Guffaws in the Mezzenine At the Kelsey

Laughter on the 23^rd Floor: The funniest tragedy you’ll ever choke on with laughter

This play provides a sparkling dilemma. Comedy has a very clear structure. The world of the play begins out of joint: the jealous husband suspects the faithful wife, the stubborn father has come under the influence of a charlatan trickster. Something is wrong with the way things are. This leads to chicanery which leads to everything coming out right in the end. That’s a comedy.

That’s were Laughter on the 23^rd Floor challenges us. It’s by Neil Simon. It’s based on his stint as a writer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour in the 1950s. The word “laughter” is in the title. And it is not a comedy.

I mention this at the top because about five minutes into the play, a small, unhappy voice behind us whispered, “Mommy, I’m bored.” Ten minutes later, a mother and two children under 12 left.

There are many, many fine, raucously funny moments in the play which are realized to full effect by the strong cast of this complex offering. The play, however, is a classical tragedy. A heroic figure with a tragic flaw makes a mistake of hubris and is humbled, evoking our pity and terror. That is the structure of this play. It just happens to be about comedy.

And, like all good classical art, it offers us instruction and delight. In fact, the delight is the instruction. We laugh until our dorsals beg for kindness or at least liniment. Joseph Perignat, as Max Prince, the character loosely based on Sid Caesar, gives us a saw-voiced, larger-than-life, nobly bewildered god of a man who turns every scrap of pain and confusion he feels into chokingly funny stuff. His pain is our delight. That is the lesson.

Mr. Perignat and Mark Swift, as Lucas Brickman, the first-person voice of the play, give new meaning to the word “awkward” as they face each other, established star and neophyte writer, alone for the first time together in the writers’ room. Their embarrassed chuckling equals the audience’s paroxysms of mirth so intense as to be chiropractic at times .

Brett Molotsky as Brian Doyle and John Pinto as Ira Stone burn up the stage individually. Mr. Molotsky’s revelation of the exact nature and location of the script he’s just sold to Hollywood leaves us gasping. And Mr. Pinto’s entrances with a growing series of dire illnesses from which he suffers puts us on the floor.

But together they create a bonfire of the insanities. When the scene is between the two of them, they are at each other like roosters in rut, which leaves us guffawed breathless and amazed. The two actors are showing us animus in character as real as any tragedy could ever hope for, and we’re laughing so loudly we almost can’t hear them. The whole play is built of sweetly ironic moments like that.

Each character has a distinct style, and each character has a deep pain covered by using that style to evoke the laughter of others before the pain becomes too real. Carol Wyman, given to us with fabulous physicality by Alana Caraccio, is a ground-breaking feminist before the concept was born. Her demon is the need to prove herself by standing as an equal in a room full of raunchy men.

Ms. Caraccioith plays with wonderfully physical comic invention. You don’t want to miss her painful, pregnant waddle or her attempt to help prevent Max Prince from strangling Ira Stone. That stage picture in itself is worth the price of admission.

In fact, that moment gives us the entire metaphor of the play in a single picture. Stone is sprawled across the ottoman squawking. But he’s not really in distress. Prince is on top of him with hands around Stone’s neck. But he’s not really throttling. The rest of the writers have arrayed themselves around in a perfect stage dispersal, taking positions of intervention. But they’re not really intervening. There’s nothing dangerous going on.

These are people who are constantly playing to an imaginary audience. When something occurs, they don’t respond directly to it as much as quickly figure what the comic potential of the moment is and what their character ought to be doing in it and where. Then they take their places in the constant skit of their lives.

Prince isn’t choking Stone. He’s presenting a comic representation of the rage he feels for the audience all the characters on stage imagine is watching them constantly. The writers are completing the stage picture for that audience. And we, the actual audience, are the irony. We are watching them. There’s a shimmering, precious quality to moments like those. And this production has an elegant sufficiency of them.

It is not a perfect production. It runs 25 minutes too long. The first act drags until Stone enters.

