" is pure Beckett in style, as a distraught woman in a long dress and shawl paces back and forth as her footfalls score a path of sorrow into the surface of the stage. The story, on the other hand, could be drawn from Charles Dickens, about a woman who has sacrificed whatever chance she had to find happiness in life to care for her demanding invalid mother.

The demeaning ritual of her slavish dependency is symbolized by the endless footfalls of her pacing. Step by step, word by cruel word, she is diminished in her ability to withstand the pressure, gradually succumbing to the relentless weight of so much emotional submission. Dryden gives a powerful performance, eloquent in its spareness, as she reacts to the disembodied voice of her demonic mother (Nicolette Chaffey).

"Krapp's Last Tape" is actually two performances in one. The actor (in this case Bailey) appears as the title character in the last stage of his life: bent, bitter and eruptively violent. His life in the present is simultaneously mirrored by the voice that emerges from the tape recorder. He is a contrast of himself: old and young, grim and hopeful, spiteful and loving, to a point where he finds the contrast overwhelming.

Krapp is a role that has tested many a fine actor. To plumb its emotional depths, and, at the same time, deal with the preciseness of Beckett's instructions -- including the exact way to peel a banana -- is an actor's challenge of the first order.

On opening night, Bailey's performance paid religious attention to the specifics of Beckett's instructions, but was less convincing in its ability to convey the deep emotional core of the character. But like Hamlet, Krapp is a role that grows in the playing, and Bailey's performance is on the right track.

As time goes by, fewer and fewer productions of Beckett's plays will be able to trace their lineage back to the master. In "Shuffle, Shuffle, Step" that voice rings true.

"Shuffle, Shuffle, Step: Three Plays by Samuel Beckett" plays at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Feb. 11 ("Krapp's Last Tape" is performed each night, accompanied by "Footfalls" on Fridays and "Rough for Theatre I" on Saturdays), Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. Tickets are $15. For information, call 323-466-3134.

REVIEWPLAYS.COM: Shuffle, Shuffle, Step: - Three Short Plays by Samuel Beckett

Theatre/Theater

This year marks the 100th birthday of Samuel Beckett and Theatre/Theater has bravely leapt to the occasion by mounting three of the intrepidly avant-garde playwright's groundbreaking one-acts in observance of what the man himself once referred to as the "awful occasion."

Under the blanket title Shuffle, Shuffle, Step, it proves a fascinating evening, perfect for introducing the community to the seventh new home of Jeff Murray and Nicolette Chaffey's 24-year labor of love, as Theatre/Theater must be credited for being one of the most prolific and steadfast theatrical entities responsible for the evolution of live theatre in Los Angeles, helping to transform it from colorless showcasing to high art over the last couple of decades.

Directed by R.S. Bailey, the first American asked by the playwright to work with him after meeting in Paris in 1973, Shuffle, Shuffle, Step offers a jarringly reverent, highly personal vision of these three now-classic works with which Bailey clearly identifies from his own history with the pieces and his relationship to their innovative creator. Bailey's correspondence with Beckett and personal notes on the changes in the text of Krapp's Last Tape, which brought him to West Berlin in 1977 at the writer's request when Beckett directed his own play at the West Berlin Academy of Art, are archived at Atlanta's Emory University

Featuring five lovely, committed performances and starkly simple but effective design elements which are actually heightened by the continual hum of traffic from Pico Boulevard on the other side of the wall, Bailey's reverent direction is by far the major asset here, as he unmistakably understands the master's voice and fiercely protected scripted pauses and rhythms better than anyone else possibly could.

The first piece, Rough for Theatre 1, was developed after Beckett expressed concern to Bailey that his familiar characters from Endgame and Waiting for Godot were continuously interpreted as master-slave associations. "He referred to them rather as relationships of mutual torture," says Bailey. Beckett told him his writing was instead meant to imply that one character "tortures the other physically while the other tortures the one mentally." Beckett also mentioned he was working on a new piece delving into just that topic, which turned out to be Rough for Theatre 1.

