The Creative Garden

By Jerry Stein

Greatness is such a rare visitor to the stage--any stage--that when it does appear it is often relegated to the shadows of the mainstream of theater seldom seen, often missed.

But director/choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge's production of "The Secret Garden," which opened Thursday night (9/10) at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, struts.

It brandishes achievement among music, lyrics, book, extraordinary singers, sets, costuming, direction and puppetry smack in the middle of commercial theater.

This 1991 musical, with music by Lucy Simon and lyrics/book from Marsha Norman (" 'night, Mother"), tells the story of Mary Lennox (a spirited Caitlin Cohn) who is shipped off from British Colonial India to
Edwardian England, when cholera plays deadly with her parents' intestines.

Mary comes down with what might be called the "Wuthering Heights Syndrome": You know young governess-bride-or in this case--the 10-year-old Mary-- finds herself in a brooding house in Yorkshire overseen by and even more gloomy maternal uncle Archibald Craven (a powerful, clarion-voiced Kevin Earley).

Archie's wife Lily (Brandi Burkhardt, a lovely ghost with a lilting soprano voice) has died in childbirth. Archie isn't exactly father-of-the-year. He resents his son Colin (Anthony Frederickson) and keeps him up in a bed chamber. The boy is so isolated he has gotten it into his head that he is going to die.

Mary fares no better with Archie. He comes to think Mary looks too much like Lily and takes off for Paris. He leaves her in the care of his conflicted brother Neville (Adam Monley, yet another wonderful, dramatic singer) who is revealed to be quite psychologically complex.

Neville is the most interesting character in the musical. But to say more about him would lessen the dramatic surprise. Discover for yourself.

The charming subplot is Mary's relationship with her sickly but combative cousin Colin (Frederickson, something of a wildcat in bathrobe). Mary has a healing effect on Colin through involving him in restoring Lily's secret garden. Children in the audience, who have siblings and cousins, should find joyous identification with their rowdy confrontations.

If there are mists of melodrama in "Secret Garden" to rival the fog swirling outside on the moors, Burnett is simply not enamored of these heightened pulls of emotions as a matter of period conventions. She comes by this proclivity for melancholia legitmately from her own life. She filtered much of her experiences into "The Secret Garden."

As a girl, Burnett was poor. She wanted to write but couldn't afford clean paper so she inserted her writing in the spaces around the script already present on used paper.

Burnett also lost a child, had a first marriage that ended in divorce and, like Mary, loved to garden.

Still, no matter how authentic the emotional source as a basis of Burnett's story, the sentimentality found in the book and especially on stage cannot be overly mitigated because most of it comes from real life. Remember the stage, because of our attentive focus on it, magnifies everything from life especially emotions. So the answer to keeping the largeness of life in scale on the stage is to make it smaller.

The triumph of director Dodge's production is that through the skillful employment of a varied set of theatrical elements melodrama is kept on a short leash.

This is thankfully achieved, in part, by Marsha Norman's script that uses brisk inserts of humor. The comedy is used as a mop to soak up the periodic melodramatic puddles that form frequently in Burnett's literary garden.

Even more significant is Dodge's transition of the original musical that was rooted, if not totally, in realism to a completely surreal interpretation. This dreamlike ambience is quite hospitable to the recurring surges of emotion.

In support of Dodge's surreal conception is Narelle Sissons' set. It uses huge, multi-level stacks of pages from a book as a playing platform. In addition, large hand-written pages are mounted on upstage curtains above the playing area. This spartan playing space provides and airiness that allows the intensity of emotions a much needed escape vent.

A more appointed set would have allowed the emotional textures to hover and seem much more overwrought in the confines of realistic libraries and sitting rooms.

The only visual disappointment is that when the garden finally blooms a few paper roses unfold that do not quite warrant the jubilant reaction of the characters witnessing it.

Further relief from melodrama comes in the back story that occasional revisits, through Mary's memories, her days back in India. There are Indian figures (Anita Vasan and Vishal Vaidya) who poetically intrude with Indian song, dance and once, quite dramatically, cavort with a group of huge scary-looking pole puppets.

Lucy Simon's music has a compelling shift of moods. There is the ominousnes of the choral "The House Upon the Hill" reminiscent of Sondheim's ballad of "Sweeney Todd."

Earley's songs offer him an opportunity to display his impressive range from the powerful duet "Lily's Eyes" he sings with an equally intense Adam Monley to the lullaby "Race to the Top of the Morning" he sings to Colin. Here, he easily climbs to a sweet falsetto.