And I need to tell Mr. Swift a thing which I hope he takes in the spirit of kindness with which it is offered. Your intentions are clear. Your physicality is fine. Your comic timing is there. But I only understood every second or third word you spoke. Your diction is awful. If you did not have the talent to be on that stage, I would not trouble to point this out. Practice your speech and you will tear up the stage with this role.

The play presents the story of a family which has made function of dysfunction. Carping, jibing, wrestling, fighting, and loving like any dysfunctional family, they turn their pain into award-winning, top-rated comic entertainment.

And as we leave the theatre, we realize that we’ve just had rollicking, if muscularly difficult, fun at the expense of a man of genius who destroys himself on the horns of his own talent and the roomful of injured misfits powerless to help him to salvation. That is the point of the play. It is an exploration of the relationship between comedy and pain. It is an instruction devoutly to be wished. See it at the Kelsey. Don’t bring your children.

Laughter on the 23^rd Floor

By Neil Simon

Directed by John M. Maurer

Onstage Productions

At the Kelsey Theatre

1200 Old Trenton Rd

West Windsor, NJ 08550

609-570-3333

http://www.kelseyatmccc.org/  

Through February 5, 2012

All my reviews are written for Stage Magazine, the Delaware Valley’s longest operating full resource for people wanting to know about theatre at all levels, novice patron to seasoned professional.

If you liked this review, please take a look at my other work on Stage. 

Pure Fun at BCF Playhouse!

The Wedding Singer: a play for the sentimental heart  joyfully realized

 

 

This is a play for the sentimental heart. Forgive contrivance, forget the cynic in you, It is pure joy! And BFC brings it home with clout.

 

This is the 2006 stage adaptation of the 1998 film. It is romantic comedy for the sheer fun of it. With a few, small changes—e.g. Billy Idol appears in the film as an integral part of the plot. Obviously impractical to have Billy Idol in every production of the show world-wide, there is a funny adaptation solving the problem—the show flows along the same plot line as the film but now dressed in lovely songs which often have lyrics so comically puerile as to be delightfully pleasing.

 

The style of the film is duplicated, if blended a bit more smoothly, in the stage version. And the stage version gives us belly-bounding production numbers like “Not That Kind of Thing” which kept my companion and me giggling throughout when we weren’t guffawing. In this show, even depression has us laughing. Actually, depression has us particularly chortling and gasping now I come to think of it.

 

This is the story of the battle between the romantic and the material worlds. Robbie Hart, the title character, is the perfect romantic schlub, in love with love, happy and friendly and without the moral perversity required to make millions selling junk bonds. Played strongly by Sean Flaherty, when he tries to get into the money game, he looks hilariously awkward and out of place in a tie and jacket which give him the appearance of a present prepared by a drunken gift wrapper at the Goodwill. And Mr. Flaherty’s first-act “Somebody Kill Me” is one of many tickle-ribbed highlights in this soft romp.

 

Sammy and George are Robbie’s best friends and band mates. Gifted to us in spirited craft by Anthony Magnotta and Connor Twigg, these two are a grand pair of side-kicks. Mr. Magnotta is  a sweetheart of a street punk, and Mr. Twigg flames and lights up the stage. Both show strong voices, strong choices and strong commitments to what they did. And both provided solo and ensemble moments of brightness to this production. I thank them for excellent supporting performances.

 

It would not be a romance without a female lead, and Robyn Hecht is a grand Julia Sullivan.   Evocative of Drew Barrymore’s original, Ms. Hecht has a truly fine performance voice and presence, with excellent comic timing and intent to match. She and Mr. Flaherty cut it up royally in “Not That Kind of Thing” near the end of the first act. With playfully comic banter at once endearing and believable, they reveal their budding love for each other, and it is warmingly funny.

 

Julia is the erstwhile fiancé of a sexist jerk Glen Guglia (goo-li-ya), played with mean-spirited, jock-headed self-centeredness by Ryan Ketner, who sparkles in his homage to greed, “All About the Green”. But the future, painfully named Julia Guglia’s heart belongs to Robbie.