In it, a supposedly blind street beggar called A (Billy Hayes, whose infamous book about his real-life experiences in a Turkish prisoner became the 1978 Oscar winner Midnight Express) is alone until the screeching tires of the wheelchair-bound B (Murray) jar him into a conversation about how the two can link together for a better life. "Do you like company, Billy?" the vociferous B asks the bewildered A. "Do you like tinned food, Billy?"

 B browbeats A until he can no longer stand it, taking B's request to push his chair as his chance to physically react against his oppressor. As in the better known Godot, the two friends-combatants parry back and forth both verbally and through sparse movement. "Why don't you let yourself die?" B asks A, who considers his answer thoughtfully. "I'm not unhappy enough," A finally decides.

The acting here is flawless, with Murray's grandly presentational style an odd and almost palpable curiosity as set against Hayes' simple and highly direct delivery-which their director indubitably intended, particularly with his ear so firmly placed against the grave of his friend, the world's first and great dramatist of the absurd.

This is also echoed in the dynamically economic performance of Mary Dryden in Footfalls, the second piece of the evening, a piece surely responsible for at least one of the blanket title's Shuffle-s. As May paces back and forth across the stage wandering in and out of Bailey's eerily atmospheric lighting, the disembodied voice of her disapproving mother (Chaffey, who's golden tones are as clear and hypnotic as any could be) becomes a continuous drip of another dose of Beckett-ian verbal Chinese water torture. "Will you never have done revolving it all?" Mother asks, to which her daughter just offers a hopeful little turn at each corner as she orbits away her sad little existence. When the voice ultimately stops its relentless harangue, all that's left is poor May, still shuffling through the paths she's carved into the floor, living a life of exaggerated nothing at all.
Nowhere does ol' Sam's disillusionment with humanity resonate more than in his one-person Krapp's Last Tape, which Bailey himself performs with amazing corporeal poignancy. Alone and abandoned by everything and everyone, Krapp spends his hours listening to the recorded diaries of his earlier years, letting the sorrow of advanced age form a remarkably sad counterpoint to his youthful enthusiasm. As he spools and respools Tape 5 from Box 5, his loneliness descends as though it were a second character to respond to. "With all this darkness around me," he says, "I feel less alone." This is the evening's most noteworthy achievement for Bailey, who gently and lovingly attempts to reveal a great playwright's all-too evident disenfranchisement with the blissfully ignorant la-de-da of life in the middle of the last century. 

Are there druthers here? Yes, some. As brilliant and daring and fearless as the works of Beckett were to their befuddled audiences in their original premieres, in many ways, performing his works has lost a lot of its power to stimulate and shock. Although he was a true pioneer, it's all been done repeatedly since. Occasionally, Shuffle, Shuffle, Step's intrinsic monotony becomes more indulgent than effective, the fault of the passing decades since these pieces were created, not anything to blame on this precision, graciously admiring, spectacularly worshipful production. "I'll not hear a human voice again," A wails in Rough for Theatre 1, to which B snaps back, "Haven't we heard them enough?" How amazing it must have been to see these plays unfold for the first time all those years ago.

Shuffle, Shuffle, Step plays through Feb. 11 at Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd. , Los Angeles . For tickets, call (323) 466-3134.

*RECOMMENDED* LATIMES

directed by Matt Skaja

produced by Branden Morgan

March 3-April 16

$20 Fri/Sat 8pm Sun 7pm

Reservations (818) 752 9253

Los Angeles Times

A Betrothal of Comedy Styles

Seventeenth century Italy meets Lorne Michaels in "The Betrothed" at Theatre/Theater. If this Italian pastiche by Jon M. Berry is not quite the berries, it is often hilarious and generally agreeable.

Berry resets various classic archetypes - two scheming fathers, their unhappily espoused children, clownish servants and secret amours - with a postmodern viewpoint and hambone verbal style. Designer Bayeux Morgan's solid Venetian setting and the strumming of composer-guitarist Bryon Hatcher drip Renaissance. However, the genial troupe of buffoons that romps along in commedia-meets-sitcom manner is closer to "Saturday Night Live" than to Carlo Gozzi.

Thus, money-mad Dottore Gratiano (Ingo Neuhaus) looks like Drew Carey and sounds like Johnny Carson. Jeff Murray plays his cohort Pantalone as a traditional buffo widower, by way of Carl Reiner. As their respective progeny, Branden Morgan's weepy Oratio and Kate Woodruff's daffy Flaminia upend standard juvenile/ingénue aspects.

