In the beginning: The One Ring comes to the Players' Ring

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Reading The Hobbit is a great way to get set for re-watching the first two Lord of the Rings movies, in time for the third and final installment, due out next month. Better yet, see The Hobbit performed live on a stage. Without the digital imagery and special effects, pared down to its basic elements of storytelling, it illuminates clearly the foundations for J.R.R. Tolkien’s subsequent tales.

The Players’ Ring cast begins the Tolkien-authorized adaptation with a pretentious, presumptuous Gandalf (Tim Robinson) arriving at the home of Bilbo Baggins (Bernie Tato). Bilbo has no idea who the wizard is, but recognizes the name and remembers old stories he was once told.

Bilbo, a shrinking violet who has not yet become the fierce warrior or knowing sage of the later volumes, is just a taste of how Tolkien’s characters develop. Gandalf isn’t yet the friendly face he will become, and dwarves are more whining and hungry than noble and strong. Even the elves — who appear here as captors and dungeonmasters — are bitter and mean, protecting their turf from interlopers.

The extraordinary times and alliances brought by the reappearance of the One Ring have not yet come to pass. Instead, the inhabitants of Middle Earth are as they have been, slightly xenophobic, jealous, nervous and, well, hungry.

Bilbo himself is concerned that "adventures make you late for dinner," as any school-age child has learned when exploring a creekbed or forest path. With the jovial arrival of the dwarves, all played by children who know the value of a good exploratory adventure, appetites grow, both on stage and in the seats.

Bilbo learns, with the audience, that the dwarves are seeking a burglar to help them recover treasure lost when a dragon attacked a dwarf city and ate most of the inhabitants. Gandalf has appointed him to the post, and there’s little the hobbit can do but go along.

Tato plays the wide-eyed hobbit to a T, with the even temper of the halflings, and with the hint of reluctance and homesickness that seems innate to the race. He brightens the show with his delivery of such well written, wry lines as "Adventures are not all Sunday strolls in May sunshine," evoking Winnie-the-Pooh’s innocence and equanimity.

Robinson, as Gandalf, quickly tires of his beard, leaving us with a clean-shaven mage shorn of his symbolic wisdom. His presence on stage varies from the welcome to the interruptive, though that is possibly part of the plan: Even this early in the adventure, he disappears and reappears at unlikely times.

Thorpe Feidt plays Thorin, the leader of the dwarves, but really he seems uncomfortable in another’s skin. Rarely making eye contact with any characters, and blustering his way through his lines, Feidt detracts from the show in small ways that add up. (On the other hand, he created Smaug, the sinister dragon, about whom we will hear more shortly.)

The real joys are the children, who are having fun but keep their focus while on stage. They have asides and ensemble lines that draw big laughs — not just from parents — and generally make merry during what could be a drawn-out journey. The trolls and goblins, with excellent masks, also bring both levity and danger to the trip.

Everyone comes together in the escape from the elf-dungeons to create a true atmosphere of urgency and hurry, with only voices and body language, raising the heart rate of all on-lookers. In particular, Bombur (Dylan Schwartz) appears to have a great time, but reins himself in enough to avoid stepping on the performances of his fellow dwarves.

After the escape, Bilbo meets Gollum (Tana Sirois), a brilliantly costumed and acted writhing character, filled with barely contained eagerness and desire, though not yet fully consumed by sinister greed.

In the final scene, Bilbo and Thorin meet Smaug, the greedy dragon, created by Feidt and (without giving away too much) with a realistic presence and threatening voice that startles and alarms.

We see inklings of the Ring’s power — "it makes me feel funny," Bilbo says — but in all this is a wonderful story that whets the appetite for more.

The Hobbit
Written by J.R.R. Tolkien and Patricia Gray. Directed by Todd Hunter. With Bernie Tato, Tim Robinson, Dylan Schwartz, and Thorpe Feidt. At the Players’ Ring, through Nov. 30. Call (603) 436-8123.

Power virtue: Ideals keep society's wheels rolling

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In the duty-bound and caste-rigid northern India of the fourth century, ideals still governed the behavior of every individual, and a sense of obligation ruled the world. Spirits of nature abounded; all living things were truly alive. In today’s America, self-interest governs all — even the most powerful — and nature makes way for humanity in a brutal slaughter of trees and fouling of the air.

