From the Vault Dept.: Who doesn’t occasionally succumb to thoughts of “what was I doing ten years ago at this time?” Or twenty. Or, in the case of what’s printed below, forty. Forty! I was previewing and reviewing theater for Albany’s Metroland magazine under the name George Gordon (a literary joke) because the Albany Knickerbocker News, for which I also was writing, demanded exclusivity – an arrogant demand when you consider that they started out paying me twenty bucks per review. I’ll deal with that topic in a subsequent post. Here’s what appeared in Metroland under my phony byline exactly two score years ago.
Shrew, Quilters to Open
by George Gordon
THEATER FOR 1985 SWINGS INTO HIGH gear this weekend with three openings by local groups and a stop at Proctor’s by a national tour.
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| Martha Schlamme |
“This will be a special sort of happening,” said Elisabeth A. Ruthman, president of the group, “with magic, music, juggling, food, wine, flowers, and an auction.” Flower vendors and bread peddlers have been brought in from 15th-century Italy to work the lounges of the Egg; there will be performances by juggling team Brussels and Sprout (which hails either from Belgium or the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant), magic by Jim Snack and song by the SUNYA Chamber Singers. Also on hand: a selection of foods, including gourmet cheeses.
The play itself, directed by Terence Lamude, is described by the director as being “very modern – but I’m not trying to wrench it into the present. It’s set in 1455 during the early Renaissance.” Although often regarded as nothing more than a dramatic tribute to misogyny, Lamude has promised that his version will reveal the play’s true intent: to depict the mutual taming of Kate and Petruchio.The show will open Sunday, the day after the gala preview, at 2 P.M., with additional performances at 10 A.M. February 4, 5, 7 and 8, and 8 P.M. performances February 8 and 9. Tickets are priced at $9 ($7 for seniors and students, $4 for kids). They may be obtained at the box office, or call 473-xxxx for more info. For the gala preview, tickets ranges from $250 to $15, and may be reserved by calling Dr. Ruthman at 456-xxxx.
Quilters Comes Together
THAT QUIETLY SATISFYING OCCUPATION OF making a quilt – producing warmth and security from bits and pieces – is theme and metaphor for the next offering at Capital Repertory Company. “Quilters,” a musical by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek, opens at the Market Theatre Saturday at 8 P.M. and will play at 8 P.M. Tuesdays through Fridays, 4:30 and 9 P.M. on subsequent Saturdays and at 2:30 P.M. on Sundays, through March 3.
The stories in “Quilters” tell the history of Sarah McKendree Bonham, who is 83, as she and her six daughters finish her “legacy” quilt, which is all that she believes she will leave behind in this world. The seven episodes of the show take their titles from blocks of the blanket: “The Lone Star,” “Tree of Life,” and “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul” are some examples. The settlers’ journey West – this is from the pioneer days, after all – is recounted in “Rocky Road to Kansas”; “Log Cabin” describes the search for shelter, and the humorous “Four Doves in a Window” tells of a woman’s coming of age.
“Quilters” began as an audition piece for Newman; with the score by Damashek, it had its first performance at the Denver Center Theatre in 1982.
In the cast at Cap Rep are Berely Fite as Sarah and Mary Gaebler, Julie White, Marjorie Berman, Mary Baird, Kate Kelly, and Anne O’Sullivan as her daughters. Hank Levy is the music director.
Tickets are priced from $9.50 to $15 and are available at the Market Theatre box office, CBO outlets and at the Saratoga Circuit in Saratoga; or call 462-xxxx.
THEATER IN REVIEW
ACT’s Crimes Pays
BETH HENLEY’S “CRIMES OF THE HEART” won a Pulitzer Prize when it opened Off-Broadway. The playwright deserved it: she has a keen, mean ear. Her portrayal of a small city in Mississippi, seen through the eyes of a half-dozen characters, has a wonderful humanity and an ice-cold sense of humor.
The world isn’t perceived the same way up north, and the way we speak has as much to do with it as anything else. TV-land has given us farcical faux-southern fare such as “Dallas,” which is to the South what Colonel Sanders’s product is to southern-fried chicken. “Crimes of the Heart,” therefore, is tricky fare to haul north of the Mason-Dixon line, and it is to the credit of the cast of Albany Civic Theater’s production, and to director Eleanor Koblenz, that a lot of time has been spent just in mastering the needed dialect.
The show opened two Wednesdays ago (January 23) and brings a new shine of professionalism to area theater. The touring company, which arrived at Proctor’s a while back, would have done well to look at this production: they might have packed up and gone home to think things over for a while.
