Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This By Beverly Creasey

I adore Alan Ayckbourn. THE NORMAN CONQUESTS are my favorite farces, followed closely by ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR and myriad others. Zeitgeist Stage’s riotous production of his PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES still has me giggling (and reenacting the video scene) a year later.

MY WONDERFUL DAY (up at Zeitgeist through March 26th) is not your usual Ayckbourn brand of madcap mayhem. MY WONDERFUL DAY is a slow burning ember which ignites at the end of the play. It’s like watching a Rube Goldberg contraption advance a ball which hits a lever that drops a hammer which hits a nail…You get the idea. The cogs in the machine turn like clockwork until the cuckoo pops out on the hour.

The birdie in WONDERFUL DAY is a sweet little girl’s assignment to write about her day. Her pregnant mom (Obehi Janice) cleans houses and this particular Tuesday she’s in tow, having been instructed to sit very quietly and finish her homework. Alanna Logan plays the obedient (and extremely savvy) nine year old whom none of the adults seem to notice. When mom’s water breaks (It’s like the theatrical rule about the gun: If you introduce one, it has to go off.) poor Winnie is left in this unfamiliar house with strangers who are melting down left and right. Winnie gets to witness and record it all in her notebook.

Zeitgeist veterans Becca Lewis and Craig Houk are masters of farce, the former playing the tactless, witless mistress of a television celebrity who takes advantage of his wife’s absence to invite her over. Houk can, as they say, read the phonebook and get laughs but his fitful nap and fabulous snoring in WONDERFUL DAY are reason alone to see the play. Director David Miller knows his way around farce and gives his cast lots of opportunities (and pratfalls) to prove it.

Winnie and her mom (tenderly played by Janice) practice their French every Tuesday in hopes of moving to Martinique. The stupid adults assume Winnie doesn’t understand English and Ayckbourn moves another cog into place in his comedy machine.

John Romualdi and Angela Smith are the estranged husband and wife (another cog). You know when they collide, there will be fireworks. I must admit I prefer the fast paced Ayckbourn farces where you have no time between the gags to analyze anything – but there’s something to be said for the chance to see how he carefully layers the plot and makes a strong statement about class callousness, to boot.

THE HOTEL NEPENTHE: Open For Business By Beverly Creasey

THE HOTEL NEPENTHE is a four star destination this month (playing through March 20th at the Actor’s Shakespeare Project in funky, fabulous Davis Sq.) Not exactly the “kind” elixir proffered by Poe, a hit of John Kuntz’s NEPENTHE induces a wild ride through a bizarre and often hazardous world. Kuntz’s Grand Hotelesque play embraces eccentrics, crackpots and psychos as they meander in an absurdist roundelay.

Who cares if the through line is perforated, the loosely connected stories are hilarious, even the grimmest of them. Kuntz and director David R. Gammons bombard us with pop allusions: from the Perry Mason theme song to one of my favorite spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of tinkling watch chimes spins Kuntz’s characters around in a frenzy). And if that weren’t enough to make me happy, Kuntz himself melts down royally, in one spectacular bit of business, over the loss of his keys. In that instant, art imitated my life, as I had lost my keys just hours before, enacting a tiny meltdown myself!

The heady cast inhabits over a dozen characters: from Marianna Bassham’s cold, calculating wife of a politician out to compromise her husband to Georgia Lyman’s vacuous starlet for the ages to Daniel Berger-Jones’ ominous cab driver (Is there any other kind in movies and theater?) to Kuntz’s affable taxi dispatcher. The performances are dead on and thanks to Gammons’ ingenious design (scenic and costume) we see the actors transform into their next character. Jeff Adelberg’s lighting morphs as well, from ambient to sinister… and into actual flashes of lightening (via tubes of light outside each “dressing room”). Bill Barclay’s sound, too, plays a pivotal role in the performance, giving the technical crew quite a workout and the audience quite an adventure.

House of Games By Beverly Creasey

Playwright Theresa Rebeck adds one hundred and thirty years to Ibsen’s feminist masterpiece, yanking it into the 21st century. DollHouse is Rebeck’s re-imagining of the Ibsen classic (running at New Repertory Theatre through March 20th).

The catch-22 in updating A DOLL’S HOUSE is that we have to root for a shrill, self-centered, preening woman who would rather shop at Barney’s than care for her children. (The nanny does that.) She’s a woman so out of touch with the world around her that, when she desperately needs money, she doesn’t think of getting a job/hocking her diamonds/selling her designer togs on E-Bay/borrowing against her inheritance. Even a loan shark is a better choice than embezzlement. (Rebeck follows Ibsen so closely that she’s obliged to keep the forgery (now embezzlement) plot. I’m satisfied that in 1879 Nora had no other outlet but I just can’t buy that in 2011).

Director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary’s production starts out whimsically, getting plenty of laughs from Nora’s (Sarah Newhouse) surprise reunion with a high school friend. Jennie Israel makes their class differences delightfully awkward. And Israel makes the friend’s betrayal completely believable, even laudatory. To her credit, O’Leary gives the secondary characters a wide berth. Diego Arciniegas is mysteriously compelling as their doctor/friend and Cheryl D. Singleton makes the most of a thankless nanny role. But why does Nora need to leave her children to find herself when she could get a divorce/see a shrink/take an adult ed course/volunteer at a soup kitchen?