It is into this soiled arena that King Dushyanta (Dave Ciampa) and Shakuntala (Piper Silverthorne) bring their penance grove and wedding bower. The powerful king, whose son has been prophesied to rule "the ocean-bounded Earth," encounters the virtuous half-nymph, who lives in a holy hermitage.

The pair fall in love, but duty calls each to other tasks. First, they elope, wedding in a ceremony witnessed only by the woodland and its creatures. Dushyanta gives her his signet ring as a token of remembrance.

As they each return to their lives, Shakuntala is so overcome by emotion that she neglects her obligations of hospitality toward a powerful guest, who curses her: The king will forget ever meeting her until she produces something to remind him.

When she goes to his royal court, the king rejects her; she is clearly pregnant, and his virtue will not allow him to covet another man’s wife. Worse, she has lost the ring that is the key to his memory.

Set to Indian drum and flute music and chanting by Amos Libby of Portland (a longtime student of the Indian arts), and couched within the good-vs.-evil struggles of ancient Indian manuscripts, Shakuntala and the Ring of Recognition is a wonderful, enchanting vision of a world where complex interactions are governed by simple principles that all remember and obey.

From the very beginning — a Sanskrit chant in praise of Lord Shiva, god of destruction and rebirth and patron of performers — to the final blessing of the audience, the play is a magical journey that has meaning for all ages and stations.

The set has extravagant detail, but remains a simple layout of a forest grove and several sitting areas allowing scenes outside the woods. The costumes — made of real silk purchased by costumer Jodi Ozimek on a special trip to New York — are sumptuous and beautiful, cloaking all the actors in garments worthy of their posts.

The actors are well rehearsed and handle difficult language with aplomb. This is, after all, Kalidasa, the Indian equivalent of Shakespeare. Director Assunta Kent has assembled the script from eight translations from the Sanskrit, and has reproduced the wit, wisdom, and beautiful imagery that has carried the original into modern times. (As a taste, consider this perspective on aging and memory: "My mind is like a lamp whose oil is getting low. It flares brightly one minute and then suddenly dims.")

The actors are also dancers, performing ritual footwork and hand movements used by Indian performers to tell their stories without words. While this play accompanies those motions with their spoken meanings, the experience is as in a fairy tale, where meanings are always made clear.

Yet this story is no fairy tale. Though its main character waters trees she calls friends and raises orphaned deer out of compassion, the king’s virtue is of a different form. He is a warrior, head of the lunar dynasty, and must fend off evil from the hermitage and join with the army of the sun god, Indra, to drive demons from the heavens.

The requirements of Shakuntala’s virtuous behavior contrast with the kingly duties of her husband. It is a lesson world leaders would do well to remember: "Vigilant kings who tax their subjects should tax themselves in protecting their subjects."

Once reminded by a fisherman’s recovery of his ring, the king is overcome by "Shakuntalitis," as the gleeful court jester (Jae Rodriguez) declares. He forgets himself and his role for a time, until recalled to duty and then rewarded by finding his beloved and his first-born son.

Of special note are the puppets — both three-dimensional and shadow varieties — created by Chelsea Cook, a USM junior, and Kris Hall. They provide elements of fantasy and fulfill the true role of theatrical performers: deepening the story-telling by expertly portraying story elements in eye-opening ways.

Shakuntala and the Ring of Recognition
Written by Kalidasa. Adapted and directed by Assunta Kent. With Piper Silverthorne, Dave Ciampa, and Amos Libby. At USM, through Nov. 16. Call (207) 780-5151.

Backstage

• The Human Theater Company is putting on Tony Kushner’s eerily prescient play Homebody/Kabul at the Portland Stage Studio Theater through November 23. It explores the life of an Afghan-obsessed British housewife who ventures to Kabul and loses herself. Written before 9/11, it explores and explains many of the emotions Americans only discovered after that tragedy.

• Laura Emack is putting her play Writers Block up for comment Saturday, November 15, at the Bangor Public Library, at 2:15 p.m., as part of a Made in Maine Theater Workshop. It looks at " the maddening marketplace " of writing and writers. Emack was a finalist in the 2001 Maine Playwrights Festival and just incorporated feedback from her writers’ group into the script. Lend your hand to this work in progress.

• Tim Collins is back at the St. Lawrence with another multi-character solo piece called An Evening of One-Man Comedy. It’s on one night only, Wednesday, November 19, so seize the evening and check out this talented multi-personality performer.