 

She discovers this with the help of her best friend and cousin, Holly, given to us in a stand-out performance by Danielle Harley. Ms. Harley’s brassy, slutty Holly is everything the play calls for. From rocking us in “Pop” to touching us with “Right In Front of Your Eyes” Ms. Harley gives us a Holly with flash and grit. Thank you, Ms. Harley. for your performance. It was a pleasure to see you and I hope to see you again.

 

But I admit that the dark-horse star of the show was Jillian Starr-Renbjor as Rosie, Robbie’s grandmother. As a grandmother, Ms. Starr-Renbjor bears a striking resemblance to one of the Disney fairy godmothers, which is why it stops the show when she busts a rap with Mr. Twigg’s George in “Move That Thang” near the end of the play. As a duo, they are a flat-out riot, dancing with unabashed dedication and, well, shaking those grand "thangs" of theirs. They deservedly got cheers, whistles and applause.  

 

Community theatre requires a great deal of multitasking and inventiveness to cover shortfalls in skills and people to employ them. Sarah Dugan both directed and choreographed the show, which would have been to her credit had she done both merely adequately. But her staging is fluid and clear. Her choreography is energetic and diverse, faint praise were she a dancer. Her training,  I believe, is  cheer-leading. That’s talent.

 

This was not a perfect production:  My seat house right in the first row was fabulous for everything but the grand production numbers. In the case where the stage floor was full  of dancers, my vantage gave me a lot of legs but not the full impact of the group motion. A suggestion I pass on is to thin the dancers: put some of them on the upper level so that there aren’t so many of them dancing together on the main stage floor.

 

And the one place I was nervous was “Grow Old Together With You” because Mr. Flaherty is not a guitar player. I was distracted from the endearing, childlike tenderness of the song by the unintended clumsiness of the guitar accompaniment. I say give the guitar to someone onstage who plays, or lose it altogether.

 

But these imperfections do not count for much in the overall.  The show is a rollicking celebration of romance over the merely crass and materialistic. If you do not like the engaging joy of well-rendered, pure entertainment, don’t go near Burlington County Footlighters’ stage for another couple of weeks. If, however, you like getting a big entertainment bang for your buck and coming out of a theatre in an excellent mood, this is the place.

 

I add a personal response to properties like Wedding Singer because I was taken aback while preparing to write this review. I read Ben Brantley’s 2006 New York Times  review. Mr. Brantley wrote:

 

. . .the show has at least a flutter of a hedonist's pulse. And if its formulaic catering to an established public appetite feels cynical, the cast members exude earnestness and good nature. They are a personable enough lot, which is not the same as saying that they have personality. . .

 

Mr. Brantley expresses a point of view with which I take exception because it represents the manner in which a whole segment of theatre has ripped itself away from the body of daily life. He is correct that this property gives no new perspective on love or relationships or comedy or music or anything. Why is it supposed to?

 

The genre of the insouciant entertainment piece is important to theatre which wishes to expand its patron base.  Mr. Bentley’s elitist disdain for producing simple, glorious entertainments is a snobbish quibble necessary to feed a system of arts dependent upon patronage. It is a disaster for a system of arts which depends on the general public.

 

Theatre truly wishing to grow its roots into the community in which it is planted needs to perform these entertainments to bring more people in. This is not Machiavellian or narrowly self-serving. The tasks of art are to instruct and delight. The new audiences are theatre children. Just as you do not teach traffic safety to a 3-year-old by showing her graphic pictures of children mauled by cars, you don’t develop audience sophistication by asking them to see what they can’t enjoy. All we develop with that tactic is dust on our seats.

 

Start with the popular and move from there. In ten years no theatre company will be afraid of having its patron base packed. There’s plenty of room on the 2022 schedule to scare the cultural pants off them with the cutting edge piece you like better. The thing is, once they become used to it, they will like it better, too.

