PAST SHOWS and REVIEWS
A list of previous productions from The Covey Theatre Company
A list of previous productions from The Covey Theatre Company
The Romanovs
October 2011
Dynamic drama recalls doomed dynasty
DOWNTOWN AFTER DARK for The Eagle October, 2011 By RUSS TARBY
If the downfall of Russia’s Romanov Dynasty had no hemophiliac prince and no controversial cleric, it would still be a story brimming with romance, revenge and revolution. But the presence of the bleeding boy Alexie and the over-sexed holy man Rasputin elevate the tale of the royal family’s fate to epic proportions. No wonder the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II during the 1917 Russian Revolution has inspired so many marvelous movies, from 1932’s “Rasputin and the Empress” to the Disney-animated “Anastasia” in 1997.
Now, Syracuse’s award-winning playwright and producer Garrett Heater adds his meticulously researched stage play, “The Romanovs,” to the list of dramas documenting the Tsar’s inevitable undoing.
Flawed characters
Presented by the Covey Theatre Company at the Mulroy Civic Center, downtown, “The Romanovs” stars David Witanowski as Tsar Nicholas II, known here as “Nicky,” and Katharine Gibson as Empress Alexandra, known here as “Alex,” and Bruce Paulsen as Rasputin, known here as “our friend.”
All three principals create characters overflowing with authenticity while plagued by individual weaknesses. Witanowski’s tsar is kindly, overcautious and ultimately indecisive. Gibson’s empress evinces a degree of intensity unusual for turn-of-the-century women. Alex is both headstrong and heart-sick. Her resolve weakens rapidly, however, when her meddlesome friend, Anna (a delightful Kate Huddleston) introduces her to the charismatic Rasputin. For his part, Paulsen turns the priapic priest into a monstrous manipulator whose motivations rarely stray from drunkenness and debauchery.
Support cast sparkles
While the leads — especially Gibson — charge the two-act play with an electric verisimilitude, several supporting players also sparkle.
As Alexandra’s sister, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, actress Amy Blumer plays two terrific scenes with Gibson, one in which Elizabeth describes the bloody aftermath of her husband’s 1905 assassination by bomb and one in which she says goodbye to the empress forever after clashing with her over Rasputin in 1918.
Robert Kovak, the play’s only actor with actual background in the Russian language, shines as the military leader Grand Duke Nikolasha, and 9-year-old actor Christof Deboni portrays a charming Alexie, the medically challenged heir to the throne. As Maria, the governess of the royal family’s five children, Kimberly Panek expresses a wide spectrum of emotions. In the first scene, she glows as she carries into the reception hall the infant son, Alexie, played by a real newborn, Calvin Mele. Later, an arrogant Rasputin ruthlessly rapes Maria who is soon fired after she refuses to acknowledge him as an honored palace guest.
As Nicky’s mother the Dowager Empress Dagmar, Susan Blumer excels as a cranky, autocratic busybody yearning for the dynasty’s glory days while boldly disapproving her son’s inability to send Rasputin packing.
Rounding out the cast are Amy Ligoci, Maya Dwyer, Liz Russell, Esther Richardson, John Price and Michael Penny.
Terror staged tastefully
Covey’s crew — director/costumer Heater, lighting technician Bob Dwyer, prop mistress Susan Blumer and stage manager Tim Hahn — all deserve credit for decisions and effects which smoothly support the script and the cast.
For instance, the difficult rape scene — while bordering on brutal — is convincingly staged, as it must be to confirm Rasputin’s true nature. The final scene of the family’s mass execution depicts terror tastefully as Dwyer’s flashing lights mimic the flurry of gunshots in the basement of a house in the Ural Mountains.
A couple constructive criticisms: while Karen Procopio styled wonderful wigs for the ladies, she seemed befuddled by Rasputin, whose bobby-pin littered straight black coif jarringly clashes with his curly black beard. And, though the action takes place between 1905 and 1918, the royal family never seems to age. Unfortunately, the audience ages plenty as the play times out at two hours and 45 minutes, at least a half-hour too long.
Despite those picayune complaints, “The Romanovs” rises well above the level at which we find most local theater. Heater, who won deserved accolades for last year’s “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe,” has done it again. Syracuse is lucky to have the youthful Heater honing his prodigious talents here. Theatrically speaking, this guy’s a genius.
DOWNTOWN AFTER DARK for The Eagle October, 2011 By RUSS TARBY
If the downfall of Russia’s Romanov Dynasty had no hemophiliac prince and no controversial cleric, it would still be a story brimming with romance, revenge and revolution. But the presence of the bleeding boy Alexie and the over-sexed holy man Rasputin elevate the tale of the royal family’s fate to epic proportions. No wonder the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II during the 1917 Russian Revolution has inspired so many marvelous movies, from 1932’s “Rasputin and the Empress” to the Disney-animated “Anastasia” in 1997.
Now, Syracuse’s award-winning playwright and producer Garrett Heater adds his meticulously researched stage play, “The Romanovs,” to the list of dramas documenting the Tsar’s inevitable undoing.
Flawed characters
Presented by the Covey Theatre Company at the Mulroy Civic Center, downtown, “The Romanovs” stars David Witanowski as Tsar Nicholas II, known here as “Nicky,” and Katharine Gibson as Empress Alexandra, known here as “Alex,” and Bruce Paulsen as Rasputin, known here as “our friend.”
All three principals create characters overflowing with authenticity while plagued by individual weaknesses. Witanowski’s tsar is kindly, overcautious and ultimately indecisive. Gibson’s empress evinces a degree of intensity unusual for turn-of-the-century women. Alex is both headstrong and heart-sick. Her resolve weakens rapidly, however, when her meddlesome friend, Anna (a delightful Kate Huddleston) introduces her to the charismatic Rasputin. For his part, Paulsen turns the priapic priest into a monstrous manipulator whose motivations rarely stray from drunkenness and debauchery.
Support cast sparkles
While the leads — especially Gibson — charge the two-act play with an electric verisimilitude, several supporting players also sparkle.
As Alexandra’s sister, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, actress Amy Blumer plays two terrific scenes with Gibson, one in which Elizabeth describes the bloody aftermath of her husband’s 1905 assassination by bomb and one in which she says goodbye to the empress forever after clashing with her over Rasputin in 1918.
Robert Kovak, the play’s only actor with actual background in the Russian language, shines as the military leader Grand Duke Nikolasha, and 9-year-old actor Christof Deboni portrays a charming Alexie, the medically challenged heir to the throne. As Maria, the governess of the royal family’s five children, Kimberly Panek expresses a wide spectrum of emotions. In the first scene, she glows as she carries into the reception hall the infant son, Alexie, played by a real newborn, Calvin Mele. Later, an arrogant Rasputin ruthlessly rapes Maria who is soon fired after she refuses to acknowledge him as an honored palace guest.
As Nicky’s mother the Dowager Empress Dagmar, Susan Blumer excels as a cranky, autocratic busybody yearning for the dynasty’s glory days while boldly disapproving her son’s inability to send Rasputin packing.
Rounding out the cast are Amy Ligoci, Maya Dwyer, Liz Russell, Esther Richardson, John Price and Michael Penny.
Terror staged tastefully
Covey’s crew — director/costumer Heater, lighting technician Bob Dwyer, prop mistress Susan Blumer and stage manager Tim Hahn — all deserve credit for decisions and effects which smoothly support the script and the cast.
For instance, the difficult rape scene — while bordering on brutal — is convincingly staged, as it must be to confirm Rasputin’s true nature. The final scene of the family’s mass execution depicts terror tastefully as Dwyer’s flashing lights mimic the flurry of gunshots in the basement of a house in the Ural Mountains.
A couple constructive criticisms: while Karen Procopio styled wonderful wigs for the ladies, she seemed befuddled by Rasputin, whose bobby-pin littered straight black coif jarringly clashes with his curly black beard. And, though the action takes place between 1905 and 1918, the royal family never seems to age. Unfortunately, the audience ages plenty as the play times out at two hours and 45 minutes, at least a half-hour too long.
Despite those picayune complaints, “The Romanovs” rises well above the level at which we find most local theater. Heater, who won deserved accolades for last year’s “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe,” has done it again. Syracuse is lucky to have the youthful Heater honing his prodigious talents here. Theatrically speaking, this guy’s a genius.
Covey Theatre Presents Original "Romanovs"
by Tony Curulla - Syracuse Post-Standard
If you like theater with one foot in the fictitious “realm” and the other firmly planted in history, Russian history, that is, then a visit to The Covey Theatre Company’s “The Romanovs” may assuage your desire for an intriguing historical drama. Also, you won’t see it anywhere else (not yet, anyway) because the script is an “in-house” original penned by Covey co-founder Garrett A. Heater. He also directs the production.
Heater’s “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” was given positive reviews and additional accolades last year, and another “historical” original is planned for next year that is based around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It looks as though Central New York will be getting its share of history lessons along with interesting drama—a potentially potent combination.
The work at hand gives us a glimpse into the domestic, as well as the political, milieu involving the Russian ruling family dynasty that lasted approximately three hundred years. This play, however, deals with the last thirteen of those years (1905-1918), when Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra were in power, but were subsequently overthrown by the Bolshevik Revolution that planted the seeds for the eventual communist state.
Within that historical framework, however, what perhaps makes this the stuff of interesting theater is the character of Rasputin, the notorious debauched “monk”, who held so much power and sway within the royal family, and in particular with Alexandra given her belief that Rasputin’s spiritual “connections” had saved the life of her youngest child.
Heater has managed to effectively present these historical personages as flesh and blood entities (with one exception) much because of the efforts of an experienced cast. Chief among them are Katherine Gibson (Alexandra), David Witanowski (Tsar Nicholas II), Susan Blumer (Dagmar, Nicholas’ mother), Kate Huddleston (Anna Vyrubova), Robert Kovak (Grand Duke Nikolasha), and Bruce Paulsen (Rasputin).
The play is starkly presented with minimal scenery and stage props except for the seemingly authentic costuming, dramatic Russian music, and historically informative voice overs. This further necessitates the effective rigors of the actors’ words and movements to keep us “in the moment”.
By and large, this occurs seamlessly with most major roles fulfilled with fidelity and believability. In particular, Gibson’s Alexandra is fraught with a multi-dimensional interpretation that obviates the necessary vacillation between physical and mental strength to psychological weakness. Also, Kovak’s Duke is demonstrative of an opinionated underling who demonstrates strength and even a sense of humor, howbeit often of a mocking cynicism. In fact, Kovak’s character is among the most interesting simply because he has a sense of humor that is outwardly displayed in an otherwise humorless environment.