There are more moving musical moments: A wrenching duet "How Could I Ever Know" from Lily and Archibald over death's interruption of their happiness. Frederickson's piping out of Colin's "Round-Shouldered Man" and Mary conjuring her Indian mysticism in the pulsating "Come Spirit, Come Charm" with its angular choreographic moves.

The supporting cast adds immeasurably: Charlotte Maltby's friendly, funny chambermaid to Mary; a plucky Cameron Bartell as an estate gardener who seems part leprechaun. And Carlyn Connolly's martinet of a headmistress who is foiled in her attempts to carry Mary off to a boarding school.

So, "The Secret Garden" does get down to being that rare event in musical theater when the elements of production, performance, music and words, cease trying to best each other to dominate a show. Instead, a kind of peace is declared among these creative forces so that they can blend into a harmonious whole. The resulting union created is a definition of greatness on the stage.

Rick Steiner, one of the producers of the Broadway production of "The Secret Garden," which won three Tony Awards itself, also recognized the exceptionalism of Dodge's production by telling me early on during the intermission "it's better than what we did."

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The Secret Garden, Thursday night at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Marx Theatre, Mt. Adams, Cincinnati, Ohio, through Oct. 3. Disclosure: The reviewer received complimentary tickets to view this production.
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Photo captions: Caitlin Cohn, above right, as Mary Lennox, finds the key to the "The Secret Garden."

Kevin Earley, as Archibald, and Brandi Burkhardt, as Lily, lower left, travel across time to sing the duet "How Could I Ever Know."

Photos by Mikki Schaffner.
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Singing Out the Memories

By Jerry Stein



Upon entering a theater, the sight of five forlorn stools siting on a stage can send a deadly message–another revue.

But relax “25 the Musical,” which opened Wednesday, May 4, at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, is a revue celebrating, you guessed it, 25 years of productions at the Over-the-Rhine theater.

This delightful show has been compiled by Cincinnati-born but nationally respected pianist-arranger and occasional actor Scot Woolley. He is an extraordinary musician, who for this show, sits on stage accompanying singers Deb G. Girdler, Dennis Parlato, Sara Mackie, Brooke Rucidlo and Nick Cearley in this songbook tour of ETC’s musicals.

Although D. Lynn Meyers, who has spent 14 years of the ETC’s 25 as its producing artistic director, has included musicals in her seasons that are not without artistic merit and audience support. The productions include “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and, just last season, the highly entertaining “The Marvelous Wonderettes,” the ‘50s and ‘60s romp.

Still, the ETC is not a mainline musical presenter the way its sister Cincinnati theaters, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, are. The theater makes its more significant marks with social dramas and some often wacky off-beat comedies.

Meyers’ theater neither has the budget nor the size to tackle multi-set shows or an orchestra pit full of strings and brass. Nevertheless, Meyers is creative about her musicals.

The only major, well-known musical presented at ETC from which Woolley has drawn songs is Jerry Herman’s “Mack and Mabel,”a musical bio of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand. And ETC presented that show in a scaled down concert-revue form.

As a result, it is to Woolley’s great credit and musical taste that he could put together material from the ETC’s musical past that gives such showcases to the singers. A major source for this revue comes from the successful annual fairy tale musicals ETC presents during the holidays from David Kisor.

Girdler is wonderfully wicked as the Queen of Hearts in “Don’t Mess with the Queen” from Kisor’s “Alice in Wonderland” and, again, dramatic most of the time in “Time Heals Everything” from “Mack & Mabel”.

Brooke Rucidlo’s “Old Black Magic” is given an up tempo take. There’s a clever assist during this number when Nick Cearley plays a series of percussive instruments handed him in rapid-fire exchanges from Girdler and Mackie.

In his musical moments, Cearley, displays a powerful range from tenor-bass to near falsetto housed in his petit body. He is especially exciting in songs from “Hedwig & the Angry Inch.”

The one musical fault in an otherwise splendid undertaking is Director Meyers’ tendency to allow all the performers occasionally to over-sing the house. These bursts of vocalizations on steroids jeopardize the mood of the songs such as Girdler’s “Time Heals Everything” and Parlato’s “I Won’t Send Roses.”

Brian c. Mehring, has provided a stylized representation of the columned exterior of the Ensemble Theatre on Vine St. for background. It’s all framed, including footlights, with dazzling row lighting.

At a time when audiences should be sending the Ensemble Theatre gifts of appreciation, this company has beaten us to the punch by sending us, once again, a gift of entertainment.

Happy silver anniversary, ETC.

25 The Musical, Thursday night at the Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine. Play dates: May 4-22, 2011. Tickets: $34-$42, some discounts available. Disclosure: the reviewer received a complimentary ticket to this production. Reservations: 513 421 3555.