 

The Wedding Singer

Book by Chad Beguelin and Tim Herlihy

Music by Matthew Sklar

Lyrics by Chad Beguelin

Directed by Sarah Dugan

The Playhouse of Burlington County Footlighters

808 Pomona Rd

Cinnaminson, NJ 08077

856-829-7144

http://www.bcfootlighters.com/

Through February 4, 2012 

My reviews are written for Stage Magazine, the Delaware Valley's oldest full theatre resource. Please take a look at the Stage site.

If you enjoyed this, take a look at my other work on stage.

The Found Weekend

Ow.

My brain hurts. 

 I love seeing and reviewing plays. I am constantly delighted at the sheer volume of talent on South Jersey stages. So I insouciantly take  two shows to review in a weekend with willingness and zeal.

Ow.

I reviewed 2 plays this weekend: Friday night I saw next to normal at Haddonfield Plays and Players. Pretty darned good! Today, I saw The Wedding Singer at Burlington County Footlighters. Pretty darned good! The question which makes my brain hurt is how on earth these two shows can possibly be described using exactly the same words?

Try to find a conceptual framework more specific than “well, they were both on stage and they  both had music” which ties next to normal and The Wedding Singer into a single, cohesive weekend’s entertainment package.  I feel like I’ve just eaten kimchi  on cream cheese logs liberally covered in pizza sauce dotted with butternut squash and topped with sprinkles and a cherry. My head doesn’t know what to do with this combination. No other body part has any clearer take on it, either.

From bi-polar disorder on the edge of full psychotic break and a suicide attempt in music as discordant and sweet as the manic cycle itself to a schlub getting both the girl and the best of a sexist jerk in songs with lyrics sent in by Mrs. Grady’s second grade class after its first lesson on those special words we call ‘rhyming words’ which sound alike.

And both truly excellent.  

Ow.

I would sincerely like to thank Stage Magazine for giving me one of the most interesting emotional weekends of my life. 

Inspired in Haddonfield

The Price of Normal: next to normal speaks raw, honest truth 

Expressionist theatre gives us a stage rigged to show the world of the play as the main character sees it. The central metaphor of the character’s life is actualized before us. If the character is bitterly convinced that reality is melting before him, the set will liquefy and run off, the lighting suggest dripping and drooping.

When the main character of the play is the bi-polar wife of a large, boring man whom she once loved and the mother of an astonishingly talented teenage girl whom she can’t stand as well as a teenage son whom she obviously loves dearly, we can expect the world of the stage to take on the lurching, spasmodic, bright-to-dark, tortured fish-flopping which is the lot of the manic-depressive. It does all that and more on the stage in Haddonfield.

Next to Normal is the story of Diana Goodman’s struggle to keep a normal family as she battles bi-polar disorder triggered by the accidental death of a child. Given to us forcefully by Sarah DuVall Pearson, the play presents her struggles with the disease, with medications, with time flow, and with the wrenching fantasies to which she is prey as staged from her point of view inside the illness. Lights now scream in dazzling color, now plunge into drab shadow. People she encounters become fantasy figures in flash transformations then flash back to their normal selves.

I need to cite Ms. Pearson for an amazing talent. She has a voice so pure and expressive that at times I simply wanted to close my eyes and listen to her. Her voice alone is worth the price of admission. The yearning of her bewildered outcries in music drives through the notes and grabs the heart. Thank you for that treat, Ms. Pearson.

Pat DeFusco is a fine Dan Goodman, Diana’s bone-weary, hound-dog faithful husband desperately stretching to keep hold of a quickly retreating normal life until his own mind is nearly dislocated by the overreach. Perfectly understated, he flashes passion with pinpoint precision then subsides back into “normalcy”. We see surprising intensity as he insists things will be fine, will be normal. We wonder a little about this until we discover that he is also prey to the same spirit of discontent which haunts his wife, although with less intensity.  

With a strong, tenor range, Mr. DeFusco navigated this emotional maze with elegance, clarity and honesty. His turn near the final curtain when he realizes he needs help to get through the turmoil is believable and moving to the extent that it brought me a tear.  Thank you, Mr. DeFusco, for an excellent performance.

