Corpses and darkness: Recurring theater themes this fall

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Dead bodies, darkness, nighttime, ghosts. Now that fall is here and the days begin to shorten, Maine’s theatrical offerings have taken a black turn, bringing more death and despair to the stage than in recent years. Were producers, directors, and actors really that depressed in the spring and summer? Is the state of the arts truly that dismal?

The Phoenix is well aware of Maine’s recurring budget "gap," the skyrocketing costs of Bush’s war on terror, and Ashcroft’s war on the Constitution. They are not calls for despondency, though. Rather, this is a time for the arts to shine, to call out to the masses and ignite our passions, not to darken our hearts with doom and death. This is not to say we need more frilly, happy pieces. We need to be disturbed, alerted, cattle-prodded into action by theatrical performances, galvanized as a community, a society that takes charge of its fate and does not dally in the pits of despair. In the meantime, be sure to catch glimpses of the high notes, like those below.

BEST SPOT FOR A GOOD SHOW

To get a good start, drive to Portsmouth regularly. The Players’ Ring is putting on some amazing shows there. Full of local actors end energy, the performances are always enjoyable and offer a much needed break from the mainstream of theater. (Because how many productions of Proof does Maine really need? We had one last year, two this summer, and one coming up. QED.)

At the Ring, Rhiannon Productions will ask Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, September 25 through October 5. Examining truth and illusion through a Cold War lens (or is it a "War on Terror" lens?), the play follows an evening of self-destruction by professors and their wives.

October 10 through 26 will see Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind, continuing Shepard’s incisive investigations of the American family.

Then comes The Cask of Amontillado, October 30 through November 9. It’s a Halloween tale, adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, inspired by something he saw in a basement at West Point, before he got kicked out. A wine cask, a dark confined space, the glittering coats of arms of ancestors . . .

Finally for the fall, trading on the Tolkien resurgence of late, from November 13 through 30, The Hobbit brings the One Ring to the Players’ Ring. Oh, and there’s this guy called Bilbo, a cave-dweller called Gollum, and a fire-breathing dragon. Is there any more to say?

Speaking of the Ring, last year’s best original script, Not on This Night, by Kittery’s Evelyn Jones, will return to the Seacoast in late December, with two showings at Seacoast Repertory Theater December 21 and 28. Amid the Battle of the Bulge in World War 2, soldiers try to commandeer a home, finding all the things a home offers, including humanity and love.

BEST STUFF WE USUALLY DON'T COVER

There’s a lot of theater going on at Maine’s colleges. Colby College, for example, will have a number of fascinating offerings, starting with a 10-minute play festival October 3 and 4.

Moving into November, Shenandoah Shakespeare Express will visit the campus to explore what it is to be English, performing Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest November 5, and Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One (November 6), along with Two Gentlemen of Verona (November 7).

Colby’s fall season will finish November 14 with a 21st-century reinterpretation of the 17th-century comedy The Man of Mode, exploring the cultivation of wit and manners as opposed to morality.

Also along the cultivation theme is USM’s The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Obie-winning play slated for October 3 through 12 in Gorham. Find out what can grow from even a barren landscape.

From November 7 through 16, check out the timeless tale of Shakuntala, an ancient Sanskrit piece revived by Assunta Kent. It includes music and dance to tell the story of a king who finds his perfect match but must elude a curse to win her.

Rounding out the fall semester at USM will be two student plays, Ghosting by Michael Thomas Toth and Goin’ to Graceland by M. Calien Lewis, performed together December 5 through 13 at the St. Lawrence Arts Center. Ghosting is a peek inside the lives of performers in a city theater, while Graceland is a set of character studies linked in a pilgrimage to Elvis’s home.

BEST STUFF WE USUALLY COVER

The Public Theatre in Lewiston earns top billing with two strong and intriguing fall pieces. First there’s Red Herring (October 10 through 19), of which director Christopher Schario says, "Imagine Sam Spade meets I Love Lucy." This 1950s noir comedy will have to be done well to work, but the Public Theatre is great at finding the best actors for the roles.

