“Kiss Of The Spider Woman” Another Winner For Welk Resort Theatre

Exceeding all expectations and shouldering some risk at losing local patrons, Welk Resort Theatre in Escondido is presenting the Kander and Ebb (score), Terrence McNally (book) musical based on the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig’s “The Kiss of the Spiderwoman”.

A story at odds with itself as it is a fantasy and a tragedy; a story that takes place in an Argentine prison ‘sometime in the recent past’ and traces the relationship between two polar opposite prisoners, a gay window dresser and a macho Marxist rebel.

Jeffrey Scott Parsons and Richard Bermudez

They are thrown together in the same cell, most likely by design by the then rebelling Latin American revolutionists. The powers that be need information and one of the inmates, Molina, is pressured into getting it from the stiff upper lipped and belligerent Valenitn.  

The musical opened on Broadway in 1993 and ran for 904 performances. It walked away with several Tony’s including Best Musical (Score), Leading Actress in a Musical and Costume Design.

To my recollection the closest the musical version came to San Diego was in 1995 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center where Chita Rivera repeated her Tony Award winning performance. Yours truly found the four -leaf clover both years, having seen both productions, one on the east coast the other right here in our own back yard.  

When producer Josh Carr let it be known that The Welk Theatre in Escondido planned to mount the show, my excitement carried me to the opening night performance and never once was I disappointed.

Director/choreographer Ray Limon, three -time Craig Noel Award nominee for direction and choreography, has gathered a winning team to tell Puig’s story of corruption, brutality, persecution and love under the most bizarre and unconventional set of circumstances.  

"Dressing Them Up"

It unfolds in a prison cell (Ray Limon, Jennifer Edwards and Doug Davis) and in the mind of a prisoner deemed a ‘sexual deviant’, Molina (Jeffrey Parsons) the gay window dresser (“Dressing Them Up”) and his hard- core Marxist revolutionary cellmate, Valeltin. (Richard Bermudez so very sexy in Moonlight’s “Aida”, looking not so bad here either, and sounding vocally strong throughout)

In the background, Aurora (an excellent Natalie Nucci) or ‘the spider woman’ takes over Molina’s imagination (“And The Moon Grows Dimmer”) and sets into motion a series of stories about his favorite actresses all masterminded by Molina who obsessed over his romantic movie stars, all.

His fantasy Aurora/spider woman (“And The Moon Grows Dimmer” and “Her Name is Aurora”), appears in dreamlike sequences but boy she looks very real and is exceptionally right in voice and movement as the seductress taunting Molina into her web, but beware of the Kiss! “Let’s Make Love”.

Dressed to the nines in Janet pitcher’s skin- tight black sleek, velvet and spangled, or white Tux and feathers there is no taking your eyes off every one of her musical numbers whether she is slinking down a spiral staircase, dancing, in a gilded cage or on an overhead ramp looking down on everything. 

Scene from "Kiss of the Spider Woman

Molina’s storytelling and his love of old movies take him away from the pain of being harassed, used and humiliated by of the rest of the ‘chauvinist’ men including the Warden (Robert Hoyt -“Hey, Molina, you little queer. Here’s a leading man for one of your movies.”)  

Jeffrey Scott Parsons fits the role of Molina just perfectly. His eagerness, attentiveness and soft -spoken advances toward Valentin give him the credibility to go back and forth as a dreamer, faithful friend and loving son. Looking like he stepped out of a prison bandbox, he accessorizes his prison uniform with a blazing red scarf.

Jeffrey Scott Parsons and Richard Bermudez

Appearing last at The Welk, he took on the role of the Emcee in their “Cabaret” he was nominated for Outstanding Lead Performance Male by The San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. Singing, dancing and comic timing were plusses for him then and still ring true.

Valentine isn’t very impressed with his gay cellmate either by marking off his side of the cell to separate the two, or by trying to ignore the stories by keeping his distance; “Will you please shut up, Will you ever shut up?” “I’m not one of your goddamn movies, I will probably die here.”

