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KC Star Review of Rubble

By Robert Trussell at the KC Star

Van also directs a piece of her own creation — I’m not sure I can say she “wrote” it — called “Rubble,” which she stages in the Fishtank Performing Studio picture window as well as the sidewalk below.

This “non-verbal” play doesn’t tell a conventional story. But there is an elliptical narrative all the same. The piece begins with characters dressed in black appearing on the sidewalk and singing a rough-around-the-edges but gripping rendition of the gospel tune “Trouble of the World.”

In the window are two young men — actors Coleman Crenshaw and Andy Perkins — who seem to be living their lives on automatic pilot, vacantly switching channels with the remote, mechanically preparing tea. But as the black-clad figures return, now wearing surrealistic over-sized white masks, Perkins begins watching something through the window that he finds unsettling. At first he seems to be peering at the sky but eventually he’s watching the strange creatures on the the pavement.

Ultimately, he disappears from the window but later emerges onto the sidewalk to take his place among the strange masked beings.

No “synopsis” of this show really does it justice. But the live music — performed throughout by Peter Lawless, Katy Guillen and Katelyn Boone — is the glue that holds this piece together. The score, performed on guitars, keyboards and sax, is evocative, dreamlike and haunting. And it allows subtle interplay between actors and musicians that only serves to enhance the show.

To reach Robert Trussell, theater critic, call 816-234-4765 or send email to rtrussell@kcstar.com.

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/07/23/3031569/review-fringe-festival-first-day.html#ixzz1TEt439qr

KC Stage User Reviews (Rubble)

Wow! Sitting down to write my thoughts on Heidi Van’s window play “Rubble” with original music by Peter Lawless was just that. After watching this amazing blend of dance, performance art, and music I was left breathless. THIS show is what Fringe is about: the delicate flow of story driven by the ethereal melodies that were weaved between the choreographed movement of the masked beings and slice of life surreal performance of the actors behind the window created a stunning work of art.

Watching the actions of Andy Perkins and Coleman Crenshaw as they performed the almost cog and gear actions of their “Daily Grind” behind the window was not only comical at times and a commentary on day to day life, but also a revelation on how sometimes something small can cause us to see the world in a brand new way. When Perkins’ character had that moment of realization and found his new world outside of his normal grind, he shows us the intrigue and curiosity of what ifs and how nows, as Crenshaw keeps ticking away only to get more ticked as his counterpart changes their normal rhythms.

While all this is happening behind the glass windows, masked beings strive and struggle to keep going, to survive and rebuild, to collect the pieces of lost hope and broken dreams. I have too few words to describe their actions: the heart only feels for them, not vocalize. When they move, they show the strain of the burden, the confusion of what to do next in an ordered timed stride. Watching the dance and pantomime of these performers left me breathless and as distracted as Perkins trapped behind the glass.

And then, Read More »

KC Star Review of Enchanted April

Review | ‘Enchanted April’ from the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre

By ROBERT TRUSSELL

The Kansas City Star

The Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre production of “Enchanted April” falls in line with some of the Midtown theater company’s strongest work and, like many shows at the MET, is sightly ragged, a little out of balance, blemished with small imperfections but performed with integrity.

Linda Ade Brand, a director with an impressive track record, has assembled a talented group of actors, several of whom are making their MET debuts. All are committed to bringing Matthew Barber’s play about Brits in Italy to life.

Barber’s two-act piece is a romantic comedy taken from Elizabeth von Arnim’s 1920s novel about four disparate women who rejuvenate themselves by fleeing gloomy, rain-drenched England for a holiday at a picturesque Italian villa. The basic arc — repressed northern Europeans literally and figuratively rediscovering their libidos in the Mediterranean sun — feels extremely familiar, and not just because the novel was the basis of a successful 1992 film.

No, English-speaking writers have been discovering themselves in Italy, it seems, for hundreds of years, much as American novelists have turned to Mexico for the supposedly purifying effects of hot-blooded Latin culture.

Still, Barber’s play is a delicately constructed piece that balances poignancy and broad comedy and, without belaboring the point, colors the seemingly frivolous humor with the long, grim shadow of World War I.

Lotte Wilton (Katie Gilchrist) sets the story in motion when she sees a newspaper ad for an Italian vacation spot that promises wisteria, olive groves and a beach. Without bothering to consult her husband, a priggish solicitor named Mellersh (William Grey Warren), Lotte recruits the depressed Rose Arnot (Silvia Stoner), whom she meets at the ladies’ club.

Rose and Lotte are a study in contrasts — Rose is reserved and literal-minded while Lotte is given to visions and exuberant outbursts — but what they have in common are insensitive husbands. Rose’s spouse, a poet named Frederick (John Robert Paisley) who publishes under the ridiculous pseudonym Florian Ayers, is a supercilious philanderer with a taste for jazz and gin.

Together Rose and Lotte recruit two other women to help defray the cost of renting the old villa — Lady Caroline Bramble (Danelle Drury), an icy hedonist who’s been unlucky in love, and Mrs. Graves (Marilyn Lynch), a crotchety senior citizen who’s outlived her contemporaries.

The first act is set entirely in England and establishes the key relationships and characters, including Antony Wilding (Coleman Crenshaw), an English painter who owns the villa. Act 2 unfolds in Italy, where remarkable metamorphoses take place and, through some contrived plot mechanics, Lotte and Rose are joined by their husbands. A vivid comic character is Costanza (Nancy Marcy), the villa’s chief cook and bottle-washer.

The performances are rich and varied. Gilchrist executes a nice piece of work as Lotte, a flighty, charming instigator who delights in upsetting the status quo. Stoner’s Rose is emotionally strait-jacketed in the first act but becomes fully human in Italy.

Lynch turns in a superior comic performance — big but precise — as Mrs. Graves. And Drury, an actress I hadn’t seen before, makes a vivid impression as the cool Lady Caroline, a woman who hides her pain so effortlessly that she seems unapproachable until she, like the others, eventually loses her mask.

Crenshaw delivers a nicely understated performance as Wilding. In the early going Warren’s take on Mellersh seems too cartoonish, but in in the second act what seems to be an overly broad turn meshes into the play quite nicely — in part because he is matched by Marcy, who seems to be having great fun as the Italian-speaking Costanza. Paisley seems to struggle a bit, as if he could never quite get a fix on Frederick, and the second-act reconciliation between Frederick and Rose rings false.

But this play does work its will on the viewer. The atmosphere in Act 2 ultimately becomes so intoxicating that some viewers may want to join the characters on stage and breath in the wisteria and take evening strolls among the gardens.

The heady atmosphere owes a lot to Warren Deckert’s lighting, but chief among the production’s virtues are the costume designs of Nicole Sukolics-Christianson, whose clothes in Act 1 — corseted, restrictive, seemingly colorless — give way to vivid sensual and free-flowing outfits in the second act.

“Enchanted April” runs through April 23. Call 816-569-3226 or go to www.metkc.org.

To reach Robert Trussell, theater critic, call 816-234-4765 or send email to rtrussell@kcstar.com.