Then comes The Belle of Amherst (November 7 through 16). Based on the life of poet Emily Dickinson, the play stars Ellen Crawford, who was last onstage in Lewiston in the same show during a break from E.R.

Good Theater has also picked a strong starting pair. First, September 25 through October 19, is Baby, a Tony-nominated musical following three couples, in their twenties, thirties, and forties, each of whom is having a baby. Explore that life change with GT regulars Stephen Underwood and Kelly Caufield, and musical director Beth Barefoot Jones. Second (November 6 through 30) is Loot, by British comic playwright Joe Orton, a black comedy deftly twisting corpses into money and cops into robbers.

Penobscot Theater Company has updated its schedule. No more Moon Over Buffalo; instead put A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters on the calendar (October 1 through 12). It’s a picture of a friendship painted in the letters two people write to each other over the course of their lives. And from November 5 through 23, William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker will take the stage, telling the story of Annie Sullivan and her famous student, Helen Keller.

Mad Horse will have a fascinating production about starting over on September 12, 2001, in The Mercy Seat by Neil LaBute. Facing their true identities, two New Yorkers (played by Craig Bowden and Christine Louise Marshall) dive into themselves. Keep your eyes on the Portland Stage Company Studio Theater October 16 through 26.

Down the hall at Portland Stage Company proper, the season begins September 23 with Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, in which mistaken identities nearly shipwreck a reunion of people split years ago by, well, a shipwreck.

NEW STUFF WITH BEST POTENTIAL

Jason Wilkins’ Naked in Portland is an original musical by a former theater reviewer for the other alt-weekly and currently a reviewer for the city’s main daily. Having crossed the line into being reviewed, Wilkins is mixing love, sex, and art, following three young women "as they learn how to become the people they want to be." Directed by R.J. McComish, who knows how to guide a cast towards even a strange vision, and featuring Lisa Muller-Jones and Tavia Lin Gilbert among others, the show should be worth a look, though it’ll be a challenge to shoehorn a full musical into the cramped PSC Studio Theater (September 19 through October 5).

Emerging from their own secure, undisclosed location are Castle Theater Productions’ Tony Cox and Anthony Pizzuto. After a three-year silence, the 22-year-old Tonys are back with Agency (November 20 through 23) by UMaine-Machias theater professor Lee Rose. It’ll be a world premiere, but in all the hoopla about their personal career developments in the past 36 months, the Tonys — who won’t even be in the show — neglected to say what it is about.

Redemption songs: They're all some never have

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Have you ever done something you really shouldn’t have? Not something small, either, like "borrowing" the boss’s car or taking off your wedding band in a bar filled with attractive singles. Something really, really big, that you’ve known all your life you shouldn’t do. Like threatening a loved one, and following through.

Is it possible to make up for that? Should it be? Who deserves a second chance? Is there anyone who doesn’t?

Admittedly, there are the Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Dahmers of the world, folks the law — and most of society — condemns to never get another shot. Some, like Bundy, are executed legally, by badge-wearing officials reading black-robed justices’ sentences. Others, like Dahmer, meet their fates in murkier ways, killed in jailhouse "incidents" by "out-of-control" fellow inmates, while overworked guards just happened to be looking elsewhere.

Enough about serial killers. What about the people who kill the living, the slaughterers of souls and spirits, extinguishers of dreams and hopes: people who commit domestic violence. (We don’t even have a name for them, like "murderer," and are left with an emotionless legal term. Instead, let’s call them DVers.)

Somehow, society tends to view DVers as lesser transgressors, even though their deeds, too, are destructive, unreasonable, and impossible to forgive. Rather than facing universal condemnation, DVers’ moral futures are muddy. Can victims — can society — forget, even without forgiving, or alternately move on, having done neither, but tolerating the violators’ presence? Or should DVers, too, be cast beyond the pale, like Bundy and Dahmer? Second Chance starts the discussion with a snap.