Turning the coin to Valentin and the treatment he receives in ‘interrogation’ by way of looking for information about his cohort’s outside the walls reveals the brutality and darkness of the story played against the lightness of Molina’s daydreams.

(Top) Lisa Dyson and Kylie Molnar (Bottom) Jeffrey Scott Parsons and Richard Bermuda

The two tracks run parallel and come together when Molina, Valentin’s girl Maria (Kylie Molmar) and Molina’s mother (Lisa Dyson) sing their most recognizable “Dear One”, “You Could Never Shame Me”, “Mama, It’s Me” and “Anything For Him”. Over the course of time, however, the relationship between the two softens and by plays end…well.

But the most moving and goose pimple moment comes when Bermudez, in his glorious baritone voice begins the prelude to “The Day After That” when the entire company joins in, and just about silences the audience in a breathless moment that crashes through all sound barriers when one can finally let a breath out.    

Strong sound (Patrick Hoyny) support comes from musical director Justin Grey and his four piece live band in the pit) including reed, trumpet, keyboard, Charles Erdah, Elizabeth Howard, Don Kuhli and Leigh Southern on keys).

Live musicians, excellent lighting design by Jennifer Edwards, always wonderful costumes by Janet Pitcher, top notch dance coordination by Sean Kiralla and a full throated cast of all men save Nucci, Lisa Dyson and Kylie Molnar, soars with enough energy and testosterone to last throughout the run which, saving some unexpected turn of events will play through Oct. 22^nd.

Natalie Nucci as The Spider Woman

In a fitting tribute to the late great song and dance man, director, actor and mentor, once Mr. Starlight himself Don Ward, General Manager of Welk Resort Theatre, Sean Coogan dedicated this important show to Don as an acknowledgement to his past achievements and for future risks they may take in the years to come.

“Kiss of the Spiderwoman” isn’t a show you will see on many future musical theatre lineups. This is a special show, particularly in these days of our now heavy-handed government interference in the LGBT community. Molina’s imprisonment was just the tip of the iceberg.

Yours truly gives it two thumbs up!

See you at the theatre.

Dates: Through Oct. 22^nd.

Organization: Welk Resort Theatres

Phone: 1.888.802.7469

Production Type: Musical

Where: 8860 Lawrence Welk Drive, Escondido, CA 92026

Ticket Prices: $38.00-$51.00

Web: welkresorts.com

Photo: Ken Jacques

“An American in Paris”: A Dance Lover’s Delight

Brothers George and Ira Gershwin wrote the music and lyrics for the Academy Award winning movie “An American in Paris” back in 1951. It starred Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron as the star crossed lovers, expat Jerry Mulligan a painter and dancer Lise Dassin who works as a salesgirl in between her dancing.

Oscar Levant played Adam Cook a budding concert pianist working his way up the musical ladder, and his friend, Henri Baurel whose upper class parents expect him to go into the family business, but he has his eye on bigger things like becoming a song and dance man to his parents horror.   

McGee Maddox and Sara Esty

“An American in Paris” the Broadway musical with book by Craig Lucas (“Light in the Piazza”, Blue Window”, “Three Postcards”) is the closest thing a musical will come to following in the tracks of a movie. The Broadway production won four Tony’s in 2015, four Drama Desk Awards and four Outer Critics Awards.

Somehow or other the contrived and convoluted love stories in the movie seemed a bit more palatable, perhaps because it’s set right after the war and Paris was just waking up from a bad dream and everyone then was looking for something to hold on to. But it’s now sixty odd years later and some in the audience weren’t even born at the time, and corn is out and realism is in.

But the dancing! Ah the dancing!  Director/choreographer Christopher Wheeldon brings with this Broadway production a dance lovers potpourri including tap, ballet, a bit of razzle-dazzle a la La Vegas style and ballroom.