Paulsen’s Rasputin who, dramatically, becomes a pivotal character in this piece, is too reminiscent of “stock” evil/horror/even monster character renditions. Between a plethora of guttural utterings and gait and movements closer to Frankenstein’s creature than to a deceptive, sinister “holy man”, I was left wondering if the play was attempting to treat history as a Halloween trick.
Most effective scene for its depth and revelation of character occurs between Nicholas and his mother as Witanowski and Blumer parry forth with intimate family secrets, and show the effectiveness of well-written dialogue performed well.
The least effective scene is an unfortunately long, unnecessarily graphic rape scene when Rasputin has his violent way with Marie (Kimberly Panek), the housemaid. Much of the time, particularly in theater, less is more, and certainly, this scene could do a lot more with much less.
Overall, the pace of the production certainly could use some picking up, and this could be achieved through some minor, but judicious, cutting, along with fewer and shorter pauses in movement ,dialogue, and scene changes. Despite the fact that Russian history and literature are slow, weighty and long, I’m not so sure this theatrical portrayal needs to be.
Review of 'Romanovs' misses nuanced acting
Syracuse Post-Standard
To the Editor:
De gustibus non est disputandum and all that, but I can’t help but think that Tony Curulla’s Oct. 20 critique of Bruce Paulsen’s portrayal of Rasputin in Garrett Heater’s “The Romanovs” is way off the mark. True, Paulsen’s Rasputin lurches when he is drunk or dying, but the contrast between such scenes and those when he is on his best behavior and establishing psychological control over Alexandra and her family belies Curulla’s characterization. I should say, rather, that Paulsen’s nuanced performance makes believable the problematic, but historically undeniable, impact of Grigori Rasputin on the Romanov family and Russian history.
Paulsen’s casting and performance is one of the (many) high points in Covey Theatre’s performance of “The Romanovs.”
Jack Miller
Syracuse
Royal Blue
By James MacKillop - Syracuse NewTimes
Only two instances do not establish a pattern, but in his second original drama in less than 12 months, playwright Garrett Heater demarcates clear priorities with The Romanovs. He likes family dramas in which characters are defined in bouncing off each other in roles we all know intuitively: father, mother, children. By taking ambiguous episodes from history, he can begin with ready-made issues and then solve them.
In his November 2010 production of Lizzie Borden Took an Axe, Heater quite plausibly explained how a daughter in an affluent family might murder her parents and get away with it. In The Romanovs, the Covey Theatre Company production now at the Mulroy Civic Center’s BeVard Community Room, Heater leaves himself less room to invent. No matter what their follies and failures, the last Russian royal family is done in by the Bolsheviks. What that leaves Heater to illuminate is the domestic turmoil before the end.
A stage play, novel or movie set in history is entitled to make any invention it wishes. William Shakespeare established the template here. The real live Julius Caesar was not sufficiently clever as to address his assassin, “Et tu, Brute?” and so the Bard had to think it up for him. Similarly, Czar Nicholas II in life was a notorious anti-Semite, the man in whose reign Tevye and his brood were driven from Anatevka. Here he is a man of conscience and a less-than-forceful autocrat. Similarly, the notorious mad monk Rasputin is still revered by latterday mystics in post-Soviet Russia who claim that all you have heard about him comes from biased and inaccurate press. It is with Rasputin, however, that Heater is most inventive.
History is not thrown in the waste basket, however. The 17 scenes, nine in the first act, eight in the second, are all conscientiously dated, from January 1905 to July 17, 1918. Taken directly from contemporary testimony, Heater projects voice-overs from people who care about what is happening to Russia and the royal family, like King George V of England (Bil Hughes), V.I. Lenin (Richard Mulligan) and Yurovsky the assassin (Rob Mulligan). The events of 90 years ago were unquestionably brutal, and their resonances are with us still.
Things begin to go badly for Russia and the royal family 12 years before the storming of the Winter Palace. In a fit of military hubris, the Russians war with the Japanese, the first such conflict between a European and an Asian nation, leading to the Kremlin’s humiliation. In the same year fighting
broke out on the streets in a preview of the enormous upheaval to come. In this production’s bare set, we never see combat or weapons, but we do have uniforms, created by playwright-director Heater.
In those brightly colored uniforms Czar Nicholas (David Witanowski), dressed as the nominal head of the army, confers with his military aide, Grand Duke Nikolasha (Robert Kovak), an ironist and the only wit in the cast. He reports that 93 peasants have been shot during a demonstration. Or was it 4,000? Nicholas is horrified at the loss of life, but also a bit confused. Just how bad was the bloodshed? How did it happen? Who was responsible? These are not just political questions but epistemological ones.
In this well-polished piece of exposition Heater tells us the most important things we need to know about the Czar. He would like to do the right thing, the strongest and most virtuous, if only he knew the truth. And usually he does not. His scolding mother, Dowager Empress Dagmar (Susan Blumer), cannot beat sense into him Most of the action takes place in the royal household. The beautiful, selfpossessed czarina, Empress Alexandra (Katharine Gibson), has just given birth to a son and heir as the action begins. In what may be a community theater first, the infant son Alexie is played by a live but very quiet infant, Calvin Mele, the son of veteran performers Jodi Bova and Josh Mele. When Alexie reaches age 9 or so he is played by Christof Deboni, in what turns out to be one of the most demanding roles in the entire project. Along with a series of florid emotional changes, Alexie must suffer near-death experiences from his hemophilia, the fatal blood disorder.
In scenes of theatrical economy, Heater sketches individual characters for the four Romanov sisters, starting with Olga (Amy Ligoci), the most bookish. He has the most fun with Anastasia (Esther Louise Richardson), the one later thought to have survived to become fodder for hoaxes and conspiracy theories. Here she is a tomboy and scamp, a torment to Alexie.
Alexie’s condition, of course, is greater torment for his parents. Despairing of any hope for a cure from contemporary medicine, Alexandra falls prey to the coaxing of her naïve, flibbertigibbet friend, Anna Vyrubova (Kate Huddleston). She sings the praises of a wonder-working holy man from the boondocks, Grigori Rasputin (Bruce Paulsen), even though she admits, “He smells like a goat.” The holy man promises to heal the child, and he appears to do just that. Once ingratiated in the household, his slimy tentacles slither everywhere.
Up until this point playwright Heater has hewed fairly close to the historical record, but with the mad monk he cuts loose. There may be lots of information about Rasputin, but it is disputed. It was apparently a Bolshevik fabrication that his very name means “licentious.” Heater’s character may draw more from dramatic history or recent news. Does he cavort with followers on the hillside, urging them to “cleanse” themselves through sin? So did Dionysus in Euripides’ The Bacchae. For lack of personal hygiene look to Moliere’s Tartuffe.
Lubriciousness? Try Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry. For hypocrisy and violence Heater might have drawn on Osama bin Laden, the puritan who loved to relax with porn.
That’s a lot of evil for a single actor to project. Bruce Paulsen, very tall and blessed with an opera singer’s sonorous voice, moves and speaks slowly, not unlike Boris Karloff in the 1930s, but with more indecent dialogue. Czar Nicholas, not always oblivious, discerns the calamity the monk promises to be. But Katharine Gibson, one of the most admired leading ladies in community theater, is put to the test in retaining her character Akexandra’s faith in this outrageous charlatan, without seeming a blithering fool.
The audience knows more than the royal family. Seemingly alone in the residence Rasputin violently forces himself upon blameless servant Maria (Kimberly Panek). Rape scenes are meant to shock and disgust. (Compare what happens to Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, which is also on the current local floorboards.) In the name of history and the playwright’s anathema at moral cancer, this pushes the limits here. Paulsen, a radio announcer on WCNY-FM 91.3, advises listeners that one scene is R-rated. It prefigures the even greater violence coming to the Romanovs.
The epic collapse of a 300-yearold dynasty is harder to handle than a hatchet murder in Fall River, Mass. Yet playwright, director and costumer Heater gets us involved with the follies and beauties of this doomed family.
by Tony Curulla - Syracuse Post-Standard
If you like theater with one foot in the fictitious “realm” and the other firmly planted in history, Russian history, that is, then a visit to The Covey Theatre Company’s “The Romanovs” may assuage your desire for an intriguing historical drama. Also, you won’t see it anywhere else (not yet, anyway) because the script is an “in-house” original penned by Covey co-founder Garrett A. Heater. He also directs the production.
Heater’s “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” was given positive reviews and additional accolades last year, and another “historical” original is planned for next year that is based around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It looks as though Central New York will be getting its share of history lessons along with interesting drama—a potentially potent combination.
The work at hand gives us a glimpse into the domestic, as well as the political, milieu involving the Russian ruling family dynasty that lasted approximately three hundred years. This play, however, deals with the last thirteen of those years (1905-1918), when Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra were in power, but were subsequently overthrown by the Bolshevik Revolution that planted the seeds for the eventual communist state.
Within that historical framework, however, what perhaps makes this the stuff of interesting theater is the character of Rasputin, the notorious debauched “monk”, who held so much power and sway within the royal family, and in particular with Alexandra given her belief that Rasputin’s spiritual “connections” had saved the life of her youngest child.
Heater has managed to effectively present these historical personages as flesh and blood entities (with one exception) much because of the efforts of an experienced cast. Chief among them are Katherine Gibson (Alexandra), David Witanowski (Tsar Nicholas II), Susan Blumer (Dagmar, Nicholas’ mother), Kate Huddleston (Anna Vyrubova), Robert Kovak (Grand Duke Nikolasha), and Bruce Paulsen (Rasputin).
The play is starkly presented with minimal scenery and stage props except for the seemingly authentic costuming, dramatic Russian music, and historically informative voice overs. This further necessitates the effective rigors of the actors’ words and movements to keep us “in the moment”.
By and large, this occurs seamlessly with most major roles fulfilled with fidelity and believability. In particular, Gibson’s Alexandra is fraught with a multi-dimensional interpretation that obviates the necessary vacillation between physical and mental strength to psychological weakness. Also, Kovak’s Duke is demonstrative of an opinionated underling who demonstrates strength and even a sense of humor, howbeit often of a mocking cynicism. In fact, Kovak’s character is among the most interesting simply because he has a sense of humor that is outwardly displayed in an otherwise humorless environment.
Paulsen’s Rasputin who, dramatically, becomes a pivotal character in this piece, is too reminiscent of “stock” evil/horror/even monster character renditions. Between a plethora of guttural utterings and gait and movements closer to Frankenstein’s creature than to a deceptive, sinister “holy man”, I was left wondering if the play was attempting to treat history as a Halloween trick.
Most effective scene for its depth and revelation of character occurs between Nicholas and his mother as Witanowski and Blumer parry forth with intimate family secrets, and show the effectiveness of well-written dialogue performed well.
The least effective scene is an unfortunately long, unnecessarily graphic rape scene when Rasputin has his violent way with Marie (Kimberly Panek), the housemaid. Much of the time, particularly in theater, less is more, and certainly, this scene could do a lot more with much less.