Written and directed by Kittery playwright Evelyn Jones, the play unravels the twists of fate, allowing the audience to follow the twisting of strings paying out through time from incidents in the past, intertwining lives in unexpected ways.

Starting with a quality facade hiding drugs, alcohol, and egotism, Second Chance moves through the logical conclusion to all domestic violence — murder — and beyond, exploring the vagaries of the DVer’s mind. We follow a search for direction devoid of a moral compass.

(A brief digression: The play itself seems to lack a compass or map. The first scene is in the evening somewhere in New York state; 24 hours later, on a run for the Canadian border, Dennis (Andrew Fling) still hasn’t made it. If he were serious, on a highway and doing roughly the speed limit, he’d have cleared customs by daybreak, regardless of starting point.)

We watch, electrified, as a control freak tries to dictate to a corpse, and later, denying culpability, vows revenge on the attacker of his beloved DV victim.

The most compelling moment of the story is when the veil of hints is swept away in a panic-stricken exchange between a lonely man and two parents (not his) in the middle of the night. "Sit back, on the edge of your seat," as the Host (Jennifer Mason) says in the prologue. This is a ripper of a tale, cleverly told, with all threads tied, though not at all neatly, by the end of Act 2.

The play is beautifully acted, though giving specifics would reveal too much. Dinah Schultze, in her debut as a lead role (Jill), gives a taste of what she can do, and promises — both plot-wise and professionally — power far beyond what we see on stage. Fling, as the DVer, mixes the Jekyll and Hyde well, both shaking and stirring the audience. Thorpe Feidt is a frightening (for this journalist, at least) caricature of those spot-news TV freelancers who appear at the most unusual moments in real life.

There are several elegant touches to the stage management: Stagehands’ faces are shrouded in Eyes Wide Shut maroon hoods; an actor whose character is dead has her body hauled off as if to the coroner. The set itself is pure Players’ Ring, flexible and functional, but unadorned and not distracting. The overhead projector is lovingly jury-rigged to the ceiling, and the swingset’s two beam-embedded eyehooks hold. The makeup also helps, subtly reinforcing the line between life and death.

The music, too, all well known pieces, supports the storyline in clever ways. It is, though, the writing that brings this show to its peak and the audience along, simultaneously willingly and inextricably.

"They make horror movies about beautiful young women materializing out of the dark," Dennis says. If only those beautiful DV victims — for they all are — could appear out of the darkness, reborn and empowered, then the DVers would see real horror begin. In seats before a stage, we look on helplessly. Are we — and they — doomed to have us do the same in the real world?

Second Chance
Written and directed by Evelyn Jones. With Andrew Fling, Dinah Schultze, and Nicole MacMillan. At the Players’ Ring, in Portsmouth, NH, through Sept. 21. Call (603) 436-8123.

BACKSTAGE

• If you haven’t yet, find a way to see UltraLight, Michael Gorman’s homage to his love for his brother, killed by a heroin addiction. Yes, it occupied plenty of space on this page last week, but it’s even better than it was billed to be. Just go.

• Eleventh & Love, Tim Collins’s show offering an international perspective on September 11, will be at the St. Lawrence, September 18 and 19, at 7 p.m., and September 20, at 4 and 7 p.m.

Love and a light touch: What it takes to be your brother's keeper

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Looking out the window of the old Levinsky’s storefront during a rehearsal recently, actor Dave Bennett saw something. He called the others over, and they, too, had a startlingly relevant vision: "There’s a guy fixing up and shooting, in a picture window on Congress Street," said Michael Gorman.

The group has been using the vacant space to rehearse for the Maine tour of Gorman’s play UltraLight, an elegy for his brother, who died at 40 of a heroin overdose. Alone with his pencil and paper, Gorman had control in a way his real life never offered. "It’s about sanctuary of storytelling," he said. "I can say whatever I want."

At its 2000 New York debut, UltraLight found an unusual theater audience: "Recovering addicts started showing up," Gorman said. After the curtain, many of them would express gratitude for the respect and truth in the tale.