There are only six people in the cast, and each deserves much credit for stunning performances. But Criss Henry, as the whimsical Babe Botrelle, stands out as an actress who gives no hint of artifice whatsoever. For all I know, she could be Babe in real life, but that still wouldn’t explain how she could take that up onto the stage with such seeming effortlessness. Actually, it must begin with her unflagging energy. For instance, she doesn’t simply move: she flings herself onto chairs or onto a cot.
Debby Sample and Benita Zahn play her sisters with similar conviction. They have hands that flutter with familiar similarity and an overeager concern about the welfare of one another. They are bonded by a slew of family tragedies, the likes of which you wouldn’t believe on paper but seem entirely credible on stage. Sample, as the eldest, a spinster named Lenny, wears a mask of worry around the others, which she lifts when alone; Zahn, as Meg, is the sister with a rep who puts on a show of living for the moment.
Gwen Ellen Fraser practically steals the play out from under everyone else at the start, bursting in with the cluckings and jerkiness of a chicken – which, after all, is her nickname. But she proves an effective foil for the sisters as she battles to maintain a Southern sense of propriety.
The problem with the two men is that they’re overshadowed by all of the busy women that surround them. Jerry Nicklas is the bashful Doc Porter, who tries to resume a courtship with Meg; Cohn McCarty plays the bashful lawyer Lloyd, who just might be able to get Babe off a murder rap. They are very real; you can practically see them wiping their feet on the outside mat.
Set designer Stephen Momrow has created a kitchen that goes for verisimilitude and succeeds, which is rare; it’s the right touch for the intimate atmosphere of the ACT auditorium. “Crimes of the Heart,” which runs through February 3, is another tribute to director Koblenz’s phenomenal ability to present even as difficult a play as this with complete understanding, conviction and, therefore, success.
NOTEWORTHY
AND THIS REALLY IS “NOTEWORTHY”: we get a taste of something Manhattan audiences have been enjoying for years – since the 1950s, in fact, when Martha Schlamme first came to the United States. She grew up in prewar Austria, and from there traveled to France and England. During the war she began entertaining troops, and she accumulated a sizable repertory not only of music, but also of languages (she sometimes does her show in 12 of them).
“A Concert Cabaret” comes to Proctor’s for one performance Saturday, at 8 P.M. Seating will be limited to tables onstage, to preserve the intimate atmosphere. You can expect to hear works by Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Jacques Brel, Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Parker, Judith Viorst, and many others, with songs accompanied by pianist Harry Huff.
Said the San Francisco Examiner: “Martha Schlamme may be either a singing actress, an acting singer, a chanteuse, a diseuse, or any combination of the above. Who cares what you call her as long as you call her entrancing?”
With fellow-performer Alvin Epstein, she has been performing ‘’A Kurt Weill Cabaret” for many years; they recently opened a “farewell” production of the show at NYC’s Harold Clurman Theatre, which The New York Times lavished with praise.
Refreshments will be provided during the Proctor’s show, which may be the closest we’ll ever come to getting the feel of an old-time European café. Tickets are priced from $7.50 to $15 and are available at the box office, CBO outlets, Drome Sound and Carl Co. stores; or call 382-xxxx.
– Metroland Magazine, 31 January 1985
Grand Schlamme
TICKETHOLDERS FOR THE PROCTOR’S APPEARANCE by Martha Schlamme last Saturday may have been surprised to be escorted down the aisle past the orchestra seats: we were put onstage, where those who paid a little extra could sit at tables near the piano and sample complimentary wine and cheese. They had a pretty convincing nightclub up there, and when Martha Schlamme strode out into the midst of it to perform, the atmosphere made sense.
Schlamme is something of a legend in Manhattan, where she has devotedly been performing the songs of Kurt Weill with partner Alvin Epstein for many years; here she offered us her one-woman show, presented to the superb piano accompaniment of Harry Huff.
There was some Weill, songs written with Brecht and one written with Maxwell Anderson; there were songs by Brel, one by Sondheim and poetry by Viorst, Cummings, and St. Vincent Millay. And what tied it together were some significant themes, beginning with a look at the failures of relationships between men and women. A theme of survival followed, with Schlamme’s own story providing convincing evidence that you can, indeed, survive seemingly impossible hardships – and the songs and stories helped. They were vital, in fact, even if the writers of some of them – Kurt Tucholsky, for instance - succumbed to despair.
Many old friends, those who knew and loved the material, were in the audience. And Martha Schlamme made many new friends that night as well.
– Metroland Magazine, 7 February 1985
[I also previewed and reviewed the Schlamme concert for the Knickerbocker News. You can find those pieces here.]
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