Category: Theater

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Racing Across The Prairie To Go “Dancing At Lughnasa” @APT

left to right, Maggie Cramer as Chris, Colleen Madden as Maggie, Laura Rook as Agnes, Tracy Michelle Arnold as Kate, Elizabeth Reese as Rose. Photo courtesy of American Players Theatre. Photos by Liz Lauren. 

Certainly the American Players Theatre has done this before, but not in my memory. But for Dancing At Lughnasa, the back wall of their venerable main stage in The Hill Theater was open so we could view the bit of prairie in the background. And I wondered why until the play started and a number of the Mundy sisters came running and skipping across the prairie to their shared home at mid-set. And this grand entrance sets the scene for ‘girlish’ frolics and fun, even though our sisters are now young adults. Well all but the eldest sister Kate, who is a school teacher and something of the head of household here…and determined to maintain a home and social standing of decorum and etiquette proper to adult women in rural Ireland.

The Mundy’s live in a small cottage just outside of the fictional village of Ballybeg in County Donegal. There are five sisters in all. Kate, the eldest, is a school teacher. Maggie, the uninhibited soul of the clan, is also the one who has taken on the drudgery of keeping the house. Agnes and Rose earn a bit of cash by participating in the local cottage industry of knitting mittens. And Chris is the youngest, and the mother of seven year old Michael Evans. They are also caring for their older bother, Father Jack who has just returned from a 25 year sojourn as a missionary in an African leper colony. He is home to recover from malaria but there seems to be something more as well. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Photo courtesy of American Players Theatre. Photos by Liz Lauren. 

Director Brenda DeVita writes in her notes in the program, “…I have to confess a tiny bit of pride, a satisfaction rests on my chest. I have a lump in my throat. I love my people. They are the people of this play.” Well, she has also put a lump in my throat and they are my people as well. And there should be more than a tiny bit of pride involved…she has assembled an amazing cast from APT’s 2024 ensemble and she has clearly brought them together on stage with a genuine feeling of joy, angst, and love leaving little doubt that this is an actual family that we are seeing here.

Kate. Photo courtesy of American Players Theatre. Photos by Liz Lauren. 

Tracy Michelle Arnold brings us a believable Kate, a school teacher and the eldest sister. She functions as a matriarch of sorts given her role in the community as a school teacher and principal wage earner in the family. Arnold brings to life a bit of her stern nature and sense of Christian devotion but at times easily melts to a softness around her family and particularly Father Jack…well until! And Arnold also clearly depicts Kate’s disquiet around her treatment by the local priest and later her ‘release’ from her teaching duties.

Rose is a bit of a question mark…the most girlish of the sisters in a youthful way…because of apparent developmental issues. Elizabeth Reese portrays her here with all of the ease and joy of the childlike but as quickly shifts to a disquieting and tragic mood when Rose has apparently been taken advantage of my a local man.

Laura Rook’s Agnes is often hard to read at times but Rook provides us with an industrious knitter and yet still a soul that rocks with the family. And she apparently has a bit of a secret interest in the elusive Gerry Evans.

Chris is the youngest but has an older edge because she is raising her son, Michael Evans, her out of wedlock ‘love child’. She helps around the house and watches over Michael, but is still easily distracted by the attentions of Gerry Evans, Michael’s father. Maggie Cramer exudes an incredible energy and joy in life when Gerry is around the house…and as easily becomes moody when he fails to fulfill his promises…because we later learn that he can’t.

And Maggie, dear, sweet, Maggie. Colleen Madden is most often the keystone to any cast that she is in, as she is here. But, she was born to play Maggie Mundy. Madden gives us a Maggie in touch with her soul and is easily expressive of her spirit while quietly, well not always, accepting her role in the household. While working to outdo or overplay her sisters during their intervals of merriment, Madden’s Maggie is also ready to make her point about their reliance on her labors. Even when she wasn’t speaking I couldn’t ignore Madden’s movements about the stage.

James Ridge as Father Jack. Photo courtesy of American Players Theatre. Photos by Liz Lauren. 

And the ‘man’ about the house is Father Jack, returned from Africa to recover from malaria but also surrounded by a bit of mystery. A local hero particularly in the eyes of Kate, if you ignore his time spent as a chaplain in the British Army during World War I, Jack has served as a missionary in a leper colony in Africa. James Ridge is a superb Father Jack, providing the shuffling body of a very ill individual and a man seemingly older than his years. And Ridge presents just the right moments of hesitation as he forces himself to remember his sisters’ names and other common English vocabulary words that he’s forgotten while overseas speaking primarily Swahili. But as his physical control returns and his memory improves, we find the reason for the reticence of the local priest to engage with the Mundy’s. Father Jack has gone native and Ridge excitedly and vigorously acts out and vividly describes the various native ceremonies that he’s committed to memory and explains how ‘we’ used them in Africa.