Adding to my difficulties with Nora’s lying and buying is the way her husband is played in the New Rep production. Will Lyman gently chides her (for shopping too much or being a soft touch) but he doesn’t go ballistic until the very, very end when he transforms into Bogie from THE MALTESE FALCON (“I’m not takin’ the fall.”) Until then, the worst thing you can say about him is that he’s overprotective. Lyman makes lines like “I don’t want that man in my house” seem eminently reasonable (given that he doesn’t know the facts). So there’s my problem. I liked him so much more than her. I even liked the reluctant blackmailer (Gabriel Kuttner) more than I liked Nora. My favorite interaction in the play is the kindness scene between Nora’s friend and the blackmailer.

Watching the audience, I observed an abrupt magnetic connect when Nora fights to be heard. When she accuses her husband of “not listening,” you could hear the female audience audibly assent. When he asserts the notion that women don’t say anything worth listening to, the males laughed in unison. Every mind in the audience was engaged. Her husband’s assertion that he would never take the blame for her foolish crime resonated for me because of a recent Massachusetts court case (involving a politician whose wife kept the books for her brother’s money laundering scheme) .She went to jail, maintaining her husband didn’t have any knowledge of the crime. He remains in office, evidently untarnished by the affair. Welcome to the real DollHouse.

Turtle Lane’s Got the Goods! By Beverly Creasey

Remember the ads for Richard Kiley’s last tour of MAN OF LA MANCHA? “This is your last chance” sounded pretty compelling…and we all went. Thank goodness. Well, I’ve got another “last chance” you mustn’t ignore. This is the last time you can see Steven Michael Key reprise his show stopping turn in THE FULL MONTY. He’s retiring the role at the end of the Turtle Lane run (March 20th)…which is where he first played it by the way, in 2006. He’s nothing short of spectacular (and the rest of the strippers are pretty darn good, too).

If you haven’t seen the musical before (or the cheeky film which inspired it) I should warn you that stripping is integral to the plot. A couple of out-of-work machinists who can’t find a job anywhere decide to do something about it. They see women spending a “girls’ night out” and a fair amount of cash at Chippendale’s so why not get a bunch of their buddies together and put on a show! They may not be as buff as the Chippers but they’re boffo and they’ve got moxie.

Director James Tallach gets hilarious performances with this motley crew of misfits, from Key’s mashed potato/hully gully/frug dancing dynamo to James Fitzpatrick’s bumbling wall flower to Robert Klimeczko’s frenetic wall crasher. There’s a sweet story, too, behind the strip line. James Casey’s character gets to “man up” for his son (Andrew Cekala) and Timothy Lawton’s depressed couch potato gets to impress his wife (Brittany Rolfs) and get back in the game. Lawton has one of the sweetest songs in the show, a duet with Bill Toll, dedicated to their wives (Rolfs and Tracy Nygard). Fitzpatrick gets to show off his impressive range in the gorgeous “You Walk With Me” (duet with Klimeczko) but it’s Key’s naughty “Every Woman Loves A Big Black Man” which brings down the house.

Erik Diaz’ corrugated set is the perfect backdrop for the labor intensive script and Donald Gregorio’s chair slamming/testosterone raising choreography hits all the right notes. Even the women (in Richard Itczak’s finery) look good. Nygard struts her stuff in the sassy “Life with Harold” number but it’s the men who take over center stage in this show. Sorry, Ladies.

WILD AND CRAZY PUPPETS: STORYTIME PRESERVATION HOUR By Beverly Creasey

Is there any form of puppetry more delicate and graceful than Indonesian shadow figures, with their elegant outlines and intricate silhouettes? Now imagine the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE version of same and you have a little idea of the madness of the NEW EXHIBITION ROOM show integrating “storytime” and puppets (playing at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre thru Feb.26th).

Does it sound like a children’s show? It isn’t…except it is. Several children in my audience just gave themselves over to the silliness and enjoyed it for silliness’ sake without absorbing the outrageous allusions (to pop rock, feminism and anarchy).

If you think there’s nothing new under the sun, wait ‘til you see a baby zombie morph from a shadow puppet to a hand puppet (both incarnations quite delightful), navigate the MBTA and partake in a poetry slam. The puppetry is wildly imaginative and amazingly dexterous.

After baby zombie’s adventures, we meet a princess who learns to trust her own capabilities. “The Paper Bag Princess” utilizes humans as well as brown bag puppets to hilarious effect… but Mac Young’s paper set pieces steal the show. His giant pop up books inspire awe and his folded library stacks are a marvel of large scale origami.