The play, whose subtitle is "A True Fishing Story," hooked cast members too. "Every night you’d have to go through a decompression process," said local musician/composer Joshua Eden.

Fishing metaphors abound in the play: lines of love and emotion become tangled in the tides of time. Ultralight fishing uses super-fragile equipment. Eden explains, the hook is lodged carefully in a fish’s mouth, like a needle in a vein, and the fisherman must work cautiously to reel it in.

The loving act of "catching something so you can release it," as Bennett puts it, is crucial to UltraLight, as is the behavior of a hooked fish. Stephen, the heroin-addicted character in the play, is caught by the carefully baited lure of his brother, Jim (played by Bennett).

Stephen (Oz Phillips) tells fish stories — tall tales making himself look good — in an attempt to wriggle out of Jim’s grasp. "Everybody associates lying with fishing stories," said Mike Kimball, who plays the supporting role of a salesman. "A lot of addicts are extremely adept at that."

Stephen ducks, hides, runs, does all the things fish do to avoid being drawn into the open. When Jim’s soul-fishing proves too skillful, though, Stephen enters the raging current and begins a fight for his life.

UltraLight shows the dexterity family members need to overcome denial and avoidance, telling the story of a brother unwilling to part with a segment of his own soul. "A lot of people get left behind that aren’t the addicts," Kimball said.

Touched with love, irony, even humor, UltraLight is a call to arms for families to help their addicts, in a nation whose drug policy criticizes them, marginalizes them, criminalizes them, and fails to extend a hand.

Maine’s jails and prisons are full of non-violent repeat drug offenders. Maine’s towns are riddled by prescription opiates stolen from patients who really need them. Heroin is cheaper and easier to find than marijuana.

And thousands are just waiting for a chance to get clean, said Marty O’Brien of the Maine Alliance for Addiction Recovery. In 2000, 75,000 Mainers tried to get into rehab programs, but there was only room for 15,000.

MAAR is helping sponsor the Maine tour, which runs throughout September, designated as National Recovery Month. "It’s very important to me ... that we convey a sense of hope," said Brian Glover, who is directing the show. "Recovery is real and not just another fishing story."

The play seeks action. "It’s not enough to say that there is a secret hidden in the American family," Glover said. Nor to say that there’s a "fog," as in Dickens’ Bleak House. "You can turn the fan on and blow the shit out," Glover said.

It takes a soft touch. "These are not people separate from us. When you wage a war on drugs you wage it on your own family. You wage it on your community," Gorman said. Many involved with the play know this firsthand, including Bennett: "I recently lost a friend to a heroin overdose. I just felt so helpless. This is about the only thing I can do for him."

Phillips’ role made him ask, "Why am I an actor? What does this do other than please me?" Now, his mission is clear: "Take a stand. Be socially responsible." Of particular importance, not just to the play, but to Phillips himself, is family.

"Maybe call up your brother and see how he’s doing," Phillips said. In fact, this play moved him to do just that. After two years of not talking to his brother, Phillips picked up the phone a couple of weeks ago. His brother is coming to see the play.

UltraLight is at Portland Stage Company, September 4, 5, and 6 at 8 p.m. and September 6 and 7 at 2 p.m. (207) 774-0465; Penobscot Theater, in Bangor, September 12 and 13 at 8 p.m., and September 14 at 2 p.m. (207) 942-3333; and the Grand Theater, in Ellsworth, September 18 at 2 p.m., and September 19 at 8 p.m. (866) 363-9500. Photos of recovering addicts will be on display, and each show will be followed by a group discussion.

Backstage

• Local playwright Cathy Plourde will direct Lysistrata in its October run at Central Connecticut State University. Her adaptation is called Lysistrata: Everything Aristophanes Wanted To Know About Sex but Was Afraid To Ask, adding a new character who draws in the audience and turns the play on its head.

Signing theater: The words are on the tips of their fingers

Published in the Portland Phoenix

As Broadway’s first-ever musical with both hearing and deaf cast members begins to gain popularity, here in Maine, deaf people are still struggling to gain access to theater and other performances.

