Veronica’s Room – A Dose of Halloween Horror

Georgia Ketchmark and Paul Roder. Photo by Alicia Turvin

 By Tina Arth

I have a love/hate relationship with shows that have small casts. Love?  I relish the opportunity to really watch people develop their roles, and take great pleasure in giving brief recognition to each actor in my review. Hate? I pretty much have to mention each cast member, so a weak link really stands out. However, in the case of Twilight’s current production, Veronica’s Room, it’s love-love-love-love for the four remarkable performers who, under Alicia Turvin’s marvelous direction, bring Ira Levin’s creepy story to jarring, vibrant life.

It’s hard to give much of an overview of Veronica’s Room without spilling over into major spoiler territory. Leave it at this: it’s 1973, and a young woman (just referred to as “Girl” in the program) and her date (“Young Man”) have met an older couple, “Man” and “Woman” in a Boston café. Man and Woman are Irish, and are caretakers for an ill, elderly woman with dementia (“Cissy”) whose sister Veronica died of TB in 1935, after being locked in isolation in her room for several years. Cissy still lives in the family home, and Veronica’s old bedroom has been preserved exactly as it was when she died. Cissy doesn’t understand that Veronica died – rather, she thinks that Veronica left because she was angry with Cissy. Because Girl bears a strong resemblance to Veronica, Man and Woman have asked Girl and Young Man back to the home. The entire play takes place in Veronica’s room, where Man and Woman beg Girl to impersonate Veronica long enough to explain to Cissy that she’s not mad, thus relieving her “sister’s” anxiety in her last days. After discussing the plan with Young Man, who is not terribly supportive of the idea, Girl finally agrees to the deal, starting with choosing one of Veronica’s old dresses plus undergarments from the chifforobe and fixing her hair in a style suitable to 1935.  From this point on, playwright Levin plays with our sense of time and reality, there are a series of plot twists, and ultimately things go very badly. Perfect for Halloween, the play devolves into a tale of horror – to put it mildly, some people are a lot less charming in Act II than they were in Act I.

The play is written with four powerful roles, and each of the four actors is absolutely superb - which helps to makes a fundamentally creepy and disturbing show really compelling. Jaiden Wirth (Girl) delivers the performance of a lifetime, evolving from curious but reluctant through amused and adventurous, confused, frightened, acquiescent, and ultimately terrified. She is utterly believable throughout – and special props to her for never overplaying the role into a stereotypical hippie chick. Ryan O’Connell-Peller’s “Young Man” plays a single character with three very distinct personas, yet manages to remain distant and aloof in each – which somehow accentuates the evil.

Paul Roder (Man) maintains an aura of neurotic calm throughout, which initially tricks us into believing that he is relatively sane, even kindly, despite some unusual tics and quirky mannerisms – in particular, he exerts remarkable control of his facial muscles to create two completely different views of the same man.  As his counterpart, “Woman,” Georgia Ketchmark is the polar opposite – initially genial and outgoing, even somewhat bubbly, but evolving into uncontrollable rage as the real story emerges. Ketchmark also acted as fight choreographer for the show, and her work absolutely sparkles in Wirth’s frantic struggles.

The set is cluttered and dated, which makes perfect sense once the audience gets enough information to understand the intricacies of time and place. Mark Turvin’s sound design includes music that moves with the script – alternating between the mid-thirties and the early seventies and helping to create the eerie sense that time and place are malleable. Karen Roder’s costumes perform the same function, defining each character’s current reality by shifting style.

Veronica’s Room is not, in my opinion, anywhere near a perfect script – some of the transitions seem unnaturally abrupt, well suited to a dark mystery but allowing too little time for the audience to adjust to changing realities. However, four strong of performances more than compensate for Levin’s mild authorial shortcomings. The show is definitely R-rated for language, violence, partial nudity, and sexual imagery – but definitely a must-see for sophisticated audiences who appreciate fine acting served with a hefty dose of unrelenting horror.

Twilight Theater Company’s Veronica’s Room is playing at the Performing Arts Theater, 7515 N. Brandon Avenue, Portland through November 3, with performances at 8 P.M. on Friday–Saturday, and 3:00 PM on Sunday.  There is an additional 8:00 PM performance on Thursday, October 31.