Matt Reher plays all the doctors in the show. Remember, this is from the patient’s point of view. After a while they blur into each other. He provides marvelous comic moments droning on in a calm, medical voice about medications and combination and side effect while Diane sings out her agonizing confusion above and around his voice. As this progresses, it takes a moment to realize that Mr. Reher has done mumbling about medical things and is now instructing us how to exit an airplane in case of emergencies. From the patient’s point of view, it’s all nonsense.

So profoundly are we wrapped in Diana’s struggles that it takes nearly half the play to realize that there is something very peculiar about the son, Gabe, whom she loves so much. Gabe is presented with supernal smokiness and innocent mystery by Frankie Rowles. Here and gone, gone and here, Mr. Rowles gives us a very fine rendering of a character half in, half out of a very odd circumstance. One thing which clues us into his peculiarity: even though he is most tender and loving for a teenage son, no one but his mother seems glad to see him.

The play is built with tandem sub-plots: the tumultuous relationship between Dan and Diane is reflected in parallel by the stormy, budding relationship between Natalie Goodman, daughter of the house, and her boyfriend, Henry, played with loving intensity by Brian Mackalonis. Mr. Mackalonis delivers unmotivated, unconditional love with complete believability and a most engaging style. He has a strong performance voice and range, delivering excellent solo performance and choral blending to this moving  tale.

I have saved what I consider the true jewel of this gem-studded cast for last. There is not a single moment from curtain to curtain when I doubt that Colleen Murphy as Natalie Goodman is anything but the tormented teenage daughter of a bi-polar mother. When she sings, when she talks, when she blinks her eyes, she is real and present with an emotional onstage range which is almost scary. And she is 16 years old.

She is a teenager playing a teenager. Not a big stretch. But it is a dead-on wonder to me that someone of such tender years would have the craft not only to define but also fulfill such an emotional roller coaster of a role so completely not only in dialogue but in song. Brava, Ms. Murphy. I look forward to seeing you work again.

It is not a perfect production. Two things stand out. Where the 6-piece band is magnificent in accompaniment, the audio balance had them a shade too loud. The accompaniment overpowered the strong singing, particularly during, but not limited to, a crescendo rendered by the full band supporting a solo voice.

Second: where the lights are designed to reflect the highs and lows of the bi-polar world and thus alternate between hot spots and shadows, the blocking often has the principles standing with their faces in shadow. I found myself often wishing the actor would simply take a step forward as I grew weary of watching his knees. That went for everyone in the cast at one point or another. This would be the only circumstance in which I’d encourage all actors to go into the light.

But these things are not significant in the balance. They are forgiven as soon as they subside.  This play presents such an unusual and compelling blend of music, character and theme that a glitch would have to be much larger to be daunting.

For instance, the audience does not leave the theatre humming any anthem or snapping to any catchy tune lingering in the mind. What lingers is the message to the extent that I almost forgot to mention that there are 18 songs in act I and 19 in act II. The music doesn’t stop. At times bright and harmonious, at times garish and discordant, it is wholly subservient to the theme. And that works with beauty and force in this offering. I rode the elevator with the family. I cried and raged with them. At one point, I sorely wanted to shout out to Diane not to sign the form, don’t sign the form! So engaged was I in the flow.

What is the price of normal? If you think you know, get to Haddonfield and see this timely mix of spectacle and theme delivered in stark power by a fine cast at Haddonfield Plays and Players tonight.

Next to Normal

Book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey

Music by Tom Kitt

Directed by Ed Doyle and Jenn Kopesky

Haddonfield Plays and Players

957 E. Atlantic Ave.

Hddonfield, NJ

856-429-8139

http://www.haddonfieldplayers.com/

My reviews are written for Stage Magazine, the Delaware Valley's longest running, full-service theatre publication. Please take a look.

Please take a look at my other work as posted on the Stage Magazine site.