In New York, deaf actor Tyrone Giordano plays Huck Finn in Big River. He signs his dialogue and songs, while Mark Twain (played by Dan Jenkins, who created the role of Huck in the 1985 version of the musical) speaks and sings the words. The show’s hearing actors, including Michael McElroy as Jim, sign the words they are speaking or singing. This is what Maine theaters should aspire to.

"Interpreting, at best, is second-best," said Meryl Troop, who bears the unwieldy title of Director of the Office of Deaf Services and Multicultural Diversity at the state Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services. She is a certified sign interpreter who has interpreted at Portland Stage Company, Maine Gay Men’s Chorus, and elsewhere around the state. "Theater by and for deaf people would be much more preferable," Troop said.

Brenda Schertz, a USM sign-language teacher, who is herself deaf, agrees. When she saw her first sign-interpreted performance years ago, "I didn’t feel like I got the same experience as the hearing audience," Schertz said, via a sign interpreter.

Big River both includes deaf people and gives all audience members a similar experience. Half of the cast is deaf or hearing impaired. Deaf actors so prominent that hearing audiences know their names are on board: Phyllis Frelich, for whom was written the role of the deaf Sarah Norman in Children of a Lesser God, is now on stage as Miss Watson and Sally. Linda Bove, best known as the deaf resident of Sesame Street, is a consultant to the show.

To help deaf people react emotionally to music, the actors dance while signing, giving visual cues for what hearing audiences could find in their voices.

Yet even in New York, deaf attendance numbers are unable to support a full Broadway show. The trick, Schertz said, is to create a combination that appeals to both hearing and deaf audiences, and then to get the word out to both communities. Big River is proving this is more than possible.

For now, most Maine performances that are accessible to the deaf — which is not many — are signed by hearing interpreters. Some places that do have interpreters are Portland Stage, Theater at Monmouth, Lakewood Theater, and Penobscot Theater. There is demand: "We have some regular consumers, people who are theater addicts," Schertz said.

For their access to theater in Maine so far, they depend on interpreters, who practice a demanding profession, both physically and mentally. Troop once had to figure out how to sign the word "rent" in the musical Rent, when it means not just the monthly payment due to a landlord, but also the tearing of souls.

"Some interpreters are more successful at that than others," Schertz said. And even the best need help. Usually, two or more hearing interpreters and a deaf consultant will work together several times before the show’s opening, usually with a videotape of the show. As the interpreters practice, the consultant will read the signs and stop both interpreter and video to correct an error or suggest changes to improve the signing.

And not all plays are good for deaf audiences. Portland Stage Company canceled the sign interpreting of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia last season because the mathematical concepts were too hard to sign. A deaf person who has a bad theater experience won’t come back, Schertz said. They feel left out of the hearing world on a daily basis as it is.

Even after the Americans with Disabilities Act became law, sign interpretation at theaters is still "not 100-percent equal access," Schertz said. Usually, the interpreter is way off to the side, relegating the deaf audience to a corner, with a bad view of the stage.

She has seen better success from interpreters standing partway up a main aisle, or on a raised platform above the stage. Both keep the interpreters out of the actors’ space but allow a deaf person to watch both the play and the interpretation at once.

Another way, and one that can open more plays to deaf people, is also in use in New York: Huck’s dad is played by two men, deaf actor Troy Kotsur and hearing actor Lyle Kanouse, side by side, one signing and the other speaking, while both engage in comic charades that add more than double life to the role. More commonly, this is done with what are called "shadow interpreters," people who follow along with each actor, even costumed similarly, and sign their lines.

No matter how theater interpreting is done, Troop has a solemn reminder about the life of the deaf: just as seeing theater is a luxury for hearing people, "I would not interpret for the theater if I did not also interpret where they really need help," in schools, hospitals, and courtrooms.

Special thanks to ASL interpreter Kirsta McElfresh.