Overall, the pace of the production certainly could use some picking up, and this could be achieved through some minor, but judicious, cutting, along with fewer and shorter pauses in movement ,dialogue, and scene changes. Despite the fact that Russian history and literature are slow, weighty and long, I’m not so sure this theatrical portrayal needs to be.
Review of 'Romanovs' misses nuanced acting
Syracuse Post-Standard
To the Editor:
De gustibus non est disputandum and all that, but I can’t help but think that Tony Curulla’s Oct. 20 critique of Bruce Paulsen’s portrayal of Rasputin in Garrett Heater’s “The Romanovs” is way off the mark. True, Paulsen’s Rasputin lurches when he is drunk or dying, but the contrast between such scenes and those when he is on his best behavior and establishing psychological control over Alexandra and her family belies Curulla’s characterization. I should say, rather, that Paulsen’s nuanced performance makes believable the problematic, but historically undeniable, impact of Grigori Rasputin on the Romanov family and Russian history.
Paulsen’s casting and performance is one of the (many) high points in Covey Theatre’s performance of “The Romanovs.”
Jack Miller
Syracuse
Royal Blue
By James MacKillop - Syracuse NewTimes
Only two instances do not establish a pattern, but in his second original drama in less than 12 months, playwright Garrett Heater demarcates clear priorities with The Romanovs. He likes family dramas in which characters are defined in bouncing off each other in roles we all know intuitively: father, mother, children. By taking ambiguous episodes from history, he can begin with ready-made issues and then solve them.
In his November 2010 production of Lizzie Borden Took an Axe, Heater quite plausibly explained how a daughter in an affluent family might murder her parents and get away with it. In The Romanovs, the Covey Theatre Company production now at the Mulroy Civic Center’s BeVard Community Room, Heater leaves himself less room to invent. No matter what their follies and failures, the last Russian royal family is done in by the Bolsheviks. What that leaves Heater to illuminate is the domestic turmoil before the end.
A stage play, novel or movie set in history is entitled to make any invention it wishes. William Shakespeare established the template here. The real live Julius Caesar was not sufficiently clever as to address his assassin, “Et tu, Brute?” and so the Bard had to think it up for him. Similarly, Czar Nicholas II in life was a notorious anti-Semite, the man in whose reign Tevye and his brood were driven from Anatevka. Here he is a man of conscience and a less-than-forceful autocrat. Similarly, the notorious mad monk Rasputin is still revered by latterday mystics in post-Soviet Russia who claim that all you have heard about him comes from biased and inaccurate press. It is with Rasputin, however, that Heater is most inventive.
History is not thrown in the waste basket, however. The 17 scenes, nine in the first act, eight in the second, are all conscientiously dated, from January 1905 to July 17, 1918. Taken directly from contemporary testimony, Heater projects voice-overs from people who care about what is happening to Russia and the royal family, like King George V of England (Bil Hughes), V.I. Lenin (Richard Mulligan) and Yurovsky the assassin (Rob Mulligan). The events of 90 years ago were unquestionably brutal, and their resonances are with us still.
Things begin to go badly for Russia and the royal family 12 years before the storming of the Winter Palace. In a fit of military hubris, the Russians war with the Japanese, the first such conflict between a European and an Asian nation, leading to the Kremlin’s humiliation. In the same year fighting
broke out on the streets in a preview of the enormous upheaval to come. In this production’s bare set, we never see combat or weapons, but we do have uniforms, created by playwright-director Heater.
In those brightly colored uniforms Czar Nicholas (David Witanowski), dressed as the nominal head of the army, confers with his military aide, Grand Duke Nikolasha (Robert Kovak), an ironist and the only wit in the cast. He reports that 93 peasants have been shot during a demonstration. Or was it 4,000? Nicholas is horrified at the loss of life, but also a bit confused. Just how bad was the bloodshed? How did it happen? Who was responsible? These are not just political questions but epistemological ones.
In this well-polished piece of exposition Heater tells us the most important things we need to know about the Czar. He would like to do the right thing, the strongest and most virtuous, if only he knew the truth. And usually he does not. His scolding mother, Dowager Empress Dagmar (Susan Blumer), cannot beat sense into him Most of the action takes place in the royal household. The beautiful, selfpossessed czarina, Empress Alexandra (Katharine Gibson), has just given birth to a son and heir as the action begins. In what may be a community theater first, the infant son Alexie is played by a live but very quiet infant, Calvin Mele, the son of veteran performers Jodi Bova and Josh Mele. When Alexie reaches age 9 or so he is played by Christof Deboni, in what turns out to be one of the most demanding roles in the entire project. Along with a series of florid emotional changes, Alexie must suffer near-death experiences from his hemophilia, the fatal blood disorder.
In scenes of theatrical economy, Heater sketches individual characters for the four Romanov sisters, starting with Olga (Amy Ligoci), the most bookish. He has the most fun with Anastasia (Esther Louise Richardson), the one later thought to have survived to become fodder for hoaxes and conspiracy theories. Here she is a tomboy and scamp, a torment to Alexie.
Alexie’s condition, of course, is greater torment for his parents. Despairing of any hope for a cure from contemporary medicine, Alexandra falls prey to the coaxing of her naïve, flibbertigibbet friend, Anna Vyrubova (Kate Huddleston). She sings the praises of a wonder-working holy man from the boondocks, Grigori Rasputin (Bruce Paulsen), even though she admits, “He smells like a goat.” The holy man promises to heal the child, and he appears to do just that. Once ingratiated in the household, his slimy tentacles slither everywhere.
Up until this point playwright Heater has hewed fairly close to the historical record, but with the mad monk he cuts loose. There may be lots of information about Rasputin, but it is disputed. It was apparently a Bolshevik fabrication that his very name means “licentious.” Heater’s character may draw more from dramatic history or recent news. Does he cavort with followers on the hillside, urging them to “cleanse” themselves through sin? So did Dionysus in Euripides’ The Bacchae. For lack of personal hygiene look to Moliere’s Tartuffe.
Lubriciousness? Try Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry. For hypocrisy and violence Heater might have drawn on Osama bin Laden, the puritan who loved to relax with porn.
That’s a lot of evil for a single actor to project. Bruce Paulsen, very tall and blessed with an opera singer’s sonorous voice, moves and speaks slowly, not unlike Boris Karloff in the 1930s, but with more indecent dialogue. Czar Nicholas, not always oblivious, discerns the calamity the monk promises to be. But Katharine Gibson, one of the most admired leading ladies in community theater, is put to the test in retaining her character Akexandra’s faith in this outrageous charlatan, without seeming a blithering fool.
The audience knows more than the royal family. Seemingly alone in the residence Rasputin violently forces himself upon blameless servant Maria (Kimberly Panek). Rape scenes are meant to shock and disgust. (Compare what happens to Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, which is also on the current local floorboards.) In the name of history and the playwright’s anathema at moral cancer, this pushes the limits here. Paulsen, a radio announcer on WCNY-FM 91.3, advises listeners that one scene is R-rated. It prefigures the even greater violence coming to the Romanovs.
The epic collapse of a 300-yearold dynasty is harder to handle than a hatchet murder in Fall River, Mass. Yet playwright, director and costumer Heater gets us involved with the follies and beauties of this doomed family.
Lizzie Borden Took an Axe
Production in Fall River, MA
August 2011
A big THANK YOU to all of our supporters on Kickstarter who pledged over $3,500 to send our cast to Fall River, MA where we performed the show twice in Lizzie's hometown! Here we are (sans Kate Huddleston, our wonderful Abby Borden) outside the actual home where the murders occurred, which is now a delightful bed and breakfast! We were also able to view vintage Borden artifacts at the Fall River Historical Society including the blood-stained bedspread from the guest room where Abby was murdered, her severed false hair piece, the hatchet head which is still considered the murder weapon, and many authentic photos of the home and it's infamous inhabitants. Our cast had a truly wonderful time and you helped give Covey Theatre its first official tour! Thanks again!!!
Tattered Fabric: Fall River's Lizzie Borden
Review by Faye Musselman
The play delivers absolutely all it says in the program. Most all voice-overs were lifted verbatim directly from inquest, preliminary or trial testimony. The play manages to interject the incest theory in a way that will give you pause for re-consideration if you’ve never bought into it before.
What I particularly liked was that the characters, except for Uncle John Morse, were age appropriate. Even Carmen Viviano-Grafts bore a striking resemblance to Emma Borden from the most known photo of her. She played Emma with just the right mixture of loyal and nurturing sister coupled with what we know to be Emma’s own fierce dislike of her stepmother.
Garrett Heater, writer/director, did a very, VERY good job interjecting the more known theories such as a possible daliance twixt Lizzie and Dr. Bowen. The later played by Jordan Glaski was excellent in conveying his concern for Lizzie,while suspending your belief in his actually BEING a doctor. His portrayal was consistent in the professionalism of his character but was subtle enough in keeping you guessing about their true relationship – again a credit to writing as well as delivery.
Kate Huddleston played Abby Borden and her portrayal was reminiscent of Abby’s character in the 1975 Legend of Lizzie Borden made-for-tv movie. Often shrill, always unappealing, a person not well read on the case would believe she was just as portrayed. Poor Abby gets a bad rap because there’s nothing to validate she was anything but kind to those girls for as long as possible. Kate does a terrific job in showing her loyalty to her husband while still conveying her strong interest in the legacy of his money. We can understand her, we can even sympathize with the burdens she endured, but we do not like her. Kudos to Kate! Not an easy role.
The primary character, of course, is Lizzie and her part was played beautifully by Katharine Gibson. Through dialog we understand why she hated Abby, through acting and writing we are never certain as to whether or not she did it. Her particular acting chops, I think, came out when her father wants to take her “down to the basement”, an obvious location and metaphor for sexual abuse. We know she is 32, we know her father dominates. But Ms. Gibson does such a wonderful job we find it totally credible that it just very well may have happened that way – thus, explaining the rage of the act, if you choose to believe Lizzie guilty. Katharine was the obvious standout performer of the cast but I tend to think their talents fed into her own.
The set was minimalistic but seemed to be so much more because of the staging. (Thus, less is more.) The use of lighting was exceptional during the two periods of time of the slaying. Bright red lighting as the backdrop to intense music, leaving much to the imagination and leaving the audience to imagine an intruder, Lizzie or an unnamed other. Totally plausible. Totally believable. Strong stuff and very well executed.
My favorite part of the entire play was a monologue delivered by “Andrew” in the second act. Played by Bernard Kaplan he speaks of “what your mother would have wanted for you” (meaning their real mother) in a suspended state with Lizzie and Emma frozen on stage. The writing here was absolutely terrific. It had me riveted throughout and stayed with me for days. In fact, as I write this, I am still haunted by it. Beautiful writing, Garrett, and so well spoken by Mr. Kaplan. “Andrew” also did a very believable job when putting his lascivious hands on Lizzie and first coercing her, then demanding of her that she go “down to the basement”. Not an easy thing to do and it could have come out corny or clumsy but Bernard did it very well.
