Judging by the children dancing in the aisles during Saturday's performance, Circa '21's current children's offering Diary of a Worm, a Spider, & a Fly is a hit with younger audience members. But the hour-long musical also has quite a few laughs for the adults.
When the kids weren't laughing at playwright Joan Cushing's fart jokes or Worm describing his sister as having a "face that looks like her butt," I was laughing at what I assume are director Kimberly Furness' additions of pop-culture references. My favorite was Worm and Fly singing along to "Carry on My Wayward Son" after being told to "Please enjoy this music while your party is reached" when they call Spider's cell phone.
Friday's performance of the Center for Living Arts' Spring Awakening wasn't perfect. But it was in the production's imperfections that its main strengths were revealed, because the earnestness in the actors' portrayals wound up overshadowing the pitch problems, and the enthusiasm of director Dino Hayz's young-adult cast - who performed the hell out of the piece - proved so infectious and stirring that the show still proved effective.
New Ground Theatre's current offering, Mr. Marmalade, is about four-year-old Lucy and her imaginary friends. Suicidal, coke-snorting, physically and mentally abusive imaginary friends. And it's incredibly funny. One particularly dark scene during Thursday's performance, in fact, had me laughing so hard, for so long, that I was wiping away tears by the end of it.
A sign in front of the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse includes a description of the theatre's current show, Southern Crossroads, as "an inspiring and hilarious story about one musical group's struggle against impossible odds, as they find new hope through music." That line fits Circa '21's production to a T, as the tone of director Curt Wollan's offering is clearly joyful, despite the sense of desperation in its setting. With the appropriate exceptions of those playing villains, Wollan's cast does not play up any silliness written into their comedic lines. Instead, they choose to play them straight, and in doing so, add to the musical's air of Great Depression uncertainty.
Apparently, director Gary Clark doesn't think Playcrafters Barn Theatre audiences will get author Pat Cook's jokes in the venue's current If It's Monday, This Must Be Murder, because almost every already-obvious punchline is accented with a combination of slow, careful enunciation and a physical action. For example, the main character, Michael Schmidt's Monday, is referenced in another character's line, "Rainy days and Monday always get me down." On Saturday, though, the actor saying this put vocal emphasis on the "Monday" and grandly gesticulated toward Schmidt, as though this rather lame attempt at humor needed to be clarified. It was one of many not-so-clever quips that were rendered even less funny through Clark's, and his cast's, efforts to make sure they weren't missed.
What first struck me during February 18's performance of Ballet Quad Cities' Love Stories: Love on the Run was the venue, as Augustana College's Wallenberg Hall provided exactly the spatial experience I wanted for this series of balletic vignettes. There's a grandness to the architecture, particularly the Tuscan pillars, that lends itself to the high-art air of ballet, but there's also an intimacy there that allowed the audience to be close to the dancers, who performed on a raised platform. I often lost myself in the beauty, passion, and emotion of the choreographed works because I was so near to the action, and not separated by a sea of seats in a formal theatrical setting.
The District Theatre's production of Scenery boasts the most range I've yet seen from actor Ed Villarreal, who is obviously growing as an artist after notable performances in the (then-) Harrison Hilltop Theatre's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Jesus Christ Superstar last year, and New Ground Theatre's Bad Habits last month. During Thursday night's show, he incorporated an accent, plus shifts in vocal inflection and projection, to punctuate either the humor or emotion of his lines, and in so doing, successfully shaped his Richard as an aging actor resigned to his status.
At the start of the intermission to Friday night's District Theatre performance of Company, my partner turned to me and said, "I don't remember this show being that funny." He was right, because director David Turley accentuates the funny parts in this musical by composer Stephen Sondheim and writer George Furth. He does so, however, with subtle nudges and winks that almost cross over into silliness but don't, and that keep the production from sinking into sappy sentimentality.
Augustana College's How I Learned to Drive offers an interesting opportunity to compare the acting talents of performers at different points in their lives, as there's a marked contrast between Reader editor Mike Schulz's work and that of the students who compose the rest of the cast. Being beyond college-age (and hired here as a guest actor), Schulz is presumably more aware of the darkness in the world, the pain of real life, and the reality of what some would call sin. I imagine he's subsequently able to draw from what he knows and use it to shape his character, whereas it's apparent that the students are feigning their feelings. To be clear, that's not to say that the students are poor actors, and each one offered a notable performance during Friday's presentation. Compared to Schulz's effort, however, there are distinct differences in the sincerity of their portrayals.
New Ground Theatre's Bad Habits is one of those rare local productions where the focus is on the writers rather than the actors, directors, or technical aspects. While a cast and crew, of course, are involved, the work gathers short plays written by local playwrights. Running a touch more than an hour, Thursday's performance showcased the promise of these local wordsmiths, while also revealing areas on which they need to focus as they work on their next pieces - the most notable being writing as people would actually speak.