BACKSTAGE

• Tim Collins has been hired to perform in You the Man, Cathy Plourde’s play about dating, relationship violence, and sexual assault among young people. Collins’s one-man show Eleventh & Love will come to the St. Lawrence September 18 through 21. He studied in London during college, arriving there on September 10, 2001. The play is based on " the non-American perspectives about the [9/11] tragedy. "

State commissioner says slots could save horse industry

Published in the Current and the American Journal

Maine’s agriculture commissioner says the horse industry here is in trouble and needs a major cash infusion to save it – cash that could come from slots at racetracks.

Robert Spear stopped short of contradicting Gov. John Baldacci’s stand against slot machines at racetracks, but said slots are one way the industry could get a much needed bailout.

Spear also suggested that if the statewide referendum on whether to allow slots at racetracks passes Nov. 4, Baldacci might change his mind.

While the referendum question – called “the Bangor bill” because it was proposed by the Bangor Raceway – gives some money to horse owners and trainers, another bill now on Baldacci’s desk – called “the industry bill” because it was proposed by a group from Maine’s horse industry – would give horsemen and women more.

Spear hinted that if the Bangor bill passes with a strong showing, his boss, the governor, might approve the industry bill, which includes permission for slot machines at off-track betting locations as well as racetracks. The two would need to be compromised before either could take effect.

Both dedicate 1 percent of the slots’ take to combat addiction and compulsive gambling.

The Bangor bill gives 75 percent of the take to the operator of the slot machines, 11 percent to help the horse industry, 10 percent to help elderly and disabled people pay for prescription drugs and 3 percent to fund scholarships at state colleges.

The industry bill would send 28 percent of the proceeds from slots at racetracks and OTBs to the state’s general fund and 17 percent to support the horse industry. It does not specifically allocate a percentage to the operators of the machines.

The industry bill also gives 3 percent of the take from slots at Bangor Raceway to the city of Bangor, if Scarborough’s local ban is not overturned.

If the local ban is overturned, however, and slots are installed at both Bangor Raceway and Scarborough Downs, the two towns would get 5 percent of the tracks’ take. (Scarborough Downs has collected the needed signatures, they say, to put the overturn of the local ban on the November ballot.)

Either bill would be a good beginning to the problems facing Maine’s horse industry, Spear said. “Right now we have a lot of horses leaving the state,” heading to other states with higher racewinners’ purses – some because of slot machines at their tracks.

“We need to find ways to get more purse money into the hands of the horsemen,” he said. The average purse in Maine is around $1,200 a race. In Delaware, where slots at racetracks are allowed, winning a race pays between $3,000 and $5,000, Spear said.

He visited there earlier this year at a meeting of the Northeastern states’ agriculture commissioners, held at Delaware Downs. In addition to a horseracing track, it has a car-racing track, a hotel and a gambling floor. “It looks like a casino,” Spear said.

He was there on a weekend when Delaware Downs had no live racing, but people were there. “The money was coming in through the slot machines. It looked like Las Vegas.”

That cash influx could save racing, he said.

“There’s a lot of history and nostalgia” in the Maine horse industry, he said. A farm census is in progress to gauge the exact size of it, but a University of Maine study commissioned by the Maine Harness Racing Promotion Board in 2000 says the “harness racing industry annually contributes an
estimated $50,724,895 in gross revenue to the state economy.” That includes $27 million in income from outside horse racing, plus $12 million in business spending related to the horse industry and $11.5 million in personal spending by workers in the sector.

“I consider the horse industry very important” to Maine’s economy, Spear said. It also helps Maine’s environment: “It keeps a lot of land open,” especially in Southern Maine.

There are small ways to help the industry, but “until you get some real money out there in the hands of the horsemen” not much will change, Spear said.

Of further concern are actions other states are taking. “I see other states going the route of machines,” Spear said. If they do, Maine’s purses will stay small and horses will leave to make money elsewhere.

A casino also worries Spear. If a casino is approved in November, gamblers may take their money there, cutting tracks’ income even more.

“We’ve got some good breeders in this state. It’s too bad to breed these good horses here and then see them leave the state,” Spear said.