Beth Schmidt played Maggie with a most believable accent and was quite convincing; Susan Blumer made a good Churchill; C. J. Parsons equally as good as John Morse and Jodie Baum gave us shades of Alice we may not have thought of before. All in all, the entire cast was excellent. The set was excellent. The use of lighting and music was superb, but the writing – the writing which weaves so well the many threads of this tale was absolutely exceptional!!
I’ve seen several plays on the Borden case, including musicals, including a ballet, and so far, this is now my very favorite of all I’ve seen. I would see it again. And again. And if YOU haven’t – you should. Absolutely.
Art
July 2011
Molesky: Hilarity to Pathos in Final CNY RoleBy Tony Curulla
Syracuse Post Standard
The Covey Theatre Company, yet again, presents unusual, interesting drama (recently presented “The Graduate”, and last year, the original play, “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe”) in offering the ninety-minute, one-act serio-comedy, “Art”.
This tight, emotional rollercoaster by French playwright Yasmina Reza from 1994, won the Olivier Award for best comedy in 1998 and a Tony Award the same year for best play.
This is an “actor’s play”, and director Garrett Heater has cast three of the best in choosing Bill Molesky (Yvan), Michael O’Neill (Serge), and Josh Mele (Marc). And what an appropriate choice for Molesky’s “send off” performance (he’s re-locating to Florida in the fall) for Central New York audiences! I say “appropriate choice” because this rather small, very focused play allows for large acting stretches from full-blown hilarity to high seriousness , and even to pathos, and Molesky, true to practiced form, dives headlong into all three emotional realms.
When Marc discovers that his good friend, Serge, has paid 200,000 francs (approximately $40,000!) for a “white painting”, or what Marc sees as, essentially, a blank canvas, he becomes overly emotional and incensed that Serge could do such a thing, and questions Serge’s values.
Marc confers with a mutually good friend, Yvan, about the situation, and the latter withholds judgment until he sees the painting. Upon viewing, Yvan, in the spirit of compromise and understanding, admits that, to him, the work does have artistic merit, however “modern” and unconventional. This sends Marc further off the emotional cliff into a state of outright anger because he is incapable of understanding the concept beyond the mere visual. Of course, much of the comedy is mined from the incongruities between the actual subject and the levels of anger and even feelings of outright betrayal that these three skilled actors are able to put forth.
Not only is Mele’s Marc impetuous in his out-of-hand dismissal of the painting, but he has become unnerved and driven to psychological areas separate from the discussion. Molesky’s Yvan, burdened by a plethora of personal problems from questioning his upcoming marriage to dealing with a nagging mother, is more interested in restoring peace among the three friends, especially since he has so little of it in his life at home. Both Marc and Yvan seem to be “cut” from similar emotional cloth.
On the other hand, O’Neill’s Serge, a calculating exercise in cool intellect and logic, baits both of his friends with controlled commentary as starched and stiff as his crisp slacks and shirt, leading the three into a frenzy of criticisms and questions of their life choices that goes way beyond the original subject of the painting, or even of anything related to aesthetics.
What is so riveting about the piece is not so much anything that comes from subject matter or plot reversal, but it is the sheer quickness in shifts of emotions that the three actors have honed to such a sharp edge. It is through the deft handling of these mercurial rhythms of the play that this drama is firmly hammered home.
The play’s title and its visual focus on a “modern” painting is somewhat of a “red herring” in that it’s not really so much about “art”, or even the larger discussion of aesthetics. However, if art is supposed to reflect real life, then the play’s complexities (like the modern painting in question) are driven by a surface simplicity. It’s not a “what you see is what you get” scenario as much as it is a “there’s a lot more here than meets the eye” as we witness these characters dissembling and revealing, simultaneously.
Syracuse Post Standard
The Covey Theatre Company, yet again, presents unusual, interesting drama (recently presented “The Graduate”, and last year, the original play, “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe”) in offering the ninety-minute, one-act serio-comedy, “Art”.
This tight, emotional rollercoaster by French playwright Yasmina Reza from 1994, won the Olivier Award for best comedy in 1998 and a Tony Award the same year for best play.
This is an “actor’s play”, and director Garrett Heater has cast three of the best in choosing Bill Molesky (Yvan), Michael O’Neill (Serge), and Josh Mele (Marc). And what an appropriate choice for Molesky’s “send off” performance (he’s re-locating to Florida in the fall) for Central New York audiences! I say “appropriate choice” because this rather small, very focused play allows for large acting stretches from full-blown hilarity to high seriousness , and even to pathos, and Molesky, true to practiced form, dives headlong into all three emotional realms.
When Marc discovers that his good friend, Serge, has paid 200,000 francs (approximately $40,000!) for a “white painting”, or what Marc sees as, essentially, a blank canvas, he becomes overly emotional and incensed that Serge could do such a thing, and questions Serge’s values.
Marc confers with a mutually good friend, Yvan, about the situation, and the latter withholds judgment until he sees the painting. Upon viewing, Yvan, in the spirit of compromise and understanding, admits that, to him, the work does have artistic merit, however “modern” and unconventional. This sends Marc further off the emotional cliff into a state of outright anger because he is incapable of understanding the concept beyond the mere visual. Of course, much of the comedy is mined from the incongruities between the actual subject and the levels of anger and even feelings of outright betrayal that these three skilled actors are able to put forth.
Not only is Mele’s Marc impetuous in his out-of-hand dismissal of the painting, but he has become unnerved and driven to psychological areas separate from the discussion. Molesky’s Yvan, burdened by a plethora of personal problems from questioning his upcoming marriage to dealing with a nagging mother, is more interested in restoring peace among the three friends, especially since he has so little of it in his life at home. Both Marc and Yvan seem to be “cut” from similar emotional cloth.
On the other hand, O’Neill’s Serge, a calculating exercise in cool intellect and logic, baits both of his friends with controlled commentary as starched and stiff as his crisp slacks and shirt, leading the three into a frenzy of criticisms and questions of their life choices that goes way beyond the original subject of the painting, or even of anything related to aesthetics.
What is so riveting about the piece is not so much anything that comes from subject matter or plot reversal, but it is the sheer quickness in shifts of emotions that the three actors have honed to such a sharp edge. It is through the deft handling of these mercurial rhythms of the play that this drama is firmly hammered home.
The play’s title and its visual focus on a “modern” painting is somewhat of a “red herring” in that it’s not really so much about “art”, or even the larger discussion of aesthetics. However, if art is supposed to reflect real life, then the play’s complexities (like the modern painting in question) are driven by a surface simplicity. It’s not a “what you see is what you get” scenario as much as it is a “there’s a lot more here than meets the eye” as we witness these characters dissembling and revealing, simultaneously.
Bill of Goods
by Jim MacKillop, Syracuse NewTimes
A juicy role in the play Art provides a serendipitous swan song for actor Bill Molesky
With community companies we usually expect the play to be the thing. Directors start with shows, such as The Sound of Music or Reefer Madness, and then search for a cast. Not this time. For the Covey Theatre Company’s production of Art, now at the Mulroy Civic Center’s BeVard Community Room, we start with the cast.
Even without being the top winner (seven times!) at the Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) Awards, Bill Molesky has enjoyed incomparable prestige among his colleagues. Now that he has sworn to leave town at the end of summer, Molesky had to appear in something as a finale and a farewell. After a false start with another project by playwright Yasmina Reza, director Garrett Heater turned to her Art, about three guys and a white painting. As expected, Molesky’s role, Yvan, favorably exploits his prominent strengths. More surprising is that the other two players, Michael O’Neill and Josh Mele, both SALT winners, are never overshadowed. This is a play about male bonding and friendship.
Art, which opened in Paris in 1994, has been one of the world’s most produced stage works over the last 20 years for many good reasons. The verbal wit, well-polished in Christopher Hampton’s translation, retains all its incisiveness and penetration. It’s that rare comedy of ideas where no one is excluded from the joke, but deep enough to provoke post-theater conversation again and again.
Better yet, each production, even without changing a word, keeps giving us a different drama. When Art moved to London in 1996, the star was presumed to be Albert Finney as Serge, the haughty aesthete who buys the painting that sets the argument in motion. When Art moved to New York City, Victor Garber’s Serge lost ground to the cynical Marc played by Alan Alda, whom audiences had not seen so edgy before.
The three Parisian men describe themselves often as “best friends” and have been getting together for 15 years for a boys’ night out. As recounted by Marc (Josh Mele) in an opening monologue, the evening’s light entertainment began slowly because Yvan (Bill Molesky) was late again. In the interval, the host, Serge (Michael O’Neill), a dermatologist, proudly announces to Marc alone that he has just purchased a painting for 200,000 francs (about $35,000 when Art premiered). Attributed to a fictional artist name Andrios, Serge is convinced he has an artistic treasure and also a sound investment. The gallery owner would buy it now for 220,000 francs. Marc, an aeronautical engineer, curtly deflates Serge’s vanity of possession with a snap judgment: “It’s shit.”
Yvan, whose tolerance has been described as a liability, tries to find a middle ground. He also wants to please. When he privately hears Marc’s rant against the painting, he smiles and nods agreement. Later, alone at Serge’s place, he claims to be moved by the painting’s subtle power. This middle ground is quickly discovered by both Serge and Marc. They pelt Yvan with brickbats like “spineless,” ”coward” and “amoeba.”
The painting is a 3-by-4-foot rectangle.
Serge would have us believe that there are many different shades of white as well as streaks of gray and light blue, but we don’t see them. Upon inspection, at least from the seats where critics sit, we can perceive tex tured patterns across the surface. These evanescent details are not enough to assure that Serge isn’t displaying the work upside down.
Although the name Andrios is Reza’s invention, the all-white painting is no mere playwright’s contrivance. Kasimir Malevich, a now forgotten Russian Supremist, produced the original white-on-white canvas in 1918. As Reza employs Serge’s painting here, it is a stand-in for modernism, which started around the time of Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” in 1907 and has been losing ground to post-modernism recently. Modernism was always confrontational and argumentative. Modern art, whether it was Dadaism in painting or Serialism in music, was always about taking a stand. The new art asked the viewer or listener to forget those needs bred into us from evolution, like the craving for comfort, beauty and reassurance, and to seize the revolutionary aesthetic.