McGee Maddox and Sara Esty

Bob Crowley’s set and gorgeous costumes are stunning and projections by ‘59 Productions’ give the entire show openness and enough sketch art and color to make sure we know we’re in Paris.

John Weston’s sound and Natasha Katz spectacular lighting also contribute to the overall look and sound. Musical director/conductor David Andrews Rogers’ and his 13 –piece- orchestra and a large ensemble of dancers, singers and walk-on’s, complete the picture. 

If you can mouth “Stairway To Paradise”, “I’ve Got Rhythm”, “The Man I Love”, “But Not For Me”, “S Wonderful”, “Shall We Dance” and about fourteen other familiar tunes than you will fall right into line with the packed house at the Civic Theatre the night I attended.

McGee Maddox and Sara Esty as the star crossed lovers Jerry Mulligan and Lise Dassin give off enough kinetic energy to make their dancing fete in the seventeen minute “American in Paris” ballet look like a lovers paradise. It is exquisite. When the two of them are on stage together it seems no one else matters.

Sara Esty and Emily Ferranti

But there are others vying for their attention. Milo Davenport (Emily Ferranti) is a rich socialite who falls hard for Jerry and offers him an opportunity to show off his art at an exhibition she arranges. He’s iffy about it but there’s a price to pay.

That story plays out along side the fantasy romance between Adam Hochberg (Stephen Brower) an injured GI and American who decided to stay put in Paris, and Lise and the real romance between Henri (Nick Spangler) and Lise.

The conflicts and drama are real for Lise and Henri as past revelations are unraveled but again, a sideshow for the real business at hand and that’s dancing.

Cast of "An American in Paris"

Most Hollywood stories, musicals in particular, end happily ever after. This “An American in Paris” complete with an overall talented cast that sings dances and acts, is no different. We know how it will end, the too involved story just takes a bit longer to play out, but for the exceptionally gorgeous dancing it makes it all worthwhile.

It’s a savory treat for dancers and all comers. It's well worth catching.

See you at the theatre.

Dates: Through Sept. 10th

Organization: Broadway San Diego

Phone: 619.570.1100

Production Type: Musical

Where: 1100 3^rd and b, Downtown San Diego, 92101

Ticket Prices: Start at $22.00

Web: broadwaysd.com

Venue: San Diego Civic Theatre

Photo: Matthew Murphy

“Marigolds” Flourish Under Lutfy’s Direction at Cygnet

Most of us know that watering and feeding our plants and flowers will produce expected results. Add some love, kind words and the results are beyond expectations, mostly positive. The same can be said about people in general and family relationships in particular.

Replace one of those elements, say love, and introduce radioactive ingredients or poisonous elements like enmity, oppression and suffocation and what you have is Paul Zindel’s 1960’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, “The Effect of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds”.

Dusted off and deftly directed by Rob Lutfy, "Marigolds" is long overdue for another look-see and Cygnet Theatre in Old Town is more than up to the challenge.

Abby Depuy as Tillie 

The last time this reviewer saw a production of ‘Gamma Rays’ is past my memory lifeline. Thankfully, it is currently being given another chance for yours truly to renew an old acquaintance in this powerful, poignant and resolute showing on Cygnet Theatres Stage through Sept. 24^th. Newcomers welcome.

Paul Zindel, playwright and science teacher won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the work in 1971where it premiered at The Alley Theatre in Houston.

It’s an autobiographical work, and an experiment the science teacher himself oversaw at an actual Science Fair Project in ‘which his student monitored irradiated seeds of the golden marigold’.

Abby Depuy, Rachel Esther Tate and Deanna Driscoll

 The play parallels the lives of a family struggling to find some tangible ground in which to function in a dysfunctional family environment.

The metaphor is not a subtle one by any stretch of the imagination, in the play nor as described in the program notes by dramaturg Tim West, who goes into some detail about Zindel’s own upbringing and the dysfunction of his own family, and particularly his mother, that also parallels the family in his play.