Jed Mills as an ancient retainer with a cheesy Italian accent and Misi Lopez Lecube and Alan Gaskill as furiously swashbuckling Spanish siblings steal the evening, and their colleagues are certainly rambunctious.

Matt Skaja directs them fairly well, although the goofy wordplay and rubber-goose ruckus needs some tightening to keep collegiate coyness at bay. Not all of the slapstick matches the punctuation from sound-effects lackey Sam Rovin, and some passages need the actors to slow down and speak up. Yet by the time Nicolette Chaffey descends upon Act 2 as the braying, Cockney-toned plot pivot, most quibbles have long since dimmed in the face of such charmingly lowbrow enthusiasm.
- David C. Nichols

"The Betrothed," Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sunday. Ends April 16. $20. (818) 752-9253. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

BACKSTAGE WEST

The Betrothed
March 16, 2006
By Madeleine Shaner

A scrappy mixture of slightly tarnished commedia, pantomime slapstick, collegiate high jinks, opéra bouffe, nightly television, shtick, and scurrilous improvisation raises the rafters in Theatre/Theater's new space to a new high, or stoops to a new low, depending on the perceived angle of the dangle. Jon M. Berry's frolic is neither fish nor foul nor farce, but it is funny for the most part--cunningly clever in spots--when it's not being deliberately obnoxious and, despite the dizzying meld of acting styles and the seemingly interminable length, adds up to genuine, lowest-common-denominator entertainment.

With the classic scheme of star-crossed lovers, misdirected parental marital strategies (Jeff Murray as the amiable Pantalone, father of the bride; Ingo Neuhaus as the Latin-spouting Gratiano, father of the doomed groom), the discovery of long-lost relatives, distraction, destruction, disguises, strife, spite, seduction, chastity and the blatant lack of it, dropped drawers, temporary transgender attacks, and a little jousting, there's plenty of something for everyone. Warranting particular mention are the well-tempered and exquisitely acted performances of Misi Lopez Lecube as the stunning Isabella; Alan Gaskill as Spavento with Kate Woodruff as Flaminia, the lovers; Branden Morgan as Oratio, the desolate groom; and Nicolette Chaffey as Burratina, the baker with a sack load of secrets under her bustle. Bryon Hatcher's live score provides the essential ambiance.

Particularly effective are the scenes when the whole of Venice seems to be onstage; the action shifts into overdrive and suddenly becomes lip-synched opera (music and lyrics by Berry, vocalizations by Andrea Herron). Matt Skaja's direction lacks the precision a play of this genre demands-too shrill too often and, blame it on the playwright, requiring too much untangling of the huge, confusing cast of characters, all of whom operate in overwhelmingly youthful high gear all the time. Bayeu Morgan's set design (with Travis Farmen) and Murray's lighting design back up and enhance the elaborate costuming by Emil Ross (with seamstress Gabrielle Guglielmelli).

Presented by Alpha Co. in association with and at Theatre/Theater, 5041 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m. Mar. 3-Apr. 16. (818) 752-9253.




CREATION MYTHS. Article by LA WEEKLY writer Steven Mikulan

THEATRE IN EXILE Article by LA WEEKLY writer Steven Leigh Morris

FullReview:February 13, 2007

THEATER REVIEW

Powerful voices of slavery ring in 'Remember Me'

By David C. Nichols, Special to The Times

The force of unexpurgated truth distinguishes "Do Lord Remember Me" at Theatre/Theater.

James de Jongh's docudrama, drawn from recorded interviews with ex-slaves in the 1930s,

transcends reader's theater contours through the power of its content.

Originally performed in 1977, "Do Lord Remember Me" stems from oral histories compiled

during the Depression by the Federal Writers' Project. Although De Jongh conflates some

individuals, his text comes verbatim from the transcribed memories. Using spirituals -

beautifully overseen by musical director Paul Wong - as unifying motif, "Do Lord

Remember Me" may offend the politically correct with its use of the N-word and Southern

patois. Yet that's how its subjects spoke, and De Jongh honors their voices.