Maggie Cramer as Chris and Nate Burger as Gerry. Photo courtesy of American Players Theatre. Photos by Liz Lauren. 

And Gerry? I am not sure exactly how to describe him but he is a cad and a romantic one at that. Nate Burger’s portrayal gives us a very active and somewhat suave Welshman who has romanced Chris and fathered Michael. Is being Welsh a foreign enough attraction for small town Irish girls? But he is footloose in a number ways, popping in and out of the Mundy home with a disdainful irregularity. But each appearance brings new hope to Michael and Chris…a hope that will remain unrequited.

Marcus Truschinski as the narrator, Michael Evans. Photo courtesy of American Players Theatre. Photos by Liz Lauren. 

And our last character is Michael Evans, a seven year old boy in August 1936 when these events take place. But the seven year old does not appear in the play…he is spoken to, looked after, spoken of, and searched for…and obviously loved and cherished by the entire household. But the physical Michael Evans is played by Marcus Truschinski. And this Michael is an urbane and well spoken adult who is the narrator here…and Truschinski slowly materialized on stage from the various wings to give us a succinct and telling narration on the backgrounds, causes, and results of the various events that we witness in Ballybeg. This adult Michael is of indeterminate age in the play, but as presented here, clearly a free agent adult.

One last kudo that I think is very important. I would like to thank Adrianne Moore, the Voice and Text Coach, and Director DeVita for providing for the lilt and melody of the Irish accents here without getting so dense as to obscure the dialogue. Clearly hearing and understanding the text here is very important to understanding the story.

I apologize that my APT season was later than normal this year and that there are only a few dates left to see Dancing At Lughnasa: but Ticket Info and Other Info can be accessed here.

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Post #501, Four Years, and I Find Out I Am A Theater Critic!

WOW! Jane Eyre, The Musical, At The Lake Country Playhouse was my 500th Post here on An Intuitive Perspective. WOW! Yeah, I know not all of them are scintillating and insightful commentary on the arts but the Monday Music feature instead…but I hope you are enjoying all of it! And I apparently lost count and missed our 4th Anniversary on March 20, 2024…you do lose track of time when you are having fun. And now, I am a theater critic as well!

So, how did I get here? I retired from my career as a computer programmer in 2018. And back in 2010 I was invited to contribute to someone else’s blog and I enjoyed the writing and comments and such. It was on another topic, not the arts.

And then I had an opportunity to work with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater as part of their Social Media Club. A little social group who were invited by the Rep to attend their performances and then comment on our experiences across social media. And to share and re-share the Rep’s various social media posts. I really took that to heart and wrote some pretty extensive and detailed reports on Facebook that I referred to as a ‘response’. That was a lot of fun and I started doing similar posts around other events.

And then I started to tire of my participation in that other blog but knew that I didn’t necessarily want to stop writing so I started An Intuitive Perspective. And the first thing I did was republish all of my older items from Facebook and then proceed with my new content. And once published, I share the link around a variety of social media including of course Facebook. That’s the bare facts…but how did I become a theater critic?

Well I was writing ‘responses’ to the shows that I was seeing at the Rep and as a long time subscriber at the American Player’s Theatre in Spring Green. And then a dear friend from the Social Media Club, Kimberly Laberge, Artistic Director at Kith & Kin Theatre Collective, invited me out to Hartland to experience the presentation of Cabaret that she was directing at the Lake Country Playhouse. It was an amazing play and an amazing cast and a cozy jewel box theater and I have been invited back again and again and I am in awe of the quality of the plays that they take on and the high level quality of each and every presentations.

And then somehow, I wish I remembered the history here, I also became involved with First Stage, which is a children’s theater in Milwaukee, that presents full blown musicals in the Todd Wehr Theater in the Marcus Performing Arts Center and smaller more serious fare in the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center. The PAC shows blend a cast of adults and young people in shows that will appeal to all ages…and I love them…and I love to watch the reactions of the youngsters in the audience as they experience real theater featuring their peers and their stories. And the other venue generally features the First Stage’s Young Company, high school age actors presenting more complex stories in an in the round black box theater…things like an adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People or Shakespeare’s Henry IV (part 1). I hope that we see many of these young actors playing at our local adult theaters eventually.

And I have been invited to see any number of other small theater groups put on amazing theater in small theater settings that I didn’t even know existed before now. And I am so grateful for the experience.

Now one thing that I regret. I had started an idea to present posts about smaller art museums around the state and mid-west under the title A Place For A Muse. I have only written two so far. I need to do better.

And what is this bit about being a theater critic? Well, as I said I have always labeled my articles and posts about theater as responses because I hadn’t studied theater or criticism directly. So I didn’t feel confident using the term review. But after attending the Lake Country Player’s presentation of A Rock Sails By, and talking with director James Baker Jr and lead actor in Rock (and Artistic Director of LCP ) Sandra Baker-Renick, I was convinced that what I write is in fact a review…and that is what they will be from now on! So I am a theater critic now, I guess!