Although Reza pointedly links each man with a profession, they remain flesh and do not become manipulable symbols. Serge, the dermatologist, makes his living on surfaces and appearance. Marc, the aeronautical engineer, is a practical man of science and an iconoclast. His emperor never wears clothes. If the play were American rather than French, he’d be ranting against elitists. What makes him French is a quality we find rarely in the United States outside special military units and certain cults, a kind of non-erotic embrace. Marc is affronted and wounded that Serge has taken to the painting in the first place. Mending that broken bond is what leads to Art’s unexpected conclusion.
The most human of the three, if not the most admirable, is the schlemiel Yvan. He has the two best comic speeches in the play, one short, one long. In the short he defines life from his limited perspective: “Marriage, children, death, stationery.” In the show-stopping aria of whining, Yvan must spin out a zigzagging narrative of misdeeds that might have come toward the end of a Feydeau farce. It’s a bravura moment for Molesky as Yvan explains how his future in-laws dominate his life and his accommodating unwillingness to get into fights makes life miserable and how it will doom his upcoming marriage.
With his rich baritone and heavy dark brows, Molesky was not built to be your average light comedian. The greatest contribution his persona gives to Yvan is a moral weight that will not let the character be blown off, as he has been in other productions, when Serge and Marc make their peace. The character from the Molesky repertory this Yvan most resembles is his almost Tolstoyan portrayal of Lady Bracknell in Simply New Theatre’s 2008 production of The Importance of Being Earnest, whose gravity paradoxically made the absurdity of her concerns even funnier. This Yvan plumbs an existential angst that Serge and Marc do not know. “You’re always talking about yourself,” Serge observes unsympathically.
Engineer Marc, as embodied by Josh Mele, one of our best-known tenors, could hardly make a sharper contrast with Yvan. With the precise speaking voice only trained singers have, Mele’s Marc is angrier and more forceful than those who have come before, while still crackling with humor. Marc speaks to us first in a soliloquy, and his disgust with the painting drives the action. It is Mele’s passion and solidity that carry Marc on the longest arc of any character.
With a new white beard, Michael O’Neill is the oldest of the trio and also the tallest. Perhaps it is O’Neill’s many appearances in nice-guy roles that give his Serge unusual sympathy. He also can make plausible Serge’s assertion that there really is something in the painting if we only had the patience and heightened sensibility to see it. But when combat comes with Marc, O’Neill’s Serge can throw a stinging jab.
Director Garrett Heater keeps the trio constantly on the move. His resolution of the fraternal conflict is surer and more convincing than that in other local productions. And with enormous changes at the last moment, his Covey Theater Company enters a second year with sure footing.
by Jim MacKillop, Syracuse NewTimes
A juicy role in the play Art provides a serendipitous swan song for actor Bill Molesky
With community companies we usually expect the play to be the thing. Directors start with shows, such as The Sound of Music or Reefer Madness, and then search for a cast. Not this time. For the Covey Theatre Company’s production of Art, now at the Mulroy Civic Center’s BeVard Community Room, we start with the cast.
Even without being the top winner (seven times!) at the Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) Awards, Bill Molesky has enjoyed incomparable prestige among his colleagues. Now that he has sworn to leave town at the end of summer, Molesky had to appear in something as a finale and a farewell. After a false start with another project by playwright Yasmina Reza, director Garrett Heater turned to her Art, about three guys and a white painting. As expected, Molesky’s role, Yvan, favorably exploits his prominent strengths. More surprising is that the other two players, Michael O’Neill and Josh Mele, both SALT winners, are never overshadowed. This is a play about male bonding and friendship.
Art, which opened in Paris in 1994, has been one of the world’s most produced stage works over the last 20 years for many good reasons. The verbal wit, well-polished in Christopher Hampton’s translation, retains all its incisiveness and penetration. It’s that rare comedy of ideas where no one is excluded from the joke, but deep enough to provoke post-theater conversation again and again.
Better yet, each production, even without changing a word, keeps giving us a different drama. When Art moved to London in 1996, the star was presumed to be Albert Finney as Serge, the haughty aesthete who buys the painting that sets the argument in motion. When Art moved to New York City, Victor Garber’s Serge lost ground to the cynical Marc played by Alan Alda, whom audiences had not seen so edgy before.
The three Parisian men describe themselves often as “best friends” and have been getting together for 15 years for a boys’ night out. As recounted by Marc (Josh Mele) in an opening monologue, the evening’s light entertainment began slowly because Yvan (Bill Molesky) was late again. In the interval, the host, Serge (Michael O’Neill), a dermatologist, proudly announces to Marc alone that he has just purchased a painting for 200,000 francs (about $35,000 when Art premiered). Attributed to a fictional artist name Andrios, Serge is convinced he has an artistic treasure and also a sound investment. The gallery owner would buy it now for 220,000 francs. Marc, an aeronautical engineer, curtly deflates Serge’s vanity of possession with a snap judgment: “It’s shit.”
Yvan, whose tolerance has been described as a liability, tries to find a middle ground. He also wants to please. When he privately hears Marc’s rant against the painting, he smiles and nods agreement. Later, alone at Serge’s place, he claims to be moved by the painting’s subtle power. This middle ground is quickly discovered by both Serge and Marc. They pelt Yvan with brickbats like “spineless,” ”coward” and “amoeba.”
The painting is a 3-by-4-foot rectangle.
Serge would have us believe that there are many different shades of white as well as streaks of gray and light blue, but we don’t see them. Upon inspection, at least from the seats where critics sit, we can perceive tex tured patterns across the surface. These evanescent details are not enough to assure that Serge isn’t displaying the work upside down.
Although the name Andrios is Reza’s invention, the all-white painting is no mere playwright’s contrivance. Kasimir Malevich, a now forgotten Russian Supremist, produced the original white-on-white canvas in 1918. As Reza employs Serge’s painting here, it is a stand-in for modernism, which started around the time of Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” in 1907 and has been losing ground to post-modernism recently. Modernism was always confrontational and argumentative. Modern art, whether it was Dadaism in painting or Serialism in music, was always about taking a stand. The new art asked the viewer or listener to forget those needs bred into us from evolution, like the craving for comfort, beauty and reassurance, and to seize the revolutionary aesthetic.
Although Reza pointedly links each man with a profession, they remain flesh and do not become manipulable symbols. Serge, the dermatologist, makes his living on surfaces and appearance. Marc, the aeronautical engineer, is a practical man of science and an iconoclast. His emperor never wears clothes. If the play were American rather than French, he’d be ranting against elitists. What makes him French is a quality we find rarely in the United States outside special military units and certain cults, a kind of non-erotic embrace. Marc is affronted and wounded that Serge has taken to the painting in the first place. Mending that broken bond is what leads to Art’s unexpected conclusion.
The most human of the three, if not the most admirable, is the schlemiel Yvan. He has the two best comic speeches in the play, one short, one long. In the short he defines life from his limited perspective: “Marriage, children, death, stationery.” In the show-stopping aria of whining, Yvan must spin out a zigzagging narrative of misdeeds that might have come toward the end of a Feydeau farce. It’s a bravura moment for Molesky as Yvan explains how his future in-laws dominate his life and his accommodating unwillingness to get into fights makes life miserable and how it will doom his upcoming marriage.
With his rich baritone and heavy dark brows, Molesky was not built to be your average light comedian. The greatest contribution his persona gives to Yvan is a moral weight that will not let the character be blown off, as he has been in other productions, when Serge and Marc make their peace. The character from the Molesky repertory this Yvan most resembles is his almost Tolstoyan portrayal of Lady Bracknell in Simply New Theatre’s 2008 production of The Importance of Being Earnest, whose gravity paradoxically made the absurdity of her concerns even funnier. This Yvan plumbs an existential angst that Serge and Marc do not know. “You’re always talking about yourself,” Serge observes unsympathically.
Engineer Marc, as embodied by Josh Mele, one of our best-known tenors, could hardly make a sharper contrast with Yvan. With the precise speaking voice only trained singers have, Mele’s Marc is angrier and more forceful than those who have come before, while still crackling with humor. Marc speaks to us first in a soliloquy, and his disgust with the painting drives the action. It is Mele’s passion and solidity that carry Marc on the longest arc of any character.
With a new white beard, Michael O’Neill is the oldest of the trio and also the tallest. Perhaps it is O’Neill’s many appearances in nice-guy roles that give his Serge unusual sympathy. He also can make plausible Serge’s assertion that there really is something in the painting if we only had the patience and heightened sensibility to see it. But when combat comes with Marc, O’Neill’s Serge can throw a stinging jab.
Director Garrett Heater keeps the trio constantly on the move. His resolution of the fraternal conflict is surer and more convincing than that in other local productions. And with enormous changes at the last moment, his Covey Theater Company enters a second year with sure footing.
The Graduate
May 2011
Covey Theatre Provokes Thought and Laughter With "Graduate"
by Tony Curulla
Syracuse Post-Standard
Ernest Hemingway is reputed to have said, “All of American Literature begins with a book by Mark Twain called “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.
A similar idea might be true for the new genre of American films that were born in the 1960’s and 70’s. Perhaps the proliferation of iconic, breakthrough films of that era from directors like Scorsese, Hopper, Coppola, Cimino, Penn, and others began in 1967 with a film by Mike Nichols called “The Graduate”. I think that statement could certainly be construed to be as true, or at least, as convincing, as Hemingway’s.
Covey Theatre Company offers the stage production of “The Graduate” some forty-four years later, and the premise is as relevant today as it was in the 1960’s because like any quality piece of stage, film, or written literature, it’s not about an era, fashions, music, or even Simon and Garfunkel (as great as that soundtrack is!). It’s about human behavior that isn’t defined by a generation or a calendar.
Well-deserved kudos go to director Garrett Heater for underscoring Terry Johnson’s stage adaptation as being a separate entity from the film by not replicating the incomparable church sequence, and by filling the musical interludes with recognizable songs from the era, sans Simon and Garfunkel.
To sum up this play’s premise would be tantamount to re-stating the premise of something as well-known as “The Wizard of Oz”, however, just as a basic reminder: Benjamin Braddock (Rob Fonda), newly graduated from college is disillusioned, confused, and seeking direction in his life. He feels alienated from his family, as well as all of his family’s friends and relatives.
Despite the exhortations by his father (Bob Fullenbaum), and mother (Katheryn Guyette) to be more social and open, Benjamin, instead, falls prey to the seductive advances of one of their friends, Mrs. Robinson (Moe Harrington).
Things get really complicated, however, when he falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (Kimberly Panek), and his feelings are eventually reciprocated. This whole scenario, of course, gets further seasoning when Mrs. Robinson’s husband (Wil Szczech) finds out, first about his wife’s affair, and then about the fact that Benjamin is in love with his daughter.
Szczech brings a convincing comic urbanity to the role as he initially advises Benjamin about the positive future in “plastics” (a purposeful and unobstructed metaphor for the emptiness and falseness that Benjamin perceives around him), and later, his palpable anger over the situation fluctuates from control to absurd comedy.