These recollections unfold against designer James Esposito's backdrop reproduction of the

woodcut of a shackled slave that appeared with John Greenleaf Whittier's "Our Countrymen

in Chains." It's all here: the auction block, outwitting of white masters, enduring starvation

and sexual exploitation, broken families, the Union Army, emancipation.

Whether earning laughs from homespun superstitions or jerking tears with accounts of

unthinkable cruelty, the script gives the lie to countless Hollywood stereotypes and rivets

the house.

Credit also goes to the wonderfully controlled Chromolume Theatre Company production,

which played last fall at the Raven Playhouse.

The cast is superb. Bambadjan Bamba (in for Parnell Damone at the reviewed performance),

Rodney J. Hobbs, Shavonda Mitchell and Annzella Victoria trump every challenge handed

them, and Arthur Alonzo Richardson goes for the jugular, especially as Nat Turner.

They elucidate and entertain at once, and that, coupled with the undeniable authenticity,

makes "Do Lord Remember Me" quietly unforgettable.

Tom Provenzano of LA Weekly raves...

***RECOMMENDED***

"Designer James Esposito's stark sound design and nearly-bare stage are complemented by Laura Russell's elegant costumes and Christopher Singleton's gentle lighting to create a production supported by, but not depending upon, technology."

"The star here...is musical director Paul Wong's gorgeous work with the five fine performers on a capella versions of such traditional songs as 'Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child,' 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen' and the play's title song."

"Director Wilson Bell repeats the fine staging from the production's earlier life at the Raven Playhouse that easily navigates the actors and the audience through scores of characters...'"

LA Weekly

***RECOMMENDED***

This remarkable piece by James de Jongh juxtaposes true-life testimonials from former slaves, recorded in the 1930s, about horrors they encountered at the hands of white masters with the stirring beauty of the Negro spirituals that helped so many through the antebellum South. While most of these tales are upsetting, there are also generous helpings of humor from the period. Designer James Esposito's stark sound design and nearly-bare stage are complemented by Laura Russell's elegant costumes and Christopher Singleton's gentle lighting to create a production supported by, but not depending upon, technology. The star here, however, is musical director Paul Wong's gorgeous work with the five fine performers on a cappella versions of such traditional songs as "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and the play's title song. Director Wilson Bell repeats the fine staging from the production's earlier life at the Raven Playhouse that easily navigates the actors and the audience through scores of characters. (Tom Provenzano)

CHROMOLUME THEATRE COMPANY at THEATRE/THEATER, 5041 Pico Blvd., L.A.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Feb. 25. (323) 938-3700.
Stephanie Lysaght of LA Weekly raves...

THEATER BEAT

August 1, 2008

Imagine a recession art-directed by Edward Hopper, and you're in "American Dead," Brett Neveu's spare tale of Midwestern obsolescence, now receiving its West Coast premiere by Rogue Machine and John Perrin Flynn. Ian Garrett's sprawling, dilapidated set is a hodgepodge of buildings that have given up the ghost: crooked screen doors, sagging lintels, a row of rusty school lockers.

Lewie Froah (Mark St. Amant) wanders his near-empty hometown like a deadbeat Ancient Mariner. He's mourning the unsolved death of his sister, Grace (Deborah Puette), killed in a store robbery. Grace's husband (David Paluck) has remarried and is moving away; a dwindling local population has even closed the high school. But at a dusty bar tended by the officious Bill (a droll Bradley Fisher), a quiet stranger (Darin Singleton) stops in for beer -- and a fateful encounter with Lewie.

The play isn't in a hurry; it meanders in, a grubby stranger keeping to himself. Slowly, though, Neveu's world reveals itself: fugitive connections that accumulate into a story you find yourself investing in -- due in large part to "Dead's" impressive cohesion of direction, design and performance. Garrett's set, Leigh Allen's eerie lighting and Bob Rokos' sound design all work to focus Neveu's elliptical storytelling. Director Dado is a Steppenwolf alum, and the Chicago ensemble's signature features -- the ground-level desperation of working people, the awkward truth of the lived moment, sudden explosions of violence -- feel strongly in evidence.