Photo: Clockwise from left: Sara Mackie, Dennis Parlato, Deb G. Girdler, Nick Cearley and Brooke Rucidlo. Photographer: Sandy Underwood.

Past plays haunt 'High'

    By Jerry Stein

    The theater can conjure terrifying darkness even with the lights pushed up to hot white.

    Matthew Lombardo, in his program notes for his play “High” that opened the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s 2010-2011 season Sept. 9, has written a semi-autobiographical play about the devastating physical, mental and spiritual destruction that addiction brings.

    Lombardo, last on Broadway with “Looped,” his stage biography of Tallulah Bankhead; offers a harrowing portrait of a young man’s descent into drug abuse. It is as painful as it is riveting. The Broadway-bound “High” is a three-character play that brings Kathleen Turner to the Mt. Adam regional theater’s stage in an impressive performance. She plays Sister Jamison, a foul-mouthed recovering alcoholic nun who has found purpose in her work at a Catholic-sponsored rehabilitation center.



    Only some overt associations with such past plays as “Doubt” and “Equus” brings “High” some mitigated praise than it otherwise would garner.

    Turner, 29 years past playing that plotting sexual furnace Matty Walker in “Body Heat,” has made a commendable transition. The erotic steam that so characterized her screen presence has lifted.

    What is revealed is a maturity that has enabled Turner to bring authority and an underlying compassion to her salty nun. She now has the kind of stage presence associated with that other matured beauty, Vanessa Redgrave.

    Kathleen Turner is joined in this play, which shows great influence of Alcoholics Anonymous principles of recovery, by Michael Berresse (original cast of the musical adaptation of “The Light in the Piazza”). His priest, Father Michael, written a bit superficially in contrast to the other two roles, is strangely intense about keeping Sister Jamison as counselor for a new patient, the young, volatile drug addict Cody Randall (Evan Jonigkeit).

    This young man, played by Jonigkeit with delivery hesitations characteristic of a somewhat fried brain, is walking bad luck. His childhood makes Dickens’ urchins look like characters in farce.
Cody’s father skipped out. His mother was a prostitute. One of her johns sexually abused him.

    The end result is Cody’s ingesting a whole formulary of restricted drugs–crystal meth, heroin. You name it; Cody took it.

    Cody’s profligate life culminates with the mysterious death in motel of his teen ager lover with whom Cody was doing drugs. This sends him to the treatment center in lieu of prison.
“High,” directed by Rob Ruggiero (he also directed "Looped" for Lombardo on Broadway) keeps the reins of dramatic tensions taut. It’s eternally midnight for these lives on stage.

    The troubled Cody has no monopoly on interior devils. In a series of monologues, Turner steps forth in blocks of light and articulates a kind of diary of Sister Jamison's life and addiction.

    And what is behind Father Michael’s unrelenting interest in Cody’s case? Isn’t he just another damaged kid moving through rehabilitation with extremely limited odds for success? No, it’s not that simple.The plot ruptures a bit to give the priest something more than a professional and/or spiritual connection. The twist is a bit convulsive but undeniably surprising just when you start thinking the worst about the priest and his intentions.

    "High” is even more emotionally exhausting than those films about alcohol and addiction, namely, “The Days of Wine and Roses” and “The Man with the Golden Arm.”

    "High" reaffirms that watching addiction being depicted on stage seems more raw, less filtered than images flashing on the same subject through a projector. Thankfully, though, there’s some relief in the onslaughtof humorous darts propelled out of Sister Jamison's mouth.

    Lombardo incorporates the main principles of recovery from AA in his dialog such as references to what recovering alcoholics call a “spiritual awakening" and the importance of a "higher power," a generic term for God. Additionally, there is also much use of the spiritual restoration from the Catholic faith.Yet, visually there is a force in designer David Gallo’s set that manifests itself as a kind of silent, watchful presence as powerful as any dialogue.

    Upstage, Gallo has placed a huge cyclorama of a star-studded night sky that could easily serve as a back drop for Grizabella’s song “Memory” in “Cats.” This serene sky, suggests a watchful God of many eyes peering down, observing this somber pageant of struggling life beneath Him. And He does act.

    The set pieces are all in white–the chairs, the institutional doors, and a huge pair of white brick walls at the bottom of which Cody is seen shooting up. But the wall also suggests those great doors of a cathedral. It is here Sister Jamison conducts a rite that Catholic and Anglican churches call The Reconciliation of a Penitent, an infrequently used kind of confessional. It's a most dramatic scene.

    Gallo’s set with expanses of bare stage is so conversant with the play. It is a striking example of how set can be in a constant dialogue with what is happening in front of it.

