Whisper House

In all fairness, it must be said that I came into this show unable to stop myself from comparing it to Duncan Sheik's Tony Award-winning smash, Spring Awakening. The die-hard fans of that show may be up in arms against me, but I think that the Old Globe's premier of Sheik's Whisper House was a remarkably better play.

Granted, the two could not be more different (although apparently microphones are a requirement). Spring Awakening was astounding for its power ensemble vocals and visuals. Whisper House is not a musical in that sense; it is more of a play that is interrupted and narrated by two singing ghosts (the only two characters that sing through the entire show) that are haunting a young boy forced to live with his spinster Aunt Lilly in the family lighthouse after his father is killed in World War II.

My biggest disappointment in Spring Awakening was that the beautiful music had no story to accomplish or was lyrically completely irrelevant to the plot. Whisper House has a very tangible story as Aunt Lilly, played brilliantly by Mare Winningham (who was also wonderful in the La Jolla Playhouse's Bonnie and Clyde earlier this year- my apologies for missing the post) must deal with a bratty young nephew as well as the racial tension of WWII against her Japanese worker and love interest.

The ghosts, played by David Poe and Holly Brook, carried off Duncan's pop style flawlessly while clearly enjoying their fiendish antics on stage wandering through the play's action. Their chemistry and harmonies reminded me of the Irish duo The Swell Season. The costumes and set added wonderfully to the eeriness of the piece, although the projections seemed, at times, a bit unnecessary. Visually and vocally, this show is easily the best thing I have seen at the Globe. And you know how I feel about The Grinch...

Dr. Suess' How The Grinch Stole Christmas!

Clearly I have a weakness for excellent musicals geared toward children, and combine that with Dr. Suess? and CHRISTMAS? Safe to say I bought my ticket in advance.

This production of Dr. Suess' How The Grinch Stole Christmas! has been running at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre for twelve successive years, and apparently despite the recession it is continuing as their biggest sell of the year. Balboa Park is gorgeously decorated for Christmas and the newly renovated Plaza in front of The Globe is complete with a Suess- inspired Christmas tree. The stage is set with pieces that look like the iconic drawings just suddenly popped into 3-D.

By far my favorite part of this Christmas tradition (confession: this is the second time I've seen it) is watching the audience full of young families decked out in their holiday finest (bows, poofy dresses, and mini suits) watch the Grinch and the Whos as the story unfolds. They have no reservations about answering the little Whos on stage or shrieking in fear at the terrifying Grinch (played this year by Jeffrey Skowron). My favorite moment happened at the end, after the snow fell out over the audience, when the Whos (and newly Christmas-converted nice guy Grinch) sing their chorus of "Who likes Christmas?" and the little boy in front of me raised his hand as high as he possibly could whispering, "Me! Me!"

Me too, kid. Me too.

Songs For A New World

It's just been a Jason Robert Brown kind of fall for me. His first musical, Songs For A New World, produced by the International City Theatre in Long Beach, was the second I've seen in the last few months, and while it's a completely different animal from Parade, I still left humming.

The stage was mostly bare except for some scaffolding off to one side and a large metal half cross with some cloth draped over the side- I think it was unintentionally channeling an Easter Sunday altar. Pictures of random sights and events hung upstage near a screen that quasi-covered the band. This play has no story and is more of a string of songs that are unrelated dramatically but have a strange musical coherence. The four actors, two men and two women, without exception, had incredible voices and the acting ability to carry an audience for two hours without an overarching story. The shift in characters from song to song was impressive, but not as wonderful as the four part harmonies and chords that they belted out. Each actor had standout moments individually, but my favorite thing about this music are those harmonies and gorgeous group dynamics.

Eclipsed

The West-Coast premier of Eclipsed, Danai Gurira's new play at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, is a gripping and graphic story about five women caught in Liberia's bloody civil war in 2003.

Three women are the "wives" of a rebel commanding officer in a military camp; one of them is a young girl. They are occasionally summoned off-stage to fulfill their sexual obligations to him in return for the safety of the camp and the agreement that the other soldiers will not forcefully take their turns with them. There are no men on stage in this play, it is the story of the women that are forced to survive in a violent war, their lives dictated by the murders and rape of the offstage men. They are given food, clothes, and trinkets from the conquered villages from the general. They receive a book and the girl, the only one among them that can read, regales them with the tale of American "big man" Bill Clinton. Their understandings of what the Bill-Hillary-Monica situation must have meant through the lens of their own "marital" situation is a great moment.

Even with moments of humor, the play is gut-wrenchingly tragic. A former wife-turned soldier convinces the girl that she can control her own fate with a gun and never let a man rape her again. Attracted by the idea of such freedom, the girl joins the army only to find herself holding other young girls at gun-point so that other soldiers can rape them instead. The question of "it's them or me" takes on gruesome, horrific weight. Meanwhile, a woman peacemaker has entered the wives' camp and is using her education and loss of her own daughter to rebel soldiers to try to inspire the wives to leave camp, as the war will soon be over.

With no education or skill set, the women are unsure of what to do: All they know is a life of violence and survival. The haunting question of how to move forward leaves the women, and the audience, at a loss. Not exactly the feel-good hit of the season, Eclipsed is a beautiful, challenging play about the resilience of women and the frailty of hope in war-torn countries.

Parade

I have been waiting for this production of Parade to come to the Mark Taper Forum for over a year, and so with my expectation set so high I was a little concerned I might come away disappointed. I shouldn't have worried.