Both Fullenbaum and Guyette are perfect as the well-meaning, but clueless parents who would just give anything to be able to get through to their son. Their many attempts through cajoling and yelling provide much in the way of comedy borne from recognizable frustration.
Of course, the seminal scenes between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson are what make for sparks, and even steam, at times, in that the production includes several scenes of partial nudity and one of full nudity accompanied by judicious lighting by Michael Blagys.
Fonda’s innocence and awkwardness, never overplayed, is balanced in the right measure by Harrington’s seductive persistence and visceral determination as the experienced older woman who exudes charm and danger, simultaneously.
Harrington bares all in ‘The Graduate’
Maureen “Moe” Harrington delivers a bravura performance as Mrs. Robinson in the Covey Theatre Company’s version of “The Graduate” closing this weekend at the Civic Center’s Bevard Theater, downtown.
DOWNTOWN AFTER DARK for The Eagle May 19, 2011 By RUSS TARBY
If you’re a regular theatergoer here in Central New York, you may think you’ve seen a lot of actress Moe Harrington.After all, she played Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl,” Keeley Stevens in “Pete’N Keeley,” Ellen in Jeff Kramer’s “Lowdown Lies” and Officer Celeste Luna in Donna Stuccio’s “Elegy in Blue,” not to mention any number of other leading roles as well as her annual self-produced cabarets.Unless you’re her husband, however, you’ve never seen her the way she appears as Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate,” playing through this weekend at the Civic Center’s Bevard Theater.That’s right, Moe sheds every stitch in one memorable scene early in Act 1.Not only is the actress’s flesh exposed in this stage version of the famous 1967 film.
So is her soul.Her acting chops have never been better, and Harrington capably captures Mrs. Robinson’s devil-may-care approach to life and love. Her portrayal of the booze-addled, unfaithful wife is a dynamic performance full of highs and lows including shouting and whispering, dressing and undressing, fighting and fornicating…
Under the watchful eye of director Garrett Heater, the entire cast of this “Graduate” follow Harrington’s lead to turn in yeoman performances. Rob Fonda portrays Benjamin, the recent college graduate who’s the object of Mrs. Robinson’s seduction. Wil Szczech plays the cuckolded Mr. Robinson. Bob Fullenbaum and Katheryn Guyette portray Benjamin’s pushy parents and Kimberly Panek plays the Robinson’s attractive, college-age daughter.
In minor roles Geno Parlato, Erica Dutelle, Basil Allen and Bruce Paulsen round out the cast.Since playwright Terry Johnson adapted the story for the stage by drawing upon the original novel by Charles Webb, don’t expect a scene-for-scene recreation of the film. But do expect an often gripping, occasionally humorous and always well-acted version of this coming-of-age classic.
by Tony Curulla
Syracuse Post-Standard
Ernest Hemingway is reputed to have said, “All of American Literature begins with a book by Mark Twain called “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.
A similar idea might be true for the new genre of American films that were born in the 1960’s and 70’s. Perhaps the proliferation of iconic, breakthrough films of that era from directors like Scorsese, Hopper, Coppola, Cimino, Penn, and others began in 1967 with a film by Mike Nichols called “The Graduate”. I think that statement could certainly be construed to be as true, or at least, as convincing, as Hemingway’s.
Covey Theatre Company offers the stage production of “The Graduate” some forty-four years later, and the premise is as relevant today as it was in the 1960’s because like any quality piece of stage, film, or written literature, it’s not about an era, fashions, music, or even Simon and Garfunkel (as great as that soundtrack is!). It’s about human behavior that isn’t defined by a generation or a calendar.
Well-deserved kudos go to director Garrett Heater for underscoring Terry Johnson’s stage adaptation as being a separate entity from the film by not replicating the incomparable church sequence, and by filling the musical interludes with recognizable songs from the era, sans Simon and Garfunkel.
To sum up this play’s premise would be tantamount to re-stating the premise of something as well-known as “The Wizard of Oz”, however, just as a basic reminder: Benjamin Braddock (Rob Fonda), newly graduated from college is disillusioned, confused, and seeking direction in his life. He feels alienated from his family, as well as all of his family’s friends and relatives.
Despite the exhortations by his father (Bob Fullenbaum), and mother (Katheryn Guyette) to be more social and open, Benjamin, instead, falls prey to the seductive advances of one of their friends, Mrs. Robinson (Moe Harrington).
Things get really complicated, however, when he falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (Kimberly Panek), and his feelings are eventually reciprocated. This whole scenario, of course, gets further seasoning when Mrs. Robinson’s husband (Wil Szczech) finds out, first about his wife’s affair, and then about the fact that Benjamin is in love with his daughter.
Szczech brings a convincing comic urbanity to the role as he initially advises Benjamin about the positive future in “plastics” (a purposeful and unobstructed metaphor for the emptiness and falseness that Benjamin perceives around him), and later, his palpable anger over the situation fluctuates from control to absurd comedy.
Both Fullenbaum and Guyette are perfect as the well-meaning, but clueless parents who would just give anything to be able to get through to their son. Their many attempts through cajoling and yelling provide much in the way of comedy borne from recognizable frustration.
Of course, the seminal scenes between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson are what make for sparks, and even steam, at times, in that the production includes several scenes of partial nudity and one of full nudity accompanied by judicious lighting by Michael Blagys.
Fonda’s innocence and awkwardness, never overplayed, is balanced in the right measure by Harrington’s seductive persistence and visceral determination as the experienced older woman who exudes charm and danger, simultaneously.
Harrington bares all in ‘The Graduate’
Maureen “Moe” Harrington delivers a bravura performance as Mrs. Robinson in the Covey Theatre Company’s version of “The Graduate” closing this weekend at the Civic Center’s Bevard Theater, downtown.
DOWNTOWN AFTER DARK for The Eagle May 19, 2011 By RUSS TARBY
If you’re a regular theatergoer here in Central New York, you may think you’ve seen a lot of actress Moe Harrington.After all, she played Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl,” Keeley Stevens in “Pete’N Keeley,” Ellen in Jeff Kramer’s “Lowdown Lies” and Officer Celeste Luna in Donna Stuccio’s “Elegy in Blue,” not to mention any number of other leading roles as well as her annual self-produced cabarets.Unless you’re her husband, however, you’ve never seen her the way she appears as Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate,” playing through this weekend at the Civic Center’s Bevard Theater.That’s right, Moe sheds every stitch in one memorable scene early in Act 1.Not only is the actress’s flesh exposed in this stage version of the famous 1967 film.
So is her soul.Her acting chops have never been better, and Harrington capably captures Mrs. Robinson’s devil-may-care approach to life and love. Her portrayal of the booze-addled, unfaithful wife is a dynamic performance full of highs and lows including shouting and whispering, dressing and undressing, fighting and fornicating…
Under the watchful eye of director Garrett Heater, the entire cast of this “Graduate” follow Harrington’s lead to turn in yeoman performances. Rob Fonda portrays Benjamin, the recent college graduate who’s the object of Mrs. Robinson’s seduction. Wil Szczech plays the cuckolded Mr. Robinson. Bob Fullenbaum and Katheryn Guyette portray Benjamin’s pushy parents and Kimberly Panek plays the Robinson’s attractive, college-age daughter.
In minor roles Geno Parlato, Erica Dutelle, Basil Allen and Bruce Paulsen round out the cast.Since playwright Terry Johnson adapted the story for the stage by drawing upon the original novel by Charles Webb, don’t expect a scene-for-scene recreation of the film. But do expect an often gripping, occasionally humorous and always well-acted version of this coming-of-age classic.
COO COO CA-CHOO
Moe Harrington plays a memorable seductress in Covey Theatre’s take on The Graduate
by James MacKillop for the Syracuse NewTimes
If the 44-year-old film remains available and every sentient person remembers most of the action and dialogue, you have to wonder why British playwright Terry Johnson adapted Mike Nichols’ The Graduate in London a decade ago. His staging leaves the date in the 1960s, when $5 per hour was a huge wage for unskilled labor, and a hotel room for assignation could be rented for $12 a night. The movie remains fixed in time, but as the TV series Mad Men has taught us, things from just a few decades ago are transformed when we look back with our wised-up eyes. People back then hadn’t given much thought to cougars. We think about them all the time now.That “we” includes playwright Johnson and Covey Theatre Company director Garrett Heater, who has unmistakably given immense thought to this production, currently on the boards at the Mulroy Civic Center’s BeVard Community Room. Johnson rounds out characterization a bit, drawing more from Charles Webb’s 1963 novel, and adding two scenes, one at the end that cannot be revealed. Outwardly much of the rest looks the same. “Plastics,” one of the most famous lines of dialogue in the history of Hollywood, is still there, only now uttered by Mr. Robinson. What is changed is the way the characters resonate with one another, generating the kind of tension that makes “drama” synonymous with “stage play.” It looks the same but feels vastly different.
Without having seen the London or New York City productions we cannot know for sure why this version feels so different from the movie, but it seems likely to be director Heater’s doing. In casting blond Rob Fonda as the title character, Heater gets more of the look of Benjamin Braddock of the novel, a disaffected upper-class WASP who has graduated from tony Williams College. Fonda, who has experienced a run of innocent travelers, including Clifford in Cabaret and Brad in The Rocky Horror Show, gives us a Benjamin who rejects the inauthenticity of upper bourgeois life but who never attempts open rebellion. He’s sort of a Holden Caulfield who can deal rather than drop out. Along with this comes an unguarded impetuousness that can get him in trouble and inflict pain.
As for The Graduate’s most memorable character, word circulated last winter that Heater had to do some persuading to get musical comedy veteran Moe Harrington to take the role of Mrs. Robinson. About a halfhour into the first act it is revealed to us what he was looking for: Harrington’s persona and her extraordinary voice.Harrington was up for a Lifetime Achievement at the Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) awards this year because she’s beloved in the way only a few players are. A skilled comedienne, she cites the role of Ellen in local author Jeff Kramer’s riotous Lowdown Lies as one of her favorites. She’s always one of the best gagsters at awards ceremonies, and her default modes are laughing and smiling. Thus when Harrington turns into a dark-browed predator, even though we know it’s in the script, we’re just as startled as Benjamin is. The film’s producers famously wanted Doris Day as the original Mrs. Robinson, but our own Moe, our Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, does what the gorgeous but jaded Anne Bancroft could not.
Harrington has done non-singing, noncomic roles often enough, but Heater appears to be the first director to have exploited the silkiness of her speaking voice. It’s unusual in a larynx so devoted to cabaret singing, which turns other women into Mermanesque cicadas. The softness could have seduced Benjamin on the phone without him even seeing her. In her lushness we also hear a note of needfulness. Out of this, though, Harrington can forge a dart when she wants to strike at Benjamin, and she can embody ripping pain when a righteous Benjamin strikes back.
