Let South Jersey Theatre Rise

The Right Things To Do, Part 1:  Know Thyself

I began reviewing South Jersey theatre only a short while ago. But it doesn’t take long for a dispassionate but friendly eye to spot odd places of timidity, rigidity, confusion and inelegance. This is particularly true since these things do not show up on the stages so much as in the houses of the companies I review. Except for a precious few, they are universally ill-attended. That’s fact number one.

Fact two: where is The McCarter Theatre?

The McCarter, in Princeton, is the single, most active regional theatre in the United States. It is the grand dame of  central-south Jersey theatres with a soaring proscenium, traps, flies and a lighting grid which makes the heavens jealous on cloudy nights. It has a full, elegant staff of first-rate talent in every aspect of the craft. It presents, all in all, the best argument it is possible to make for the value of live theatre.

And I got lost getting there. Less than a mile from the door, we stop  at a pizza place. Excuse me, The McCarter Theatre? Blank stares, a shrug and gone.

Down the street, a gas station. Again, excuse me, The McCarter?

“That’s that movie theater, right?”

I was taken aback. So close to this national treasure and the people working around it have never heard of it. This represents a disjuncture between art and life which I find painful. I fully expected everyone living and working around McCarter to know at least what it was if not how to find it. Even the pizza drivers drew a blank? That’s absurd. And that’s fact number two.

Knowing that you live near arguably the best American theatre would be a great point of pride in a rational world. That it’s not speaks barrel loads, and those barrels are not full of fine wine.

How come they don’t know? Why doesn’t the level of McCarter match more broadly with the level of  daily life?  We can take a guess that the superlative nature of McCarter’s fare puts it off the common radar. But that answer is not completely satisfying. And it begs the question, if they’re not aware of it for its artistic accomplishments, how about just because it’s famous? is all theatre too fine to be reckoned in the common field of notice?

Not at all. Staples clerks, school secretaries, even pizza drivers are the stuff of which community theatre is built. Community theatre is folk art of the highest sort. It is well within the notice of folks in pizza parlors and gas stations.

And yet we have Collingswood, NJ, a town with a fabulous theatre, an arts center, galleries and bistros. A lot of artistic stuff happens in Collingswood. Now, scoot along Haddon Avenue in Collingswood on a breezy, summer’s day and ask folks at random if there isn’t a community theatre around there somewhere. In fact, there are two. But if you find one person in ten who knows that’s true and, of those ones in tens, one in ten who can name one of the two theatre companies, you’ll have done better than I did.

This unnatural chasm between great art and real life is rationally preposterous. All arts, particularly theatre, grow from things every human does as a child.

What does an actor do? An actor stands in front of witnesses and says things with great conviction which could not possibly be true. Acting is the art form of lying. If that sounds harsh, think “fibbing”.

What is a fort made of sofa cushions other than a stage set? And the little one inside calling out, “I’m a soldier, Mommy!” is an actor developing his craft. You clearly make out her vocal characterizations and interpretations as the show goes on.

The skills of the art are so innately bound with human development and growth and yet the art itself is so oddly ripped away from it. This makes my brain hurt.

But an idea came to me as I pondered facts one and two. Who is in the best position to repair this injury to our cultural psyche? Community theatre is! The big theatres try, but there aren’t enough of them. There are a whole lot of community theatres, and they’re all over the place!

I hear the groan building even before anyone has read this. It’s the over-worked core groups of community theatres telling me they will snap if they’re given more work than is already on their plates. Not to worry. This is intended to relieve exactly that stress by working together and doing a couple of fun, gutsy things.

There’s a stopper, of course, or this would have been done long ago. I don’t exactly know what’s in the way, but I have a message for the South Jersey theatre community to understand with perfect clarity:

You are a very, very talented group of people.

I have seen you on stage. I have seen others on stage. I have reviewed you. I have reviewed professional theatre. You are not professional theatres. But there is not a single performance I have seen where there has not been sufficient talent, if not training and production values, to fill any stage anywhere.

The industry as a whole seems to believe that it benefits from the interesting assertion that talent is a rare commodity and, therefore, valuable in a free market sense.  So there are places where all the “real talent” gathers and flexes itself. And then there is Everywhere-Else. We in Everywhere-Else must rightly pay the real talent great sums of money to flex for us because, without them, we have nothing to inspire us.

