This was another ambitious and enjoyable year of theater in Albuquerque. I reviewed 41 plays this season, including my 500th review for the Journal. I would like to thank my colleague Marissa Greenberg for writing excellent reviews while I was vacationing in July.
This has been a year of festivals. Because of the short runs for the plays, I was not able to review any of the works from the 2011 Revolutions International Theatre Festival, but I am looking forward to the 2012 edition that starts next month.
The University of New Mexico Department of Theatre and Dance will present the 12th Annual Words Afire Festival of New Plays in April 2012. This year I saw “Back Home,” written by Nic Wehrwein, a UNM student finishing his master of fine arts degree in playwriting. Wehrwein had a veteran director in Shepard Sobal and an able cast headed by Equity actor Frank Taylor Green. While I found the play uneven, it certainly provided a unique opportunity for a new playwright to see his work on stage.
The Summer Shakespeare Festival, Will Power!, returned to the Vortex Theatre under the artistic direction of David Richard Jones. “Romeo and Juliet,” directed by Ryan Jason Cook, offered Stafford Douglas and delicate Willow Hanson as the youthful star-crossed lovers and a strong supporting cast. I enjoyed Tabatha Shaun as a female Tybalt, Juliet’s hotheaded cousin who precipitates the tragedy. Directorial decisions in the second half of the play, however, weakened its impact.
John Hardman directed a high-energy, high-decibel “Comedy of Errors” that was all bark and no bite. But “The Merchant of Venice,” directed by and starring Peter Shea Kierst, was a triumph.
The Albuquerque Theatre Guild, growing in membership and activities, sponsored the Albuquerque Tennessee Williams Festival 2011 to commemorate the centennial of the birth of this great American playwright. There were plays about Williams (“Mr. Williams and Miss Woods” by Phil Bock at the Adobe and “Rancho Pancho” by Gregg Barrios at the National Hispanic Cultural Center) and plays inspired by Williams (“Vessels: A Modern Retelling of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’” by Kevin R. Elder of Tricklock and “Cat on a Streetcar Named Iguana” by Phil Bock at the Adobe).
Independently, Fusion Theatre Company premiered Williams’ 1939 one-act “Once in a Lifetime” at The Cell. I doubt that many cities can match our yearlong observance of Tennessee Williams’ birthday. One of these productions was among my year’s best.
The Fusion Theatre Company continued to present some of Albuquerque’s finest theater at The Cell. Its productions of “God of Carnage” by Yasmina Reza, directed by Gil Lazier, and “Red” by John Logan, directed by Jacqueline Reid — both direct from success on Broadway — were audience treats.
My favorite Fusion play, however, was “The 39 Steps,” adapted by Patrick Barlow from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 British film. Robb Sisneros directed only four actors — Ross Kelly, Jacqueline Reid, Paul Blott and Bruce Holmes — to play dozens of characters. There was the surreal silliness of sight gags, deliberately missed sound and light cues, and whacky physical comedy that resulted in almost nonstop laughter.
Mother Road Theatre Company mounted excellent productions around the two implacable columns of The Filling Station. Most recently it staged “The Memory of Water” by Shelagh Stephenson, directed by Mark Hisler and Vic Browder. The play focused on three estranged sisters who return to the family home for their mother’s funeral. Dysfunctional hardly begins to describe the relationships — the anger, bitterness, jealousy, love, and despair—that the sisters have for each other and their dead mother.
Julia Thudium, Wendy Scott and Pip Lustgarten were excellent as the sisters, and the play evokes laughter despite the seriousness of the subject matter.
My favorite Mother Road production was “A View From the Bridge” by Arthur Miller. If you plan to mess with Miller, you had better be prepared to give him everything you’ve got. Miller’s themes are big, his characters big and his speeches big. Directors and founding members of Mother Road, Vic Browder and Julia Thudium, successfully accepted the challenge.
Their fine cast — William R. Stafford, Kristín Hansen, Julia Harris, Justin Tade, Julian Singer-Corbin and Nicholas Ballas — inhabited Miller’s 1955 drama of passion and repression, loyalty and betrayal, and especially family. The play was infused with the power and inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Hansen’s performance was one of the season’s best.
My next favorite production was “The Eccentricities of a Nightingale,” UNM’s contribution to the Tennessee Williams Festival. Director Shepard Sobel brought his theatrical experience, sensibility and insight and awakened in his student cast, staff and techies powerful senses of accomplishment and vulnerability. Though this was an ensemble enterprise, I was especially moved by Amanda Machon as Alma Winemiller “peculiar,” imperfect, and brave. Costumer Dorothy Baca dressed her in a long, white gown with trumpet sleeves that fluttered like angel wings. Machon’s youth and delicacy merged with her character’s strength and audacity. I could not take my eyes off of her.
The Adobe Theater is to be applauded for its production of “Arcadia” by Tom Stoppard. Insight, challenge and wit scintillated from Stoppard’s text like bubbles from a sparkling wine, and the result was intoxicating. Playwright Stoppard is unabashedly intellectual, but his characters tell you what you need to know.
“Arcadia” was set in an English country house inhabited by a family at the beginning of the 19th century and their descendants living in the present. These groups were featured in alternate scenes and then together at the play’s end. Matthew Naegeli did a fine job directing a complex play.
The Vortex Theatre provided my two other favorites. Peter Shea Kierst was brilliant both directing and portraying the moneylender Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare. Kierst pruned the play of lines, characters and even scenes to focus on the contrasting qualities of love and hatred, mercy and revenge, friendship and romance, Christian and Jew represented in the play’s two plots.
With a fine supporting cast, “Merchant” was an accessible yet moving rendition of a problematic play. Arlette Morgan’s Portia and Caitlin Aase’s Jessica were powerful, and Kierst’s stiff, cold dignity humanized a stereotype.
For me the best production of the year was “The House of the Spirits,” based on Isabel Allende’s novel “La casa de los espiritus” by Caridad Svich. Under the perceptive and sensitive direction of Valli Marie Rivera, this epic, multigenerational story set against natural disasters — earthquake and tsunami — and even worse manmade disasters — assassination, social and political revolution, governmental “cleansing” and legislated torture — took shape on the Vortex stage.
The cast of “The House of the Spirits” was uniformly excellent. Many actors played multiple roles that included singing and dancing. The dialogue, raw yet poetic, successfully and joyfully combined English and Spanish. Every technical aspect of the production contributed to its impact. I wish that I could mention all of the names of those involved in this presentation. My professional organization, the American Theater Critics Association, awarded the Francesca Primus Prize of $10,000 to Caridad Svich for this play. The Vortex production was community theater at its best and did justice to play and playwright. Theater in Albuquerque really is special.
Look for me on the front row.