Choosing life: Internal control vs. intimacy and trust

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Writers can live solitary lives, enjoying more the fruits of their imaginings than the actual ups and downs of life. Thus is Jake (Hugh J. Barton), in Neil Simon’s poignant, funny play Jake’s Women. Simon gives us a view into his own writerly world, and the challenges of coming down from his writing world into the real one, where he must surrender control to others and to the universe.

In a series of imagined and real conversations, Jake confers with the women in his life — his sister, his analyst, his first wife (killed in a car accident 10 years ago), and his daughter at two different points in her life. His second wife, Maggie (Lisa Kristoff) appears both in reality and imagination, while a literal-minded girlfriend (Sheila, played by Sandi Panati) is just a reality.

The characters are hilarious, and well played, especially Karen (Shirley Bernier), Jake’s popcorn-crunching sister, who appears in wildly garish costumes — as she is imagined by Jake.

Jake’s marriage to Maggie is in crisis. She feels trapped by her life, and needs to escape. Jake, for his part, is just trying to get "from there to here" and may need to go by way of Calcutta or Hong Kong.

The audience serves as another imaginary interlocutor for Jake, who has periodic asides demonstrating the actual level of self-awareness he possesses. The imagined conversations also contain humorous reminders to Jake — from himself — that he’s creating both sides of the dialogue. "My mind has a mind of its own," he says at one point.

As the play progresses, Jake’s internal dialogue appears more and more, and begins to influence his relationships with real people.

The causes and consequences of his choices in life become clear as he explores himself, prodded by his loved ones’ voices in his head. His daughter, Molly, appears both as an innocent 12-year-old girl (Diana Bernier Siegler) and a grown-up woman (Natasha Bernier Siegler) attending the college Jake thought his first wife dreamed of. (Not so, we learn in a funny aside.)

Maggie, too, finds her voice and through a passing night of infidelity reaches her own rock bottom and begins to rebuild herself, her way.

The pair are great at interacting both awkwardly and lovingly as the plot requires, and their emotions are palpable even from the seats. The other characters also fit in well, except the older Molly, who is flat at key moments.

The play is very funny, with lines explaining why people need psychiatrists if all we do is pop pills to feel better, but also sentimental, reminding us of loved ones we have lost and can only revisit in our memories.

Jake struggles mightily for his sanity. He begins to lose control of the one life he has total dominion over — the one in his mind. And Maggie challenges him to surrender control over his flesh-and-blood life, too, asking him to trust people and become emotionally intimate.

Simon probes deeply into Jake’s independence, and director Jim Colby demands a lot of actor Barton. At times, Barton can seem overwrought, carrying emotions too long in their moments, but he bridges well Jake’s gap between the writer-observer and the life-liver.

Maggie, too, wrestles powerfully with her own emotions, deciding whether she can truly love Jake or must leave his insane world to reclaim her own heart and mind.

Jake must create a vision of his own ideal, controlling the conversation and then surrendering to its momentum. It is then that he sees the potential in human emotion and begins to truly feel with his heart.

When the voices come back, Jake sends them away in favor of real love, a non-ideal, often out-of-control situation in which trust and hard work are required.

Jake’s Women
By Neil Simon. Directed by James Colby. With Hugh J. Barton, Lisa Kristoff, and Amanda Smith. At Studio Theatre of Bath, through Nov. 16. Call (207) 443-2418.

Backstage

• Mad Horse Theater Company has extended the run of The Mercy Seat, its season opener, through November 9. It’s at the Portland Stage Studio Theater. Call (207) 730-2389 for information.

• The Theater Project in Brunswick is having a new-plays festival this weekend, November 7, 8, and 9. First up, November 7 at 7:30 p.m., will be The Bridge, by USM theater teacher Thomas A. Power, about a small-island lawyer who becomes the owner of a large, valuable piece of waterfront property. Next, November 8, at 7:30 p.m., will be Shooting Dreams, also by a USM theater teacher, William Steele, about a deer overpopulation problem on a Maine island. And November 9, at 2 p.m., will be a double-header, Warm Ashes by New Mexico playwright Robert F. Benjamin, a comedic drama about aging and the meaning of life, and H.R. Coursen’s adaptation of Hippolytus by Euripedes. The events are all pay-what-you-can. For reservations, call (207) 729-8584.