Set in 1913 Atlanta, Georgia, a young girl is tragically murdered during the Confederate Memorial Day parade in the pencil factory in which she works, and her Jewish, Yankee boss is accused and convicted without much of a trial. The town is in a frenzy reminiscent of The Crucible and wild anti-Semitic tales come out of unreliable sources, creating a tension and distortion of the truth that brings about more heartbreak and destruction.

T.R. Knight, of Grey's Anatomy fame, plays Leo Frank, the man accused of murder, with perfect meticulous, controlling tics required for the often-cold, displaced Brooklyn Jew. His wonderful speech patterns conveyed his change from a distant, difficult husband to a loving and appreciative one. His wife Lucille, played by original London Donmar cast member Lara Pulver, has an effortless, beautiful voice that also shapes her journey from a meek and lonely housewife to a powerful woman determined to seek justice for her husband at all costs. The entire ensemble was great at playing multiple characters, but one standout actor was David St. Louis, whose physical and vocal power on stage left the audience in awe.

Tony-award winning composer Jason Robert Brown was in the audience the night that I saw the show, and it was so fun to watch him watch his own work. He was mouthing the words and conducting from his own score from his seat, and absolutely beamed whenever the audience laughed at his words. The visual appeal of this show was outstanding: There was a tattered old gray painting of a Confederate scene hanging over the factory, which at times was lit to restore its full color, or even evoke other images altogether.

If you can get to downtown Los Angeles before November 15th, go see this beautiful show. The Mark Taper Forum is a part of Center Theatre Group and so has the Hot Tix program, where every performance has tickets available for $20. Definitely worth it for this story.

August: Osage County

With more incest, deception, abuse, and dysfunction than a Greek tragedy, August: Osage County is not your typical family drama. Tracy Letts' Pulitzer-winning, three-hour-plus saga is intricately written, exhaustingly well-acted, and stomach-wrenching to watch.

At 82, Academy Award winner Estelle Parsons blew all pastoral images of a Great Plains family matriarch out the window with her abrasive, pill-addicted character. Her poet husband has just walked out the door and into the lake, causing her three daughters and other assorted family members to come home for his funeral in a cloud of old hurts and confusion. A family this dysfunctional trapped in one house is a ticking time bomb, and with each lie that unravels, no one escapes unscathed: adultery, child abuse, addiction, incest, and general cruelty.

The howlings and shrieks of a family in pain, with the ramblings of the oft-high mother, made the show a bit hard to hear and understand at times, but it did add a distinct sense of mass confusion. Shannon Cochran, as eldest daughter Barbara, matched Parsons in sheer power on stage, as she slowly grew into a slightly younger but equally cruel version of her mother. The feeling of entrapment in their Great Plains home is palpable, and the play ends with no more hope than when it began. Unlike the Greek tragedies where someone usually repents after the bloodshed, the family of August: Osage County is left with nothing but their own wreckage with which to try to salvage any kind of life.

DISCOVER LOVE

The Belarus Free Theatre is an underground theatre in Minsk. Because they are not approved by the Belarusian Committee of Culture, their performances are illegal and must be performed in secret locations that their audience members discover when they call a special phone number hours before to prevent being caught by the police. Even with such precautions, the actors and company have been arrested and have been black-listed from state-approved jobs.

Their performance of DISCOVER LOVE at the University of San Diego's Institute for Peace and Justice was a part of their international tour to promote awareness of their little-discussed home country, which they say is the last dictatorship in Europe. Three actors and an almost bare stage tell the true story of Irina and her husband Anatoli in Russian with English supertitles on a screen, which sometimes featured video projections. Anna Solomianskaya plays Irina from childhood into a young woman who meets, falls passionately in love with, and marries a dynamic and uniquely intelligent man. The portrait of their marriage as they struggle to make ends meet in poverty-stricken Minsk while caring for their two young daughters is searingly truthful and beautiful. After years of exhausting work, the two somehow manage to become successful enough to live comfortably. Anatoli is passionate about helping others achieve similar success, and just as the pair begins to discover their love all over again, one night Anatoli does not come home.

Irina frantically searches for her husband, praying that there was some sort of accident that prevented him from calling home. The police raid their home before she even has a chance to report him missing, saying she might be the culprit. Soon they find pieces of his car and the true story unravels: Anatoli and his friend were attacked in his car, dragged into the forrest, beaten, and shot in the back of the head by government forces as a result of their public support for a democratic Belarus. Irina is reeling with heartache and despair as she realizes that he was a victim of a "forced disappearance," a common fate for anyone who opposes the Belarusian government: Men simply don't come home. Sometimes their bodies are found, like Anatoli's, and sometimes they are not.

But as tragic as the story is, it is not about Belarusian politics. It is completely and absolutely about the incredible love between two people and its power. Anatoli allowed Irina to discover love. After the performance, co-writer and director Nikolai Khalezin said that people who see the show as a political play have missed the point: "It is not a political play. It is a love story that is interrupted by politics." Someone in the audience asked Solomianskaya, who played, Irina, how she conjured such an emotional and powerful performance from someone else's story every night. She recounted watching the real Irina watch DISCOVER LOVE from the audience, and replied, "There is no story that doesn't belong to you. If you can imagine even for a moment that that could happen to you... how can someone have such strength?"

The Belarus Free Theatre has no home, no money, and no support in Minsk. Yet DISCOVER LOVE is one of the most beautiful love stories and powerful artistic performances I have ever seen. The passion, wit, and intelligence of this group, coupled with incredible talent and bravery is one of the most inspiring examples of theatre as a vehicle for the human experience.