So thank you to all who visit here and read my scribblings. And thank you to all of the theater people who have adopted me and allowed me to see your marvelous shows and write about them with abandon. It has been a very rewarding four years…and I hope we can continue!!!

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Jane Eyre, The Musical, At The Lake Country Playhouse

I read Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre in eighth grade. I know that I enjoyed it. But that was just over sixty years ago. So at a stratospheric level I have some memory of the story line…but the details have been lost in the mist. So I was eager to see how much of the story would return to me while watching the Lake Country Players present Jane Eyre, The Musical. Or even more in question was, how can a musical present the whole story? Well, my friends, the hardest working stage in the lake country delivered and delivered…and Jane Eyre fans won’t miss out on any of their favorite characters or any of their cherished plot lines!

Paige Lombardi as Young Jane, Emily Keiner as Jane Eyre, and Jaela Landowski as a schoolgirl. Photo courtesy of Lake Country Players, Photographer: Breanne Brennan

Playwrights John Caird (book and lyrics) and Paul Gordon (music and lyrics) have indeed provided us with the complete story of Jane Eyre (yes,yes, I know some small events had to be glossed over or skipped to fit the story into a musical) but they also very wisely maintained the first person feel of the presentation in the grand atmosphere created by Charlotte Bronte in the novel. So many of Jane’s recitations or asides to the audience are spoken by members of the ensemble in rapid succession as we watch Jane assimilate the situation she finds herself in at that particular moment. And yes it is a large and very skilled ensemble playing multiple roles, as 28 actors present the story through 2 acts and 39 songs! And as I mentioned, LCP’s hardest working stage? The actors also completed dozens of set changes that keep our heads spinning and well as Jane’s. Director Breanne Brennan, choreographer Thom Cauley, and stage manager Ashley Williams have created a mystery of fluidity on stage as the story and music proceed apace! At one point I think I saw 25 people on the stage for one of the late play ensemble numbers.

And we have two Jane Eyre’s! Paige Lombardi exhibits the youthful exuberance of a young girl but already has the drive and moxy that the adult Jane is going to need. Particularly moving is her interaction with cousin John Reed and her aunt Mrs. Reed that results in her exile to Lowood Institution. And there are a number of transitional pieces in the musical where she appears with Emily Keiner as our adult Jane that illustrate the bridge from youthful Jane to her full adult self. Keiner owns Jane Eyre here as she makes her own decisions to determine her own life path and she perfectly and demonstrably shifts from love and happiness to the crestfallen woman whose hopes are dashed as the secrets of Thornfield Hall and Mr. Rochester come to light. How Keiner so easily makes these transitions is a talent that I hope we see more of at LCP in coming seasons.

left to right, Erin Sura as Mrs. Fairfax, Emily Keiner as Jane Eyre, and Ezekial N. Drews as Edward Rochester. Photo courtesy of Lake Country Players, Photographer: Breanne Brennan

Ezekial N. Drews is similarly gifted as he portrays Edward Rochester. Drews has a character who runs from intimidating and surly patrician, to a stately and mannered gentleman, to a seductive wooing suitor, and finally a contrite and mild, defeated man…Drews missed nary a step in these various miens and certainly portrayed the Rochester that readers will remember from the novel.

A pure delightful character and lighter space in the musical is Reagan Renner as Adele, the student who Jane is responsible for while governess at Thornfield Hall. Her exuberance and sassy caricature present just the right bit humor at just the right time. Particularly as she mimics Mrs. Fairfax’s animated scolding just out of sight of the other characters on stage.

Erin Sura as Mrs. Fairfax and Emily Keiner as Jane Eyre. Photo courtesy of Lake Country Players, Photographer: Breanne Brennan

And some of the tenderest albeit sad scenes feature Gabriella George as Jane’s best friend, Helen Burns, at Lowood. Her interplay with Lombardi as the young Jane is very very touching and then her death during the Typhus outbreak and Jane’s grieving are particularly touching moments…far more so than some of the adult heartbreak…and George is a major player in the success of these scenes! Another actor who I hope finds a place in future LCP seasons.

And one last bit about the set: LCP often uses visuals projected on the back wall of the stage to set the feeling and locale for each change of scene. Director Brennan certainly put a lot of thought into what was selected here. She created a number of slides that resemble watercolors and drawings that not only tell us we are in an attic or school room or garden…but they are also depicted in a gray and just out of focus manner that clearly tells us that we are in a 19th C. Gothic story.

Paige Lombardi as young Jane and Gabriella George as Helen Burns and in the background, Emily Keiner as Jane Eyre. Photo courtesy of Lake Country Players. Photographer Breanne Brennan.

Jane Eyre, The Musical continues through July 21, 2024 at the Lake Country Playhouse in Hartland WI. Ticket and other information available here. It was sold out at the performance that I attended. RUNTIME: 2 hours, 30 minutes. 15 Minute Intermission.