Opening onto set designer Charles Murdock Lucas’ outrageously messy and disorganized home (a once old vegetable store) with a room off to one side where Nanny (Carm Greco), the elderly border lives bringing some income into the household, a main room that is filled with notebook papers, school books, a cage holding a rabbit, an out of whack living room/kitchen with a hot plate and running water and stairway leading to upstairs bedrooms, and with windows covered in old newspapers, an enthusiastic Tillie (Abby Depuy) bounces in like a ray of sunshine (lighting designer Connor Mulligan) listening to her voice on a recording. (Kevin Anthenill, sound design)

Deanna Driscoll, Abby Depuy and Rachel Esther Tate

“He told me part of my hand came from a star that exploded long ago, another part from a tongue of fire, some tiny part from was on the sun itself exploded and whirled into a great storm; a whisper of earth, a fern that was crushed, and diamonds millions of years later. And then to the audience “and he called this bit of me an atom… What a beautiful word.”

Tillie is a science wiz and has the admiration and trust of her science teacher, Mr. Goodman. At home she is ridiculed, abused, battered and scorned by her radioactive mother Beatrice (Deanna Driscoll) whose dreams were never fulfilled and who cannot conceive that her daughter is worthy of anyone’s praises, particularly a teacher’s.

Making her debut with Cygnet, this fourteen -year old homeschooled youngster, Abby Depuy, hits the nail on the head in her portrayal of an abused young person who chose to take another path to keeping her sanity with her undying curiosity in the field of science.

“…my experiment made me feel important-every atom in me…Atom. What a wonderful word.”

Tillie’s older sister Ruth (Rachel Esther Tate) fading under the distress of her mother’s poisonous abuse, is an epileptic who at times mimics her mother’s tone on Tillie and in more forgiving language tries to aid and abet her younger sister by encouraging her, but that is shot lived. One wonders if anything save the experimental marigold’s can thrive under this roof.  

In another outstanding performance (“Stupid Fuc*ing Bird) Tate has the distinguished task of pivoting from high school girl concerned with what her peers have to say, to wanna be grownup plastering her mother’s lipstick on thicker than needed to sharing her cigarettes with an adult acting more juvenile than herself, to badgering her younger sister.

Deannea Driscoll and Rachel Esther Tate

Dressed in a nightgown and robe (Shelly Williams) throughout the first act Driscoll, in this prized performance, digs into the role of Beatrice like a subterranean termite digs in to a piece of wood determined to shred and destroy any piece of humanity from the bottom up.

Seldom does she show signs of caring, and when she does they are few and far between, followed by a barrage of criticisms and putdowns. “I don’t like the idea of everyone laughing at you, because when they laugh at you they are laughing at me.”

 “I’m stuck with one daughter with half a mind; another one who’s half a test tube; half a husband- half a house full of rabbit crap-and half a corpse.” “Everything I wanted to be exploded.” Beatrice channeled by Driscoll who is simply outstanding as the offender and offended in this highly charged repugnant yet hopeful character study maintains character throughout.

Depuy's Tillie is the hope for the future, emerging as  a winner in every sense of the word.

Abby Depuy as Tillie

 Her Marigold experiment wins first place copping out the competition of the beautifully composed yet comical Janice Vickery (Michelle Marie Trester) whose experiment included getting a Tabby cat from the ASPCA and boiling it in sodium hydroxide …anyway the skeleton now on display with some missing bones, was the result of her science project.

At the play’s end I almost wanted to get into bed and cover my head and not think about the abusive behavior just seen. On rethinking I had to bring Tillie into my vision and marvel at the strength of this young girl’s ability see light, even through a prism.

Hats of to Lutfy and his committed cast!

See you at the theatre.

Dates: Through Sept. 24th

Organization: Cygnet Theatre

Phone: 619.337.1525

Production Type: Drama  

Where: 4040 Twiggs St. Old Town San Diego, CA 92110

Ticket Prices: Start at $38.00

Web: cygnettheatre.com

Photo: Daren Scott