Rocky horrors! A young, innocent t-and-a show

Published in the Portland Phoenix

They really should advertise that it’s teenagers prancing around in fishnet stockings, underwear, and lab coats. That would really pack in audiences. But, then again, they’re filling the house without any advertising at all.

A group made up mostly of high school students has been performing a live version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show for a year now in Portland, and will wrap up for the winter on Halloween night.

The live action takes place in front of a movie screen, with actors on stage mimicking movements and lip-syncing the lines. So the show is more about the costumes and the atmosphere than acting per se.

Scott Collard (Riffraff) has a scary bald spot befitting an evil butler; the fishnets are fabulous and the leather omnipresent. Even so, Mia Perron as Janet and Connor Tubbs as Brad Majors are innocents abroad among the Transylvanians, though in a sea of friendly (if weirdly painted) faces.

There are lines to be memorized, but not by the usual suspects. The audience has a part in the show, too, calling out comments on characters, superimposing their lines over the film’s dialogue, and drawing attention to arcane details of the film (as evidenced by one chant as a scene opens: "muscle twitch, muscle twitch!").

This is participatory theater at its finest, and Rocky Horror at perhaps its least scary. Often performed by adult actors who bear too-eerie resemblances to the characters, Rocky Horror can be an eye-opener even for the most cosmopolitan late-night freak-show addicts on "Sexchange Street."

This version is by high school students — the oldest one, Andrew Bossie (Rocky) is 20 — and even college types may be alarmed not at the content, exactly, but who’s shouting about dildos and the odd rim job. It is an R-rated movie, after all, being celebrated and performed by teens.

"Technically, we’re not even supposed to be in the theater," said Knate Higgins, the 16-year-old at the center of the show in his role as organizer, director, and player of Dr. Frankenfurter, a "sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania" who has found a way to create human life for sexual pleasure.

The experience of being at Rocky Horror has a youthful energy and an innocent flavor — if it’s possible to be innocent while repeatedly screaming the words "slut" and "asshole" — that many performances lack.

Usually, the whole show is performed in mimic, but Higgins said that gets "distracting and monotonous." And picking up from past Portland productions of the show, the cast only does some scenes.

"We just take our favorite songs from the movie and we just go up there and do them," Higgins said.

They do keep much of the flavor of traditional Rocky Horror performances, including a "virgin sacrifice" to select the best-costumed audience member and sales of $1 "bags o’ shit" filled with props to throw. (The money goes to help pay for the Gorham High School chorus trip to Disneyland.)

"We have so much fun doing it," Higgins said. Despite the audience attention, "we never get too stressed out because it’s Rocky Horror."

And the audience-participation lines have just as much gusto as ever, though with a few new twists, including references to Osama bin Laden, JonBenet Ramsey, Austin Powers, and the playoff performance of the Red Sox.

Higgins himself gets some good-natured heckling from time to time, but handled it well when I saw him — better than most stage actors, who aren’t exactly used to voices from offstage.

Overall, the expressive acting — somewhat like mime — is excellent, and we can give a pass to Bossie, who has only been with the show a couple of weeks and still takes his movement cues from the screen, unlike the other cast members, who have memorized their parts. The lip-syncing is also excellent, and if the soundtrack broke, they’d speak right up and not miss a single word.

Still, there is an element of seriousness about it. The State Theatre has come calling, asking Higgins to hold the show there in the future, and a student at the SALT Institute is doing a documentary photography project about the cast and the show. And perhaps serious isn’t bad, for a movie that stars Susan Sarandon. (Then again, this movie also stars Meat Loaf as a sax-playing motorcycle rider who becomes an evening meal.)

There is only one real question left: Does Gorham High School’s chorus director wash his hands after counting that money?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Directed by Knate Higgins. With Knate Higgins, Mia Perron, Connor Tubbs, and Andrew Bossie. At the Movies on Exchange, in Portland, Halloween night at 10 p.m. Call (207) 772-9600.

Backstage

• Bob Demers of Open Book Players is the editor of Readers Theatre Digest, which has a new Web site, www.readerstheatredigest.com

• Children’s Theatre of Maine is accepting reservations from high schools that want to bring students to see Romeo and Juliet, January 6 through 25. Tickets are $4 per student, and there are two performances each morning from Tuesday to Friday. Call Jeanne at (207) 878-2774 or email edctm@maine.rr.com

Lord have Mercy: Kyrie eleison, Yarhamuka-llah

Published in the Portland Phoenix

With these words, "kyrie eleison" and "yarhamuka-llah," Christians and Muslims around the world have, for centuries, asked God for mercy. These chants, and others more sinister, were heard around the world after September 11, 2001.