The play chases its mysteries only so far. The question of what to do with the dead -- a way of life or a family member -- isn't fully explored. But Neveu and this excellent company ponder the dilemmas of the living with tenderness and admirable simplicity.

Charlotte Stoudt

"American Dead," Theatre Theater, 5041 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday. Ends Aug. 24. $25. Contact: (323) 960-7726. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Theater Reviews: American Dead,

By L.A. Weekly Theater Critics

Monday, July 28, 2008 - 6:00 pm

GO AMERICAN DEAD Brett Neveu's play, first commissioned by Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago - where the playwright earned his wunderkind reputation before immigrating to the film and TV biz out here - recalls an early stage work by Lanford Wilson, Rimers of Eldritch. Both works place their focus on the subtleties and vagaries of plain talk by plain folk, Midwesterners whose cities are rusting, whose farms are being foreclosed and bought out, yet they endure with pleasantries, verbal niceties that become lifeboats bobbing over depths of anguish and violence in the making. This places on the actors and director the burden of responsibility for capturing the unspoken truths beneath the hollow veneer of words. Chicago emigré Dado stages the kaleidoscope of scene with meticulous attention to subtext and the language of facial ticks and flinches, of sadness emerging vaporlike from still faces. The play's event concerns a long-ago shooting of a local sheriff's deputy (Deborah Puette) and clerk (understudy Daniel Montgomery) in a grocery store robbery by unknown assailants, and the attempt by the woman's partner, (Paul Dillon), to find the killers. The chipper barkeep (Bradley Fisher) asks a whole bunch of questions to out-of-towner Dennis (Darin Singleton) regarding a news story of Dennis' son hiding himself away, and the play slowly funnels in on a conversation Dennis heard in prison, which could be a missing link to the ancient investigation. The play's core, however, comes from the murdered deputy's forlorn and bewildered brother (Mark St. Amant), who has become both an alcoholic and an idiot savant - desperate for the attention of his late sister's widower (David Paluck), as he and his new wife (Ann Noble) pack to move out of town. The play seems superficially trite for a while, until we adjust to the production's languid rhythms, and its portrait of lingering grief. Dado's staging even overcomes the venue's echoey qualties, which double the actors' workload. The ensemble work is finely tuned, while Ian Garret's atmospheric platform set and Leigh Allen's tender lighting design add visual poetry to the lament for somebody and something having slipped away so pointlessly. Theatre/Theater, 5041 Pico Blvd., L.A.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; thru Aug. 24. (323) 960-7726. A Rogue Machine production. (Steven Leigh Morris)

July 31, 2008

By Les Spindle

In its West Coast premiere, this drama, developed by Chicago's Steppenwolf company, is a knockout effort from fast-rising playwright Brett Neveu (Eric LaRue). His work - though recalling elements of Sam Shepard, Tracy Letts, and Larry McMurtry - is blessed with its own distinctive style. Director Dado's brilliantly acted production crackles with dramatic electricity.

In a staid community in the Midwest, the lives of deputy sheriff Grace Tisdale (Deborah Puette) and a stock clerk (Matthew Scott Montgomery) were lost during a grocery store holdup. A few years after the tragedy, Grace's brother Lewie (Mark St. Amant) is unable to let go and move on, drowning his grief in alcohol and spending time in vacated local buildings, where he feels the presences of his sister and the young boy. As Doug (David Paluck), Grace's widower, prepares to move away with his new wife, Lisa (Ann Noble), Lewie struggles with the impending loss of the final link with his dead sibling. Another wrinkle is added to Lewie's emotional turmoil when a former resident (Darin Singleton) with a secret makes a return visit.

St. Amant's alternately comic and poignant take on the childlike Lewie is mesmerizing. The actor inhabits this difficult role with an unflinching mastery of vocal and physical characteristics that evoke the despair behind Lewie's fumbling attempts to pretend everything is all right. Particularly effective are his scenes with the superb Paluck, in which the characters' pregnant pauses and halting communication speak volumes. Noble excels as the new spouse struggling to cope with the tension in the air, and Puette is heartbreaking as the spiritlike entity who relives happier times with her brother. Singleton hits all the correct notes in his multishaded role. Paul Dillon and Bradley Fisher add welcome comic relief as a bossy sheriff and busybody barkeeper, respectively. Montgomery rounds out the exemplary ensemble effort.