 

Cats at the Ritz

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats: the mystic heart of the universe revealed 

T.S. Eliot’s assumed name, Old Possum, never made it into the 1981 musical adaptation of his whimsical work, but more of his original draft characters made it onto the stage than into the published volume, and for this we are thankful. Grizabella the Glamour Cat was cut from the book of verse but revived in the musical. Lucky for us. She is the one who delivers the now classic “Memories”, the masterfully stirring anthem of faded glory and the most well-known song of the show.

So let us start with her. As Grizabella on the Ritz stage, Colleen McGinnis provides two of the most beautiful and compelling of the production’s elegant panoply of high points with the delivery and reprise of that song. Both, superbly acted as well as sung, grabbed then melted every heart in the place.

But it is not for her substantial talent that Ms. McGinnis gets first notice here. The measure of the cast is that she is very strong but not a stand-out. They’re all charismatic singers and dancers. She gets mention because she has the only two numbers in the show which spotlight solo talents so singularly. The others are ensemble. And, if this production shines anywhere, it shines most brightly in its ensemble work.

I may have heard some to match, but I cannot now recall a more heavenly and transporting sound than the full company of Jellicle cats in four-part choral glory singing with the wholly engaged orchestral music on that stage in that production that night. I don’t know that I’ve ever cited a vocal director in a review before. Clint Williams offers me a first. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Truly magnificent blending.

Uplifted by sensuously acrobatic dances arranged by choreographer/ director Dann Dunn as well as mysterious, half-shadow night alley lighting by Chris Miller, the effect is  to pull the audience into the souls of these beautiful creatures being presented on stage. You become a cat draped on a warm window sill raptly listening to and gazing at the stage whereupon resides the mystic heart of the universe. It is a remarkable show.   

The show is music and dance. To an unbroken sound track of orchestral music, we hear Eliot’s words sung as we are introduced to a series of dynamically quirky cats known, as a group, as the Jellicles. The term “Jellicles”, by the way, is Eliot’s version of a distortion in dialect of the phrase “dear little cats”. It is not a breed.

We hear their world-view, their  triumphs, their disappointments, their memories, their rituals. And when the stirring song comes to its natural end, the movement naturally begins and the pure, joyous physicality of the cat soul is revealed in the dance.

There is no dialogue, character development or clear plot line. We meet the Jellicles gathered for their yearly ball. There is a sub-story about the abduction and restoration of the Old Deuteronomy, the Jellicle’s leader--sung and given fine physical nobility, strength and grace by David M. Rooney. There is the ascendant transformation of Grizabella’s passing into another Jessicle life.

But story isn’t important in this play, introductions are. The heart of the play is in learning about Skimbleshanks and watching the train he lives on reproduced in trash by the cats rolling around the stage in the second act. It’s watching Lindsy Mauck as Jennyanydots bust a dynamite number with a chorus of tap-dancing cockroaches.  It’s Corey Wade Hundorf’s Rum Tum Tugger strutting and stretching his absolute, arbitrary contrariness. And it is Ryan Blackson’s magically blinking Mistoffelees  producing the missing Old Deuteronomy just like he “pulled seven kittens out of a hat,” as the song says.

The revealed heart of the tale is the personality and society of the cats, and this is served to us with style and clarity by a very talented cast and crew.

It isn’t a perfect production. I consistently found the digital music too loud, sometimes obscuring the singers. And the dark, mysterious lighting was at times too dark and mysterious. I occasionally wished for more light on the principals. But these shortfalls are minor in comparison to the joy and power assembled on the stage. They are insufficient to deny the trim fitness and triumph of this work.

CATS marks the opening of the Ritz Theatre’s 27^th season in Oaklyn, N.J. A success story by any measure, the Ritz is the best sort of community theatre in that it is rooted in and heavily integrated into the community it serves. The number of it’s outreach and educational programs is inspiring. It leads the way in consideration of handicapped theatre patrons. It is an outstanding manifestation of the artistic strength and depth of South Jersey.

And, happily for us, it insists on a high  standard of performance technique from its young actors, almost all of whom are on their way into the theatre world. The spirit of the place is palpable on entrance. These folks are happy to be together, happy to be working in theatre, happy to be at the Ritz. They are happy about what they do, it shows, and we’re all better for it.