There’s no question that messing around with Mrs. Robinson is a bad idea and, admittedly, she’s an evil person. She usually wears black, even to the wedding. Then again, evil on stage is hardly a liability, which is why we prefer Dracula to Mina, Lucy or Jonathan Harker. Playwright Johnson was wise to give her more dialogue than in the movie.
Kimberly Panek capably takes on the heavy burden of making virtue and sweetness interesting as Elaine, Mrs. Robinson’s daughter. Experience counts: She had previously played Sandy in Grease. The two scenes playwright Johnson added to the film script both give Elaine more to do and provide support for Mrs. Robinson’s contention that the daughter is at least 10 percent of the mother. In a line retained from the film, she demands to know if Benjamin has read Ayn Rand’s rightist screed, The Fountainhead. Despite Elaine’s childlike love of Cheerios, she has some surprises for her husband in their coming life together.
Beyond the love triangle of boy-girl-mother, The Graduate is also a critique of suburban consumerism, most of which has taken different forms more recently. The several parents, whom Benjamin calls “grotesque,” are gently drawn comic figures, almost endearing when compared with grown-ups in, say, Judd Apatow or Farrelly Brothers movies. In what could have been a thankless role, Katheryn Guyette turns Benjamin’s mother into a scene-stealer, a walking domestic obsession, like Barbie in Stepford, only nuts. Bob Fullenbaum’s Mr. Braddock is readily given to bluster but never becomes an ogre. He’s quick to reverse course and take Benjamin’s side, if possible.
Heater gets more out of the role of Mr. Robinson by casting Wil Szczech, the same man who played the lusty Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons for Simply New Theater a few years back. By attributing to him the iconic line, “Plastics,” Mr. Robinson becomes the macho embodiment of the world sensitive Benjamin dreads to enter. Of course, Benjamin never intended to cuckold, but we know he has indeed been gored. His subsequent rage, although justified, comes off as impotent.
Director Heater squeezes much fun out of four supporting roles, starting with Erica Dutelle as the stripper, more ironic than in the film. Gennaro Parlato prudently underplays the seen-it-before hotel clerk. Bruce Paulsen switches from barfly to sober cleric within moments, and Basil Allen as the psychiatrist milks seven-beat pauses for all their worth.
Like other dramas taken from the silver screen, The Graduate calls for many, many rapid scenes changes with all kinds of furniture schlepped back and forth on casters, as well as multiple uses for Maggie Blythewood’s fixed set. Le Moyne College lighting expert Michael Blagys performs tricks of concealment never called for at the Jesuit college.
So how does the move from screen to stage work? A line like, “You’re the most attractive of any of my parents’ friends,” gets a bigger laugh when we hear it live, even when we know it’s coming.
Moe Harrington plays a memorable seductress in Covey Theatre’s take on The Graduate
by James MacKillop for the Syracuse NewTimes
If the 44-year-old film remains available and every sentient person remembers most of the action and dialogue, you have to wonder why British playwright Terry Johnson adapted Mike Nichols’ The Graduate in London a decade ago. His staging leaves the date in the 1960s, when $5 per hour was a huge wage for unskilled labor, and a hotel room for assignation could be rented for $12 a night. The movie remains fixed in time, but as the TV series Mad Men has taught us, things from just a few decades ago are transformed when we look back with our wised-up eyes. People back then hadn’t given much thought to cougars. We think about them all the time now.That “we” includes playwright Johnson and Covey Theatre Company director Garrett Heater, who has unmistakably given immense thought to this production, currently on the boards at the Mulroy Civic Center’s BeVard Community Room. Johnson rounds out characterization a bit, drawing more from Charles Webb’s 1963 novel, and adding two scenes, one at the end that cannot be revealed. Outwardly much of the rest looks the same. “Plastics,” one of the most famous lines of dialogue in the history of Hollywood, is still there, only now uttered by Mr. Robinson. What is changed is the way the characters resonate with one another, generating the kind of tension that makes “drama” synonymous with “stage play.” It looks the same but feels vastly different.
Without having seen the London or New York City productions we cannot know for sure why this version feels so different from the movie, but it seems likely to be director Heater’s doing. In casting blond Rob Fonda as the title character, Heater gets more of the look of Benjamin Braddock of the novel, a disaffected upper-class WASP who has graduated from tony Williams College. Fonda, who has experienced a run of innocent travelers, including Clifford in Cabaret and Brad in The Rocky Horror Show, gives us a Benjamin who rejects the inauthenticity of upper bourgeois life but who never attempts open rebellion. He’s sort of a Holden Caulfield who can deal rather than drop out. Along with this comes an unguarded impetuousness that can get him in trouble and inflict pain.
As for The Graduate’s most memorable character, word circulated last winter that Heater had to do some persuading to get musical comedy veteran Moe Harrington to take the role of Mrs. Robinson. About a halfhour into the first act it is revealed to us what he was looking for: Harrington’s persona and her extraordinary voice.Harrington was up for a Lifetime Achievement at the Syracuse New Times Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) awards this year because she’s beloved in the way only a few players are. A skilled comedienne, she cites the role of Ellen in local author Jeff Kramer’s riotous Lowdown Lies as one of her favorites. She’s always one of the best gagsters at awards ceremonies, and her default modes are laughing and smiling. Thus when Harrington turns into a dark-browed predator, even though we know it’s in the script, we’re just as startled as Benjamin is. The film’s producers famously wanted Doris Day as the original Mrs. Robinson, but our own Moe, our Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, does what the gorgeous but jaded Anne Bancroft could not.
Harrington has done non-singing, noncomic roles often enough, but Heater appears to be the first director to have exploited the silkiness of her speaking voice. It’s unusual in a larynx so devoted to cabaret singing, which turns other women into Mermanesque cicadas. The softness could have seduced Benjamin on the phone without him even seeing her. In her lushness we also hear a note of needfulness. Out of this, though, Harrington can forge a dart when she wants to strike at Benjamin, and she can embody ripping pain when a righteous Benjamin strikes back.
There’s no question that messing around with Mrs. Robinson is a bad idea and, admittedly, she’s an evil person. She usually wears black, even to the wedding. Then again, evil on stage is hardly a liability, which is why we prefer Dracula to Mina, Lucy or Jonathan Harker. Playwright Johnson was wise to give her more dialogue than in the movie.
Kimberly Panek capably takes on the heavy burden of making virtue and sweetness interesting as Elaine, Mrs. Robinson’s daughter. Experience counts: She had previously played Sandy in Grease. The two scenes playwright Johnson added to the film script both give Elaine more to do and provide support for Mrs. Robinson’s contention that the daughter is at least 10 percent of the mother. In a line retained from the film, she demands to know if Benjamin has read Ayn Rand’s rightist screed, The Fountainhead. Despite Elaine’s childlike love of Cheerios, she has some surprises for her husband in their coming life together.
Beyond the love triangle of boy-girl-mother, The Graduate is also a critique of suburban consumerism, most of which has taken different forms more recently. The several parents, whom Benjamin calls “grotesque,” are gently drawn comic figures, almost endearing when compared with grown-ups in, say, Judd Apatow or Farrelly Brothers movies. In what could have been a thankless role, Katheryn Guyette turns Benjamin’s mother into a scene-stealer, a walking domestic obsession, like Barbie in Stepford, only nuts. Bob Fullenbaum’s Mr. Braddock is readily given to bluster but never becomes an ogre. He’s quick to reverse course and take Benjamin’s side, if possible.
Heater gets more out of the role of Mr. Robinson by casting Wil Szczech, the same man who played the lusty Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons for Simply New Theater a few years back. By attributing to him the iconic line, “Plastics,” Mr. Robinson becomes the macho embodiment of the world sensitive Benjamin dreads to enter. Of course, Benjamin never intended to cuckold, but we know he has indeed been gored. His subsequent rage, although justified, comes off as impotent.
Director Heater squeezes much fun out of four supporting roles, starting with Erica Dutelle as the stripper, more ironic than in the film. Gennaro Parlato prudently underplays the seen-it-before hotel clerk. Bruce Paulsen switches from barfly to sober cleric within moments, and Basil Allen as the psychiatrist milks seven-beat pauses for all their worth.
Like other dramas taken from the silver screen, The Graduate calls for many, many rapid scenes changes with all kinds of furniture schlepped back and forth on casters, as well as multiple uses for Maggie Blythewood’s fixed set. Le Moyne College lighting expert Michael Blagys performs tricks of concealment never called for at the Jesuit college.
So how does the move from screen to stage work? A line like, “You’re the most attractive of any of my parents’ friends,” gets a bigger laugh when we hear it live, even when we know it’s coming.
 |  |
Photos courtesy of Amelia Beamish
Lizzie Borden Took an Axe
November 2010
Lizzie Borden case solved!
DOWNTOWN AFTER DARK for Nov. 18, 2010 The Eagle, Syracuse, N.Y.
BY RUSS TARBY
Of all the books and movies about the Lizzie Borden murder case, nothing cuts to the core as incisively as Garrett Heater’s new two-act play, “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe,” which made its world premiere last Friday in downtown Syracuse.
On a sweltering Aug. 4, 1892, an aging middle-class couple, Andrew and Abby Borden, were hacked to death in their modest home in Fall River, Mass. Lizzie, a 32-year-old spinster, was tried and acquitted of the brutal slaying of her father and stepmother, but most folks still figured she was guilty.
Drawing on testimony from the inquest and subsequent trial, Heater’s spellbinding script clearly depicts the desperately dysfunctional New England family. Andrew, ably played by Bernard Kaplan, is the miserly paterfamilias with a creepy fascination with his daughters' deceased mother. Kate Huddleston shines in the otherwise tarnished role of the greedy, domineering stepmother, Abby. Andrew’s two unmarried daughters are the reserved Emma, portrayed by an introspective Carmen Viviano-Crafts, and the spendthrift Lizzie played by Jodi Bova, who brings a surprising joie de vivre to the role of the suspected murderess.
Fast-paced play
A quintet of well-defined supporting characters keeps the dialogue snapping with hints of rivalry, resentment, thievery and incest. Beth Schmidt’s turn as the maid, Bridget Sullivan, drew an occasional chuckle as she tries to assert herself with her immigrant’s brogue clashing audibly against the Borden’s brisk English. Likewise, Susie Blumer provides a pinch of comedic relief as a nosy neighbor lady, and David Witanowski’s buoyant Dr. Bowen, though married, adds a measured suggestion of romance. C.J. Parsons bristles and boils as the girls’ uncle and Andrew’s financial advisor, while Jodie Baum plays Lizzie’s chum, Alice, realistically vacillating between friendly fidelity and the darkest doubts.