Scenic designer Ian Garrett, lighting designer Leigh Allen, and costume designer Stephanie Kerley-Schwartz superbly capture the play's intoxicating mix of naturalistic and surrealistic moods. This marvelous production is a feather in the cap for Rogue Machine, one of the city's newest producing companies.

AMERICAN DEAD

Reviewed by Jose Ruiz

The Rogue Machine has come up with a dandy of a show for their second presentation in their still evolving young life. Playwright Brett Neveu writes dialog that gives his characters a sense of hopelessness even when they try to seem positive. This story deals with death on several levels. While the apparent central theme is the murder of Deputy Sheriff Grace Tisdale and grocery clerk Mark Shawver during a holdup at the town's store, the aftermath of that shooting is having eroding effects on her brother Lewie Froah. A former house painter, he is now an alcoholic who can't get a job and frequently has visions of his dead sister and sometimes the dead clerk. He holds conversations with Grace, usually reliving some past experience and each day he sinks deeper into depression.

The characters who populate this small town somewhere in the Midwest are simple, yet colorful in their own way. Like many small towns today, this one is slowly dying. It has lost much of its industry, its jobs, and the people are moving away. Doug Tisdale is one of those leaving. He was married to Grace before she was killed. Now he has remarried and is taking his new wife away from the house and the town that holds the memories of his dead wife. Bill, the bartender in the only bar left in town, is more than friendly. Nosey is a better word, since he wants to get involved in everyone's affairs.

Bradley Fisher - Mark St. Amant - Paul Dillon

The Sheriff, Alan Starett, is a tough no-nonsense man who just wants to keep things quiet in town. He also is disturbed at not having found Grace's killers yet. When Dennis Rescola, a drifter, comes into the bar things begin to happen. The mysterious stranger has a secret about the death of the deputy, but there are circumstances that prevent him from disclosing the facts freely.

With that simple story outline, Neveu creates a gripping tale with many symbolic parallels to life as we know it now. He zeroes in on drug use (methamphetamines) as the major contributor in the decay of the town and its youth but there is a lot more going on. There is a sense of defeatism in the residents and it appears that most are just existing from day to day. Director Dado uses moody lighting to accentuate the fluid sets on the broad stage and the actors create the residents with sharp outlined characters.

Paul Dillon who was reviewed here a couple of years back for his sizzling Killer Joe performance where he played a cop gone bad, is given the role of a lawman again. As the Sheriff, Dillon plays it straight with a tunnel focus and gritty determination.

For a man with a recent bride, Doug Tisdale seems to talk a lot about his dead wife. David Paluk treads the fine line of widower and recently wed with sympathetic realism. Bradley Fisher is excellent as the bartender who always verbally spars with the Sheriff, and Darin Singleton makes Dennis, the drifter, a nervous, insecure ex-con who seems terrified at the consequences he may have to face if he reveals what he knows about the killing. Deborah Puette delivers a believable performance as the dead officer returning to converse with her brother Lewie who is having a hard time keeping it together. Mark St. Amant delivers an exceptional performance, mixing despair with anxiety, grief with anger and desperation with deep depression. He exemplifies the "dead" in the premise ­ almost a walking zombie, too afraid to die but too weak to try to make a life. Ann Noble plays new wife Lisa Tisdale and Mark was played by Daniel Montgomery.

As it is in much of life, this story has no real resolution. There is a glimmer that the murder will be solved ­ there is a hint that life will renew with the recently married couple ­ there is a insinuation that Lewie may try to control his drinking. But nothing is definite and the story ends with the stage going dark and lifeless ­ pretty much like the town and the characters in the story will eventually wind up.

The production continues through August 24, 2008 at Theatre Theater - 5041 Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019 (West of La Brea). Reservations at: (323) 960-7726.

American Dead

Five years ago, Grace Tisdale, a young Midwestern deputy sheriff and Mark Shawver, a teenage bagger, were gunned down in a grocery store robbery, precisely the kind of crime big city dwellers read about on a daily basis. To the residents of this small American town, however, it was not merely the deputy and the teenager who were victimized. Grace Tisdale left behind a husband and a brother, both of whose lives were forever changed.