Okay, two thing: first, this myth of the scarcity of talent is complete rubbish, and, second, it does not benefit the art or the industry in any but a very unimaginative, short-sighted way. In the end, it leads to the cultural schizophrenia we have now. Talent is not a rare commodity. It is a human birthright. To say it is rare is to lie. Ah, theatre!

So I start here: you folks in community theatre don’t know how talented you are. If you knew how talented you are, if you knew how good your product is, none of this would be a problem. Why do I think that?

Because if you knew yourselves to be as talented as I, having seen you on stage, know you to be, you would be beating brass drums down the streets of your towns getting notice. You would be unable to be less proud of your products than that. You are that damned good.

So I challenge South Jersey community theatres: meet with me. Let’s figure a place to get together on Saturday, January 7, have a cup of tea and chat about a common strategy.  I’ve heard a number of strong ideas on my rounds, and I’m certain there are more amongst such a creative group. Let’s raise public awareness of theatre to the point where every adult in South Jersey will know the name of her/his own community theatre group and everyone on two legs within ten miles of Princeton will at least be able to point with pride in the direction to The McCarter, acknowledging the cultural high ground that it is.

On the way, together, we can accomplish the 4 Cheeks Project: four cheeks for every seat of every house of every performance of every community theatre production playing in South Jersey. I’m tired of sitting alone in the dark. Let’s get me some company watching your very good work. 

Where shall we meet? Let me hear from you.

Terry Stern

sjreviewer@yahoo.com  

(856) 240-0890

At McCarter Theatre in Princeton

A Christmas Carol: Why Live Theatre Will Never Cease

If there is a single story in the English language which embodies today’s heart of Christmas, it is A Christmas Carol. Begun as a political pamphlet about the plight of poor children in early 1843, Dickens withheld its publication, revised it, and published it later in the year under its present title.

It was written at a time when the Christmas tree and card were first being introduced to English culture. The story, in its many incarnations and iterations, is credited with bringing joy and song back to the celebration of the holiday after a period of somber sobriety and keeping it there for over 150 years unto the present day.

Nearly everyone I know, Christian or not, was raised on this beautiful, early Victorian cautionary tale. So, Charles Dickens and Alastair Sim notwithstanding, A Christmas Carol is definitely an American classic.

It is most fitting, then, that it should be staged with such elegantly magical depth, grit and splash by the crown jewel of New Jersey theatres, The McCarter Theatre of Princeton. Venerable and rightfully venerated, the McCarter is the  Everest of regional theatres and has been nearly since its opening in 1930.

Endowed with a proud history and a technical staff of 30, there is no end to the riveting beauty, clarity and delight of the stage pictures it presents in its productions, particularly this one. Wigglingly exciting images, sounds and animations from the hair-raising door knocker to the blaze of the flaming headstone with a  giant, eerily animated puppet of death filling a quarter of the stage from floor to proscenium arch directing the climax. The spectacle dazzles earnestly and seamlessly from start to finish in a manner most satisfyingly matched by the performances it supports.

Graeme Malcome gives us a twisted wick of a Scrooge, hauntingly gaunt, crabby and spare atop the mountain of his success, presented in a towering, unsettlingly off-center set by designer Ming Cho Lee. Mr. Malome rants, snarls and forcefully fulfills the deliciously evil character we hate so much it makes us laugh.

Agile and with fine timing and form, he makes an entrance you do not want to miss to open the second act. You may wish to avert your gaze if you are acrophobic, but you will be yanking on the sleeve of the person sitting next to you demanding to know what’s going on. His is the show’s deep, steady anchor.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is styled by Ronica Reddick with the quirky flair of  a slightly over-caffeinated interior designer insouciantly arranging and rearranging a room. Except her room is Scrooge. She bears a twinkling, sprinkling, chiming wand and gleefully wreaks havoc on Scrooge’s equilibrium, not to mention the audience’s. She is an elegant, comic delight.

Piper Goodeye and Michele Tauber, two most versatile actresses playing multiple supporting parts, most notably and hysterically as Mrs. Bonds and Mrs. Stocks, the two solicitresses who come seeking respite for the poor at this season of the year. As their names so clearly attest, one cannot do without the other. They fill in each other’s words and finish each other’s sentences, bustling about like fairy godmothers who’ve had more than the recommended amount of cocoa for one day.  