The wonderfully shameless humor is delivered absolutely deadpan. You’ll shake your head but dissolve into giggles nevertheless at the fire breathing dragon (Joseph Mirrella) who singes a princess (Hannah Husband in a fabulous gown/cloud of dust and debris by Cara Pacifico), who enlists the help of a minstrel (Chuong Pham) and falls for a goofy librarian (Alejandro Simoes in a dual role). What’s not to love? Who wouldn’t welcome an off-the-wall experience which ends in homemade cookies for everyone? Best of all, the NEW EXHIBITION ROOM has cured me of my forty year puppophobia!

HEARTS AND MINDS By Beverly Creasey

What a clever idea for a Valentine’s Day cabaret, especially in these cynical times: GET OVER IT! explores the flower-less, loveless side of the holiday with humor and style. Who needs candy and roses when you can hear cheeky songs like He Ain’t Mr. Right or Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover – and nosh on yummy cornbread at Ryles Jazz Club.

Pamela Enders and Wayne Fritsche celebrated “the Martyrdom of St. Valentine” with a mix of traditional and pop songs under the musical direction of Doug Hammer. Enders sailed through the comic material with just the right touch of flirty innuendo. With gorgeous low notes and an ethereal top range, she is as at home with heartbreak (like Irving Berlin’s ironic You Can Have Him) as she is with musical theater numbers like So What? and Mein Herr (from CABARET). Her defiant Mein Herr brought down the house.

Fritsche, too, knows his way around musical theatre, having performed in shows like FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and OLIVER. His voice is as big as his towering stature, which he spoofed in I Enjoy Being a Girl from FLOWER DRUM SONG and used to advantage in the duet with Enders in the all out Enough Is Enough.

The godfather of Boston cabaret, John O’Neil, did the introductions and John Baboian and Steve Chaggaris joined Hammer for the snazzy accompaniment. As Edna St. Vincent Millay famously wrote, “Forget the epitaph. Take up the song!”

SMALL WONDERS at WHEELOCK By Beverly Creasey

Ask any gardener. Working the earth is good for the soul. Health professionals promise that digging and planting will lower your blood pressure. Philosophers and novelists have touted the healing power of nature for centuries. Candide chose gardening for his “best of all possible worlds” and Frances Hodgson Burnett made a garden the centerpiece of her children’s novel, THE SECRET GARDEN.

Burnett’s stories were wildly successful in the late 19th and early 20th century. Popular films of the ‘30s and ‘40s renewed interest in her work but most people these days recognize THE SECRET GARDEN because of the Broadway musical. Jane Staab and Susan Kosoff have revisited the novel and fashioned a new musical from the source material. Their SECRET GARDEN (at Wheelock Family Theatre through February 7th) simplifies the tangled plot of the Broadway version, restores the core of Burnett’s story and makes the songs themselves part of the narrative.

The musical opens with Mary Lenox’s arrival at lonely Misselthwaite Manor and her immediate impression of the place: “No, I Don’t Like It.” The catchy tune (which I’ve been humming since) sums up the whole plot, simply and effortlessly. She doesn’t want to be in England under her uncle’s care and he doesn’t much like the idea either. Only the maid seems happy to interact with the girl.

With little amusement for Mary at the edge of the forbidding moor, she follows the grumpy gardener about. Mary befriends the unfriendly man and with a robin as her only playmate, she decides to plant her very own garden. (NOTE: Don’t hurry out for refreshments at intermission until you witness Mary’s garden miraculously bloom before your eyes. It’s one of the “secret” surprises in Matthew Lazure’s grand Victorian set.)

Kosoff’s smart book and clever lyrics (like the amusing notion and play of time in “Let’s Do It Now”) and Jonathan Goldberg’s gorgeous orchestrations of Staab’s lovely music lift their GARDEN head and shoulders above the gloomier Broadway version, in my opinion. It’s a whole lot more enjoyable for children: The two in my party, ages five and seven (ordinarily a hard sell) sat glued to their seats, waiting for the story to unfold.

The relationships Mary forges give the story its redemptive spirit. Kosoff, as director as well as writer, gets fine performances from everyone. Katherine Leigh Doherty (fresh from her Broadway appearance with Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC!) makes Mary a force to be reckoned with. She wins over the crusty gardener (Neil Gustafson) and soon they’re inspiring each other (“Tha’ an’ Me Are Alike” is cheeky and charming).

Jennifer Beth Glick radiates kindness as the maid whose affection for her young charge is unconditional. Jacqui Parker as the severest of housekeepers and Russell Garrett as the distant, depressed uncle even manage to soften under Mary’s indomitable influence. Andrew Barbato lights up the stage as the country boy who talks to animals and knows their secrets. Ellis Gage gets lots of laughs as Mary’s sickly cousin whose temper tantrums she simply will not abide. (Composer Jane Staab even has a wee cameo as the tyrannical boy’s nurse.) And if that’s not enough to entertain us, the country boy brings on an adorable lop-eared rabbit which draws plenty of oohs and ahs from the audience.

THE SECRET GARDEN reveals its metaphors on the technical side of the production, too. Stacey Stephens creates soft, supple garb for the country folk and stiff, starched Victorian garb for the housekeeper and her employer. Franklin Meissner, Jr. gives the secret garden its very own light and the cold manor house, its lack thereof. Don’t miss Wheelock’s delightful promise of spring.