Thus begins American Dead, a new play by Brett Neveu and the second production of Rogue Machine, one of L.A.'s most promising new theater companies. The title refers not only to the two crime victims, but to the dying town itself. The school, the bank, the gas station-they've all closed, though the doors of the local bar remain open.

In the years since the crime, Grace's widower has remarried, but her brother Lewie, already not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, remains traumatized by the crime and keeps reliving the robbery, visited by the imagined ghosts of Grace and Mark.

Now, Lewie's life is about to be changed by two unconnected events. First, Grace's husband Doug and his second wife Lisa are about to move away, and in so doing, rob Lewie of the one remaining link to his murdered sister. Secondly, a stranger from another town has begun to frequent the bar where Lewie is habitually served one drink too many, a stranger with a secret.

The stranger is a man named Dennis Rescola, known in these parts as the father of "that kid who wouldn't leave his house for a few days because he didn't want to go to school," that kid who "had some guns." Dennis has a reason for showing up in Bill Doane's bar, one which will rock Lewie's already unstable world.

Playwright Neveu has had considerable success in Chicago, where Jack Helbig of the Daily Herald wrote, "the day is probably going to come when we lose Brett Neveu, when this talented playwright lights out for greener pastures on either the East or West Coast." The talented writer is now L.A. based, and Rogue Machine is fortunate indeed to have American Dead as their sophomore effort.

Neveu's writing captures the Midwestern idiom, his serious subject matter spiced with dashes of wry humor. Dennis earns his living making polyethylene belts for vacuum cleaners and washing machines, but he's "sworn to secrecy" about how exactly they're made. Bill is none too happy to hear his bar described as smelling "like an ass crack." There's also a running gag about how many drinks Bill is allowed to serve Lewie under Sheriff Alan Starett's eagle eye.

Under the outstanding direction of Dado (that's her whole name), the entire cast of American Dead deliver sterling performances. Mark St. Amant creates a fascinatingly enigmatic Lewie, a not terribly bright man unable to exorcise the ghosts of his murdered sister and the stranger who was killed with her. Paul Dillon is brilliant as Sheriff Starett, folksy yet steely, and Darin Singleton is equally fine as mystery man Rescola. Dillon and Singleton have the play's most powerful scene, an interrogation between a fierce police officer and a troubled father who becomes a broken man before our eyes.

Bradley Fisher is excellent as bartender Bill, waiting in vain for "the town to get its second wind." David Paluck does compelling work as Doug, who feels bad about leaving Lewie behind but knows that this town is no longer the place for him or for his schoolteacher wife, the always striking Ann Noble. Recent LA Weekly Award-winner Deborah Puette is heartbreaking as murdered Grace, and Matthew Scott Montgomery is boyish sweetness as Mark, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

American Dead's impact is heightened by an absolutely superb design team. Scenic designer Ian Garrett fills Theatre-Theater's cavernous black box with a multilevel set which vividly depicts a town on the verge of becoming a ghost town. Leigh Allen's lighting is equally arresting, clearly differentiating between the real and the imaginary, the red traffic light suspended above the set punctuating scenes and symbolizing the go-nowhere town where American Dead is set. Bob Rokos has created an outstanding (and appropriately moody) sound design, and Stephanie Kerley Schwartz's costumes couldn't be more right for the play's characters.

Neveu's script does take a while to get going, and at least in this instance I would have benefited from having read the kind of introductory synopsis which begins this review. Also, the play's abrupt ending proved confusing, both to myself and to the friend who was my guest, provoking a "What?" at blackout rather than a "Wow!" Once a couple of cast members gave me their take on the ending, it all made sense, but I wish I hadn't had to ask.

Overall, however, American Dead is well worth seeing. It is gritty, suspenseful, and often grimly funny in both its writing and its acting, and makes one eager to see what's next for Rogue Machine.

Theatre Theater, 5041 Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles. Through August 24. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00. Fridays at 7:00. Reservations: (323) 960-7726 or www.roguemachinetheatre.com.

--Steven Stanley

July 25, 2008

Photos: John Flynn