The young actors in this performance delight and amaze. Danny Hallowell gives us a Peter Cratchit which embodies the yeoman’s spirit of optimistic youth, taking the stage as if mastering a mountain peak and crying out gleefully in triumph to us below. Matthew Kuene is a wonderful, harried delivery boy straining under a burden which looks nearly as large as he is and drawing strong laughs with his impatience at the unbelieving fools looking their gift horse in the mouth.

Which brings us to the ghosts of Christmas past. This role is brilliantly given to Annika Goldman, Kate Fahey and Samantha Johnson, three young actors who show stamina and talent, dancing, leaping, and laughing in innocent enjoyment of their spirit selves and who provide the perfect, non-threatening bridge to introduce Scrooge to the spirit world.

The cast deserves more praise than I can give here. The Cratchits and Fezziwigs deserve mention, the char woman, laundress and undertaker demand a word as does Old Joe, There is no one I would omit from a fair review with unlimited space and a readership of infinite patience. But I would like to cite the director, Michael Unger. 

This is Mr. Unger’s 14^th year directing the McCarter’s holiday offering, and the vision he brings to the stage carves its own, spacious niche amongst the myriad of productions, performances and renditions of this story. At once comfortingly familiar and surprisingly its own, Mr. Unger’s offering is as sweet as they ever come. Thank you so much, Mr. Unger, not only for this tasty, Christmas treat, but for giving us an incontrovertible argument proving live theatre will never die. It provides spectacle more amazing than movies and more intelligent than circuses.

 I would encourage everyone to get to see this blazing spectacle of hope and transformation. It will not be the cheapest ticket you ever bought, but it will be the most wisely-spent money you ever laid down for a seat.

And that would do it except for a final observation. This is some of the best, full-range theatre appearing on any stage anywhere in the world. Yet, when we got a bit turned round on our way there and stopped to ask less than a mile from the curtain, no one had any idea what we were talking about. “Is that a movie theater,” asked one?

Places like The McCarter gamely address this painful disjuncture between art and daily life, collecting for local charities and food banks at the end of the performance. But they are not nearly enough. It will take a full-blown, cooperative effort on the part of the theatre world, community theatre in particular, to make a dent. Community theatre must not be timid in leading the way on this.   

Take this in the joyous and grateful spirit in which it is offered: I saw a beautiful confluence of experienced craft, honed talent, elegant space and first-rate equipment, materials and supplies on the McCarter stage. It is an assemblage which cannot easily be elsewhere matched.

But there are a number of actors I’ve seen on smaller, less elegant community stages whose talents would fill out a production such as this quite nicely. And this does not in the least diminish the respect and high regard in which I hold the fine actors at McCarter. I saw huge talent there, and I saw no talent I haven’t seen matched many times on community stages.

Training isn’t cheap, and the courage to trust in your own talent is hard to come by. But talent is universal. We’ve got it, every one. Let’s join with excellent theatres like The McCarter to get theatre rooted into real life. Everyone within ten miles of the place should know exactly where it is and what fine things take place there.

My reviews are written for Stage Magazine, a primary live theatre resource for the Delaware Valley. It is a useful and attractive site. Click here totake a look.

You may also be interested in reading some of my other reviews which have appeared in Stage. Click here toread some.

This two-part series on theatre for young children in Camden also appeared in Stage. People tell me the second one made them cry. Click here and get a hankie.

STAGES at Camden County College

School for Wives: rip-snorting classical hoot!

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was a very funny man. Living a short but  successful life from January 15, 1622 to February 17, 1673, we know him better by his pen name, Moliere. School for Wives was his 1662 return to a theme which had won him great favor the previous year with his School for Husbands: the folly of jealousy in love.

Moliere’s comedy is strongly influenced by his great love of commedia dell’arte,  the late Italian Renaissance comic theatre style. He is a master of comic types. Arnolphe is the pompous middle-aged fool so wrapped up in his own peculiar logic that he is totally bewildered when his contrivances unravel as they collide with the real world.

Stephen Bonnell gives us a classic old fool with a twist: he steps tantalizingly close to cattiness. This allows him a pleasing pantheon of sneers with which to delight us as the plot unfolds. There is his lovely smug sneer, his warm-beer bewildered sneer, and his liver-and-marshmallows defeated sneer to name but a few. He has choral sneers with his friend, Chrysalde. Thank you, Mr. Bonnell, for a fine anchor to this furiously funny production.