    Lamentably, the only real low for "High" is some unwanted associations with past plays This play comes after John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play “Doubt” also containing a brittle nun but not so benign in intent as Sister Jamison.

    Reaching farther back there is most notably Peter Shaffer’s 1973 drama, “Equus.” This play involves a psychiatrist who also engages in self-probing monologues just as Sister Jamison does in "High." He also is treating a most troubled boy who blinded horses.

    And it is even harder to overlook the duplication that "Hifh" shares with "Equus. ” and “Both plays have key scenes in which both boys are fully nude.

    Little if anything is original in the theater or anywhere else for that matter. But surely Lombardo must have been aware of these parallels writing this play. The trick, though, is to be artful enough not to be so similar as to encourage comparisons. Some, perhaps even most audiences, one of which gave “High” and Turner a standing ovation on opening night, may not be aware of these associations with iconic plays or, if they are, won't even care.

    Still, “High” is derivative. Because "High" doesn’t manage to cloak the stage history that haunts it effectively, it cannot escape the label of being just another variation on an extensively treated theme.

    "High" is being presented at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park, Mt. Adams Tuesdays-Sundays through Oct. 2. Tickets: $25-$64. Reservations: 513 421 3888.

Photo by Sandy Underwood: Kathleen Turner is a nun who treats Evan Jonigkeit in 'High.'

Art Angst

By Jerry Stein


    I'm beginning to dread living room sets on stage.

    It used to be when you walked into the theater and you saw a couch you could expect something rip-roaring like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or a "Long Day's Journey Into Night" but not with Donald Margulies' "Collected Stories," which opened the Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati's 25th season Sept. 8. As handsome as Brian c. Mehring's set is with its built-in book shelves and print of Matisse's "Dance" on the wall, it all begins to at least sound like a teacher's office.

    The ETC's producing director D. Lynn Meyers has assembled a more than competent pair of actors in Amy Warner and Corinne Mohlenhoff. As the crusty writer-teacher Ruth Steiner and budding creative writing student Lisa, respectively, there is a lot of spirited oral boxing here.

    But though Margulies gives each actor choice, witty, even decently reflective lines in their edgy student/teacher relationship, the play visits the well-worn theme of the struggling artist engaged in finding her/his voice.

    Perhaps it would be tolerable to sit through a writer's development, ambition and some unattractive behavior that a good review conjures up in the young writer for the umpteenth time.

    The problem is that Margulies has written a kind of treatse on the vicissitudes of writing, nothing less than a diary most likely on himself. In the first scene, Steiner takes apart Lisa's struggling prose. It's supposed to be a tutorial and, believe me, it is. Long after we get the point that this kid needs lots of work, the critique goes on.

    There are other self-indulgences on the part of the playwright that try the patience. There's a long recitation of Ruth's short story about two women baking cakes. It's necessary to draw a conclusion that Ruth is writing about herself. But hopefully those cakes won't turn out to be as over done as this scene.

    The play gets out of the living room briefly in the second act so we can attend Lisa's reading of her new novel before a literary society. Something dramatically is revealed in this reading but it goes on far too long especially when it treats Lisa's insecurities of giving her first public speech.

    Climatically, it's not giving too much away to reveal that the final scene, set six years later from scene one, is one of hurt and betrayal over Lisa's success as a novelist. The catapulting retributions elicit engaging enough passion from Warner and Mohlenhoff.

    But rivalry and betrayal between mentor and student have been all so much more effectively in all sorts of art world and backstage dramas and cinema. The film of "All About Eve" accomplishes this theme with a lot more economy than what is on display here. They never seen to tire of using their tongues as swords on each other.

    Despite the length of the interchanges in that final scene, Margulies' script takes an abrupt turn from betrayal to a kind of flash analysis on the part of Lisa as to what is really causing Ruth's rancor. She gleans all of this from that short story about the cakes.

    The connection between the story and Ruth's life is telegraphed in act one to the detriment of the final confrontation. For all its drama, the final scene just swings the hammer too hard concerning what most of the audience will have figured out.

    The generous audience gave the play (or was really in honor of the performances?) a standing ovation.

    But at about two hours and 40 minutes, including a break for the class, I mean audience, the grade for the play certainly is not an F but a good argument could be made for an incomplete.

    "Collected Stories" will be presented at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St.,Over-the-Rhine, Wednesdays through Sundays through Sept. 26. Tickets: $34-$42. Reservations: 513 421 3555.

    Photo by Sandy Underwood: Amy Warner, left, and Corrine Mohlenhoff in 'Collected Stories.'