In a modernist Manhattan apartment, Ben (Craig Bowden) sits motionless as the audience enters the Portland Stage Studio Theater. The air is murky — dust pervades the city’s air. In the background, a cell phone rings, sirens blare, police radios crackle, TV news anchors drone. There is no murmur of conversation usually heard when the audience is being seated.

Stunned silent, Ben can’t even hear the ringing cell phone in his hand. He is clearly a man overwhelmed — but by what? So many that day were struck dumb by the calamity; others by its call to address their lives’ main issues. Still others saw a chance to begin anew, to take charge of lives they had previously lived only vicariously, watching themselves from afar.

Invited into the living room of this studio, we watch as two New Yorkers, Ben and Abby (Christine Louise Marshall) adjust to the fact that their lives have been exposed to the sunlight, cast from the shadows of the Twin Towers after the collapse. It is a unique chance.

Many New Yorkers fell further in love with their city after that day; many left forever, seeking safer homes in smaller towns less likely to be targets in the future. People across the country re-evaluated their lives. Some married, others divorced. Children were conceived, jobs quit, careers reoriented. For the briefest moment, it appeared America could be reborn into a new world of unity, compassion, and love.

And then the president spoke to the nation, and echoed Ben’s words in Neil LaBute’s powerful play The Mercy Seat. Nothing changes in America, no matter the disaster, Ben tells Abby. "The American way is to overcome, to conquer, to come out on top. We do that by spending, eating, and screwing our women harder," he says.

This excruciating truth is only the beginning of the revelations, both cultural and personal, unveiled as the Mercy Seat, the Biblical covering of the Ark of the Covenant, is lifted away, showing the truth of what life and love contain. LaBute’s unshrinking gaze takes in a world torn apart by tragedy, and finds the moments of uncertainty, doubt, and opportunity.

He focuses on them, on how they affect the human condition, and inserts his crowbar a little deeper into the closed American heart. Bowden and Marshall — two of Maine’s best actors — are heartbreakingly compelling, playing to perfection their complex roles.

As their characters’ relationship is made clear, and their internal conflicts exposed, the tower of each character is built a story higher. Both actors exert control over the emotions of the audience, creating moments of palpable tension and physical release with the honesty of their acting. The range of emotions through which they move in two hours is exhausting and soul-opening for both actors and audience, eliciting laughter, tears, terror, and joy. Relief is the only one not fully present, and that is by design.

The magnitude of September 11 is amplified by their personal losses and the agonies of their solitary choices. Abby’s character is the voice of playwright LaBute himself, needling, poking, digging into Ben’s deepest soul, scrabbling to open his rocky heart. Initially, he fights it, but gives in eventually, seeming to know this is an opportunity he will never have again.

She names his fears, his options, states clearly the repercussions of choices he would prefer to make by obscure reference or implication. It is an excruciating process, as she forces honesty upon the unwilling Ben, compelling him at every turn to question himself and his motives.

He tries over and over to seize the chance he sees, but truth repels him, and ultimately leads to her fateful request, that he be honest and make the call he was about to make, before the towers were struck. Neither expects the fallout to be what it is, and the audience sits stunned as paired planes of truth crash into the twin towers of Abby and Ben, shaking both to their foundations.

The Mercy Seat
Written by Neil LaBute. Directed by Andrew Sokoloff. With Christine Louise Marshall and Craig Bowden. By Mad Horse Theatre Company, at Portland Stage Studio Theater, through November 2. Call (207) 730-2389.

Backstage

• The new West End Studio Theatre in Portsmouth, NH, will open its first season October 31 with Artists’ Collaborative Theatre of New England performing three short plays about middle-aged women in awkward situations. WEST is the former home of Pontine Movement Theater, which now shares the space with New Hampshire Theater Workshop. Call (603) 926-2281.

• Frank Wicks’ play Soldier, Come Home, based on his great-grandparents’ Civil War letters, played recently in his great-grandparents’ hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It drew over 100 of Wicks’s relatives, as well as a video crew to tape the play for wider distribution. The play is also on sale at www.soldiercomehome.com