Agnes is the sweet young thing. Played to a grand comic shine by Melissa Rittman, she snaps across the stage with energetic, bawdy innocence. Sheltered from an early age by her guardian, Arnolphe, she has been purposely kept in total ignorance of anything not related to the cloistered, distaff existence  he has planned for her. Ms. Rittmann is a perfect Penelope Trueheart, the ripe peach striving to stay on the tree as she’s told but yearning for the picker’s pluck and not willing to wait, no matter what they said at the convent.

In steps Horace, given to us as the perfect youth by Ian Taylor. Heroically smiling in confident self-satisfaction, Mr. Taylor gives us a Horace who is always nobly running somewhere. At first sight, Horace and Agnes are in love and undergo great pains to be together, none of which you want to miss. You certainly do not want to miss Mr. Taylor’s dying twice for love. He was not the only one on the floor at that point. Half the audience was there, too, holding our sides. The other half was laughing too hard to fall down.

Filling out the farce are the rascally servants, Alain and Georgette, played by Tim Rinehart and Maria Panvini like a top-billed Vaudeville comedy team. Rinehart & Panvini give us comic timing like championship mixed doubles, knocking their play about with total commitment to every whacky choice they make.

And then there are more minor characters like Chrysalde, Arnolphe’s long-time friend who warns the jealous guardian against his folly. Chryslde is given to us with snide urbanity by Tim Rinehart.

Tim Rinehart? The one who is fabulous as Alain? Yes, he doubles as Chrysalde and plays such distinct characters that the only clue there was to his double role was that Chrysalde was wearing knee pads but was doing no falling. Then I realized that Alain and Chrysalde were of very similar build. Then I checked the program.

Mr. Bonnell and Mr. Rinehart are at their sneering, condescending  best in their common scenes, bouncing the subject of cuckoldry back and forth like a tired mouse just wishing for the end already. Boastful condescension abounds in elegant sufficiency. These two elevate the sneer to the art it was always meant to be.

The actors not mentioned by name here are omitted for want of space, not praiseworthy performances. Each deserves a paragraph. The entire cast is to be roundly appreciated for its fine comic timing, its ability to play physical comedy and its mastery of classic French comic style, flowing, posing and mugging about the set in full extension. Vocal and physical interpretations are energetic, whimsically stylized and comically insouciant.

And many, many thanks for the ability to render a play written in rhymed couplets as something other than a series of literary speed bumps. Rhyme is harder to play than you might think, and all of them can play it.

The set is beautiful, simple and versatile. The costumes show marvelous detail. Sets and costumes are stand-outs, but, happily, are combined with such stand-out performances and staging that, well, they don't. Stand out. They support the motion and build of the play seamlessly and with eminent skill.

It is not a perfect production. Opening night takes its toll in glitches and lines suddenly just a little beyond memory’s reach. And the acoustics are slightly hot in the theatre. There’s an echo which actually makes it harder to understand an actor the more he or she projects and enunciates. For those reasons, I might have missed a major plot point regarding Arnolphe’s double identity had I not known it was coming.

And for those reasons, the production takes a single strike, by which I mean that the unmitigated appreciation and enjoyment the director, cast and crew deserved for their fine work was dulled one strike’s worth by an audience sometimes not fully at ease and wondering if everything were going right.

But I can guarantee that by the time you see it, most of these things will have worked their way out. You will see a better performance than I did, and I’d see this one again any time. This production makes classic French farce an accessible commodity and gives the belly quite a workout. Do not see this show if you’re trying to stay angry. But if you’re not, get down to Lincoln Hall and see this remarkable fulfillment of comic vision.

Moliere’s death is as legendary as his plays. Having contracted what was likely tuberculosis in his younger years, he was, ironically, playing in The Imaginary Invalid at the age of 52 when he collapsed in a fit of bloody coughing on the stage. Recovering, he insisted upon finishing the performance. When curtain rang down, he collapsed in another fit, went into a coma and never regained consciousness. Not quite comic, but definitely an actor’s exit.

School for Wives, many say, was his finest. Stages at Camden County College struts it proudly , sneering and wooing us with promise of precision into elegantly riotous and most welcome satisfaction. It is an intimate theatre. See the show. Buy tickets in advance.

My reviews are written for Stage Magazine, a primary resource for the Delaware Valley theatre community. Click here to Take a look at the Stage Magazine web site.


If you enjoyed this review, you may like to see my other work in Stage. Click here to take a look.


This link is to a series of two articles about theatre and social change covering performances of children's theatre for young students in five Camden schools. People tell me the second article made them cry. Click here to read them.