Interestingly, Ritz founder and Artistic Director Bruce Curless never intended to open a theatre in Oaklyn. In fact, he had another site in the bag for the arts center he envisioned. It fell through due to a less than noble zoning decision. Dejected, Mr. Curless happened to pass the closed Ritz property and, on an inspired whim, looked into it.  

The Ritz had originally been a vaudeville/movie theater. It played that fare until 1947. But by the 1980s, fallen into disrepair, it was a porn house. When Bruce Curless proposed reopening the theatre, the owners were ecstatic until they learned he didn’t want to show porn there. Then they weren’t so sure. Innovative change was not their strong suit.

Luckily for us, Mr. Curless and crew talked them into it. Twenty seven years later we have a South Jersey theatrical institution and a testament to an unrelenting commitment to make art work for everyone.

My reviews are written for Stage Magazine, the Delaware Valley's oldest and proudest full resource for patrons and players alike.

To see all my work in Stage, click here.

Connecting to the Root

Growing the Patron Base

However you size up the state of contemporary theatre, one thing is painfully clear. The money base is too small. Theatre companies squabble over what they see as a tiny bit of cheese. They are often necessarily stingy and closed-hearted about their resources and support bases.

There is a long-term, fully satisfying escape form this finger-puzzle: grow the patron base. Convince potential viewers to step inside theatre doors. Easy as pie. Half the work is already done. The theatre doors are wide open. That last bit is facetious and yet oddly true.

The task looks uncomfortably formidable. How to get more people into the theatres. Give tickets away free? But that cheapens the work. And half the people you give free tickets to don’t show. How good can it be if it’s free?

Theatres often feel trapped by circumstance, caught between the rock of art and the hard place of public taste. It may seem to some that things have always been this way. It turns out this is not so.

Over the past hundred and fifty years, theatre has been turned inside-out and back again. Once the main source of popular entertainments with brilliant spectacle and sentiment, it lost momentum, heart and its hold on the public imagination to the electronic onslaught. Folks wondered if it had a future.

Theatre turned to patronage. It took the path of painting and portraiture. Outdone by new gadgets in its primary purposes, it settled into a well-heeled niche reserved for the cultured, the refined and the wealthy.

As in any patronage system, there was an urgent survival need amongst practitioners of the art to establish that talent was a very limited commodity which only some few possessed in full measure. Those few deserved full patronage. The rest did not. And thus was the genre of “Community Theatre” born. That last part is facetious and yet oddly true.

Common wisdom defines “Community Theatre” as a pejorative term meaning, “expect to run out in two hours mourning the loss of 15  bucks and 120 minutes”. It’s a picnic softball game:  bearable to be in, okay to see if your kid’s in it but otherwise murder to watch without a beer or something stronger in your veins.  

There is no purpose in arguing that this conclusion is not rampant amongst those in theatre. I hear it chronically on my reviewing rounds. There is an almost obligatory apology for not being professional as well as a reluctant and painful acceptance of the empty houses. It’s only community theatre. You can’t expect people to want to see it.  

Community theatre folks didn’t invent this attitude, nor do they wear it happily. I’m certain they heard many people mouth it, some quite acidly, before ever thinking to it pick it up and use it on themselves.

My problem is, I’ve seen them on stage. This creates a pungent, cognitive dissonance—somewhat like standing inside the cone of a bell as it is struck—when the reality I encounter on community stages collides with the evaluation of Community Theatre given me by popular wisdom. This is supposed to suck. People say it sucks. People act like it sucks. It doesn’t suck. My brain hurts.

If I had the power to make a single law for community theatre it would be: you may no longer look down upon yourselves. Community theatre people caught in self-denigration will recite all the Shakespearean prologues backwards from memory. You may still not think well of yourself as a theatre artist, but you will definitely have something to be proud of. Played right, you’ll also have a happy bevy of bar bets. This last bit is facetious and yet also oddly. . .