Heater’s script brilliantly blends courtroom voiceovers and characters’ soliloquies to break up interaction set entirely at the scene of the crime – the tearing-at-the-seams Borden household. Director Jenn DeCook and stage manager Tim Hahn pull all the elements together assuring an attention-grabbing, swiftly paced two-hour performance that seizes you by the neck and doesn’t let go…until after Lizzie’s final, ever-polite plea for tranquility…is revealed as a cold-blooded rationale for killing.
Roaring ’90s recreated
As a Victorian period piece, “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” comes fully to life thanks to Heater’s obsessive attention to detail. Not only are Heater’s costumes and Kathy Procopio’s wigs period-perfect, DeCook also insists on an authentic 19th century ironing board, bulky black shoes, real coffee, mutton and pears, and antique sofas, tables, desktops and chairs provided by Baldwinsville ‘s Alternative Decorating Studio. While the performances and production values are totally top-shelf, what makes Heater’s play a true triumph is how it allows the facts to unfold bit by bit as untruths are concocted and evidence destroyed. Lizzie’s own contrasting alibis inevitably damn her, but the playwright avoids preaching, instead unveiling each clue in good time, letting the audience itself put two and two together.
“Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” is exceptional theater. Heater should make every effort to have it staged in Fall River, Boston and beyond. For now, it’s scheduled for two more shows at 8 p.m. I suggest you make your reservations today.
Covey Theatre Co. debuts
“Lizzie” marks the debut of a new troupe, the Covey Theatre Co., operated by Heater, Blumer and businessman/producer Michael Penny. And an auspicious debut it is! Lizzie Borden herself, who scandalized Fall River in the early 20th century by inviting actors and actresses into her home, would certainly approve…
CHOP TALK Syracuse NewTimes November 17, 2010
By James MacKillop
Start with the most disputed acquittal in American jurisprudence, even ahead of O. J. Simpson’s. Despite damning circumstantial evidence, Lizzie Borden was found not guilt of the murder of her father Andrew and step-mother Abigail. They died of nineteen and eleven strokes from an axe respectively, not forty and forty-one as the ghoulish jump-rope ditty would have it. That rhyme, whose words we all know, supplies the title to Garrett Heater’s brand-new drama, Lizzie Borden took an Axe. Twice forty whacks have been applied to Lizzie’s history in graphic novels, TV movies, two operas and a ballet, all attempts to tease out the “truth.” Heater’s play is no whodunit. It’s more of a Why-do-it.
Although still a young man, Heater has served a sustained apprenticeship as both an actor and director with different local companies, especially the Baldwinsville Theatre Guild. The SALTAcademy has recognized his work on both sides of the footlight. As if to prove that his time has been well-spent, Lizzie Borden turns out to be quite a polished piece of work, often counter-intuitive. The murders take place off-stage, for example. And the courtroom scenes are reported in voice-overs. Like the masters of the twentieth century golden age, Heater emphasizes layers of characterization, in which each person’s secret is revealed late in their narrative arcs, often indirectly. Happily he shuns the common sin of actors-turned-playwright, of writing scenes calling for gaudy displays of rhetoric or emotion, what he or she might love to play if given the chance.
Lizzie Borden is the inaugural production of The Covey Theatre Company, which Heater has founded with Baldwinsville pal Susan Blumer, who takes a supporting role here, and Michael Penny. The novelty of the company should not be overplayed, however. Covey, or perhaps we should say Heater, has drawn on many respected and familiar faces, starting with Kate Huddleston, a SALT Lifetime Achiever, as the hated step-mother Abigail. SALT nominee Jodi Bova appears in the title role, along with SALT winners Jodie Baum, Carmen Viviano-Crafts and David Witanowski in supporting roles. The Covey begins with credibility.
Note also that John Nara, rumored to be leaving town at any moment, serves as lighting designer. Given that Lizzie Borden is also produced in the BeVard Room of the Mulroy Civic appears to be the successor to Nara’s much-lauded Simply New Company, which closed down last spring. Added to this are Karen Procopio’s wigs, Heater’s own cache of period costumes and posh late Victorian furniture from an uncited source, and you can see that Lizzie Borden looks quite a bit like Nara’s enormously successful production of James Joyce’s The Dead.
When we first view the family life of the Borden household two years before the murders, things are not going well. Contention reigns, and the script does not encourage us to take sides. The parents Andrew (Bernard Kaplan) and stepmother Abigail (Kate Huddleston) sound a little like those familiar ogres, the stuffy Victorian parents, but individualizing touches abound. Abigail, addressed as “Abby” by her resentful younger step-daughter Lizzie, has risen from less affluence than the Bordens to take an uneasy place in the household. She resents demeaning comparisons with the late first Mrs. Borden and suffers from a verbal clumsiness that invites stinging attack from Lizzie.
Paterfamilias Andrew might have some money, but he’s too much of a skinflint to be called “rich.” A proud self-made man, he resents the hordes of immigrant labor that has made his success possible and thinks he should be loved and appreciated for having put poor people to work. Lacking the refinement of the real upper class, he regularly bellows his anger when he doesn’t get his way. His laments for his deceased first wife take an unsavory turn when he leans toward Lizzie and swoons that he can still see his beloved in his daughter’s eyes.
Lizzie (Jodi Bova), as she must be, is Heater’s most audacious creation. If the story were to be Hollywoodized or sentimentalized, she would have to become to object of our affections, but that does not happen here. A leading lady and choreographer, Bova is more of a looker than the historical Lizzie, whose photo is on the cover, but that does not detract from the characterization. In the opening dispute with her parents over an inheritance, we can sympathize with her sense of having been shorted. But Lizzie seems too grasping, it’s hard to stick with her. Not that she hasn’t had some privileges, one of which was a grand tour of European art treasures. Then she chides Abby for not having traveled.
Although the neighborhood gossip Adelaide (Susan Blumer) gives useful information, we don’t always grasp its meaning on first hearing. There are puzzling, ambiguous quirks in Lizzie’s behavior, like the petit mal she succumbs to, perhaps brought on by menstruation. Lizzie reveals most of her prickly self in exchanges with others. Continually, she bullies the Irish maid Maggie (Beth Schmidt) about hard labor in sultry hot weather. As the action proceeds, she strikes a contrast with her older, cooler, more upright sister Emma (Carmen Viviano-Crafts). The most ambitious of these dialogues is also the subtlest. In it she contends with the fawning friend Alice (Jodie Baum), essentially a power play over who has the stronger hand.
Misused and put-upon, Maggie is a fuller character than might be expected. This may be an accommodation to some of the hare-brained speculations, cited by Heater in the program, that assume a bigger role for her in the murder. Beth Schmidt’s authentic but not cartoonish accent underscores the demeaning ethnic slurs Maggie had to endure from Abigail, Andrew and his equally bigoted bother-in-law, John (C. J. Parsons). Well-spoken Dr. Bowen (David Witanowski) arrives to illuminate the rising paranoia in the household before the murders. While a faithful married man, his good looks and proximity to the Borden household set Adelaide’s tongue a-wagging, and signals that Lizzie might have attracted a lover. Amplified voice-over with testimony from the trial reveals the voices of Bill Molesky, Josh Mele, Michael Penny and playwright Heater.
In a murder mystery without screaming, spilled blood, or exposed skin, director Jenn DeCook keeps the tension high. She relies on a strong experienced cast, where the women seemed called upon for greater shades of subtlety. The role of Lizzie marks an enormous breakthrough for Jodi Bova, previously best known for outrageous comedy, like Debbie Does Dallas, which she also choreographed. If she did not actually slaughter her parents, she had the motivation (mostly not revealed here). And although a Sunday school teacher, her arm had enough motivation to wield the axe.
selection from They Talk the Lines, December 22, 2010 by Jim McKillop
In a play about a double murder with intimations of incest, Garrett reveals character subtly and slowly, giving intimations of Chekhov. Jodi Bova was the wounded butterfly in the title role, with strong support from Kate Huddleston, Carmen Viviano-Crafts, David Witanowski and Jodie Baum.
Covey Theatre Inaugurates With Murder Most Foul
Saturday, November 13, 2010 Tony Curulla for the Post-Standard
Despite the substantial number of community theater companies in town, somehow most are able to boast reasonable longevity, so it isn’t often that new ones are born. Let’s face it: what with expensive facility rentals, costume and prop expenses (beg, borrow, steal, and rent), and show royalties, together with a finite (howbeit, enthusiastic) audience base swimming upstream against a strong current of economic downturn, it may be sheer determination (and perhaps a muse or two) that manages to keep so many afloat.
So when some people decide to “double down” and establish a new company (Covey Theatre Company), and inaugurate its inception by presenting an original work (“Lizzie Borden Took an Axe”) by one of those same people (Garrett A. Heater), that’s a bold move and a statement of belief. The new company opened its first performance on Friday evening to the applause of a substantial audience who got what they came for: taut, interesting drama performed well.
In this bloodless rendition of a very bloody and very real double murder that took place in Fall River, MA in 1892, and under the capable direction of Jenn DeCook, Garrett Heater’s original script raises more questions than answers, and that’s what it should do because the audience came for compelling intrigue, not historical dogma. And compelling it is, as well as historical. Framed around actual court transcripts that are utilized as voiceover scene separations, Heater’s script, nonetheless, is presented, dramatically, in a series of scenes taking place in Victorian dressing and sitting rooms, parlors, and formal dining rooms, and skillfully executed by an experienced cadre of community actors.
Jodi Bova is all business in the title role as she exudes a convincing combination of Victorian charm and palpable hate for her stepmother, Abigail (Kate Huddleston), as well as disgust for her father, Andrew (Bernard Kaplan). Her tough exterior belies a pampered, yet tortured, history that includes an intimated, yet obvious, incestuous relationship with her father. Kudos for authenticity belong to Beth Schmidt as Bridget Sullivan, the feisty, yet so-put-upon Irish maid. Her flawless accent, together with appropriate, but never exaggerated movement, was a fine example of controlled stage savvy.
Victorian manners and behaviors abound as exemplified through characters Emma Borden, (Carmen Viviano-Crafts), the older and tight-lipped sister, the “keeper” of the family secrets, and friend Alice Russell (Jodie Baum), who becomes uncontrollable at the thought of telling a lie. Neighborhood gossip and “watchdog’ duties go to Susan Blumer’s Adelaide Churchill, doling out suspicion and innuendo in several scenes. Both C. J. Parsons (Uncle John) and David Witanowski (Dr. Bowen) turn in fine performances, as their characters attempt to inject some control and objectivity to the bizarre goings-on.
Heater’s costumes, together with Karen Procopio’s wigs, serve up healthy doses of Victorian finery, along with a plethora of period furniture (some for sale after the show’s run). A nicely lighted set through the efforts of Todd DeCook (construction) and John Nara (lighting) creates the appropriate atmosphere purposefully antithetical to the events.
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Photographs courtesy of Abel Phillips