Having reviewed professional performances which made me wish for a smaller bladder and community performances which did not, I cannot accept the term “community theatre” as a reliable measure of quality. Community theatre is not bad theatre. It is, simply, theatre rooted in a community.

The term “professional theatre” is more predictably a measure of union status. In a recent production which mixed Equity and non-Equity players, it was the Equity lead who destroyed the punch and pace of the performance. The community performers were spot on.

Professional is no guarantee of quality. Community is no guarantee of shoddiness. The extent to which these unforgiving judgments are  embraced by the public heart is the measure of theatre’s challenge. And its own hearts, as well as those of its neighbors, comprise the public heart.

The first place to flush out the old code is at home. Remember the law of Terry, for it is a Stern pronouncement: no one may denigrate himself as an artist. Everyone on any level of theatre deserves her talent acknowledged. And for every talent which exists on the planet there is at least one situation under which it can and will blossom into full, astonishing beauty. Talent must find its place. And so what?

So what if we feel great about ourselves, understand the full worth of our product and acknowledge the depth of all our talents? So we feel wonderful, the walls between professional and amateur are shattered and the seats are still empty. Exactly how does pride serve to fill them? How does it grow the patron base?

I’m glad you asked!

Changing the home team perception of community theatre work is the first part of changing the entire public perception of it. That’s where theatre has to go. If there is serious intent to grow the patron base, unless the theatre community wants to start having theatre babies at an alarming rate, the only place more patrons can come from is the great pool of people who now never consider crossing the threshold of a theatre. Welcome to the hoi polloi.

Current theatre wisdom mistrusts the hoi polloi. They’re the ones who abandoned theatre for flash gadgets to begin with. Theatre can survive without them. Theatre has courted real money.

But, in the process, theatre has made its standards so precious as to exclude a great deal of its best talent. Practitioners promoted a big lie with great energy so that a fortunate few could get through a rough time. This was a brilliant adaptation back then. Now it wears like a choker on a happy, bouncy puppy.

There is an opportunity at present. The electronic visual pop is 1) old hat and 2) a great deal more expensive than it used to be. Folks in community theatre can now offer an evening’s entertainment for less than a movie ticket with popcorn. Theatre gets a second wind. There is the opportunity now to grow the patron base as it hasn’t been grown in over a century.

The job is simple: embrace the hoi polloi. And, oh yes, we are the hoi polloi. We have found the patron base and he is us. She is the people in our neighborhood. They’re the people that we meet as we’re walking down the street, yes the people . . .The people theatre has been frantically separating itself from for more than fifty years. So how does it close the gap it’s worked so hard to create?

Let’s remember the origins of the art is in temples, not royal courts. How about thinking of theatre as the people’s art it is?  It’s job now, as it was at the start, is to instruct and delight. Whatever else happens in a play, the audience should walk out with at least a slightly different perspective than it held going in. And it should be uplifted and delighted in the process.

An argument I hear all the time: instructing and delighting the people in our own communities means reaching them where they are. That’s pedagogy 101. Go from the known to the unknown. That means stooping to the lowest common denominator in the production of art. That’s not acceptable.

Nor should it be. There are theatres which will and should continue to perform art for art’s sake. But community theatres can and should perform art for community’s sake. Raising the consciousness and refining the tastes of community audiences pays great returns in more patrons for both community and pure art theatres. And community houses, once full, will be able to stay full even as programmed offerings become edgier.    

First, community theatre should embrace its communities. It ought to take the art to where they are and entertain them as they wish to be entertained (“they” includes us). It should say to its communities, “we are you.”  

It has to believe that it deserves audiences. Without that belief, there won’t be any. But perhaps more importantly, it should know that the audiences of its community need and deserve its work. Maintaining the disconnect and allowing the present culture gap to continue impoverishes everyone. And there’s no one in a better position to address and fix this imbalance culture-wide than the people of Community Theatre.

Having laid that heavy burden upon your broad, artistic shoulders, I will tell you where to start: whenever you’re in public, always make sure to remember to pretend that being in community theatre is as much fun as it actually is. That last bit is not facetious and nothing I have ever written has been truer.