A (Brilliant!) Clockwork Orange at Bag&Baggage

Photo by Casey Campbell

By Tina Arth

Prior to last night, my only experience with A Clockwork Orange was almost 50 years ago, when I saw (and hated) the movie. I have since learned that Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, like pre-1986 American editions of Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novella, omitted the final chapter. The result was that an already darkly dystopian tale was deprived of a hint of redemption that puts the whole story in completely different framework.

Luckily for me (and for theater-goers around the globe) the author never really liked the way his story had been handled on film or in the U.S. print version. In 1987 Burgess released A Clockwork Orange: A Play with Music (subsequently updated for an off-Broadway production in 2017), and it is this show, with the final chapter restored, that undergirds director Cassie Greer’s stunning Bag&Baggage production at the Vault in Hillsboro. I can best describe my reaction as West Side Story meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with just a hint of The Wizard of Oz.

The play retains the novella’s essential elements, but the staging and the addition of music lend a slightly lighthearted air that allows Burgess’ essential themes (principally, that free will is essential to a meaningful human experience) to shine through the story’s overt violence. A Clockwork Orange tells the tale of Alex, an angry and violent teen in a totalitarian, futuristic society. Courtesy of his unbridled aggression, he takes leadership of a strange little gang (Georgie, Dim, and Pete) who express themselves with a curious lingo called “Nadsat” that seems to be a hybrid of Russian and Cockney slang. Out on a crime spree after a night of drugged drinking at the local milk bar, Alex and his droogs (friends) fight with a rival gang, rob an author and rape his wife; later they break into the home of an elderly woman who dies during the attack. The other gang members escape, but Alex is caught and given a 14-year sentence. A few years into the sentence, Alex is subjected to an experimental behavioral modification treatment that uses aversion therapy to render him incapable of violence. The treatment is initially successful, and he is released from prison, but as Act II progresses things go (predictably) wrong.

The cast is all male, and with the exception of Aaron Cooper Swor, who plays Alex, each cast member plays multiple parts, including the roles of women. Jim Rick-White’s lighting design often assaults our senses with its harsh use of contrast, while costuming and sets are minimalist. The effect is a hard-edged but surreal presentation that features, but never glorifies, the darkness inherent in the script. The play is filled with scenes of fighting and raw violence, but choreographer Mandana Khoshnevisan has created a hybrid of gymnastics and ballet that softens the impact and lends some humor to even the harshest moments. The end result is a play where we never forget that we are watching an allegory, rather than simulated reality – and this challenges the audience to concentrate on the author’s (and director’s) thematic intent.

Swor is superb in a bizarrely challenging role where he must lead the audience through a series of reactions from utter disgust and alienation through brief flashes of empathy, setting us up to finally accept a surprising degree of transformation as he recovers the free will he lost during treatment. Watch also for Ty Hendrix’s athleticism and his skill at adapting to the needs of his many roles, and for Andrew Beck’s supremely arrogant, almost inhuman Dr. Brodsky. While you’re at it, watch them all – there are neither small roles nor weak links in this 9-person cast.

Audience members are invited to read a synopsis of the show at intermission to help them comprehend the dialogue, so peppered with Nadsat that it might seem unintelligible at times. I started to look at a clipboard, but immediately put it down when I realized that despite the odd language barrier the actors had told the story so clearly that I needed to no interpreter. If you have not seen or read any previous incarnations of A Clockwork Orange, go see the Bag&Baggage production simply for the merit of the presentation and message. Otherwise, forget everything you know about the book or film and go to see a brilliant take on a compelling tale.

Bag&Baggage’s A Clockwork Orange is playing at The Vault, 350 E. Main Street, Hillsboro, through October 27th, with 7:30 p.m. performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and 2:00 p.m. Sunday matinees.

 

South Pacific - 70 Years Later the Message Still Resonates

Men's Ensemble

By Tina Arth

Theatre in the Grove’s 2019-2020 season celebrates 50 years of ambitious community theater in Forest Grove with a powerful combination of shows old and new, beginning with the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. It’s a huge undertaking – a three-hour show with 27 cast members plus a 14-piece orchestra – under the experienced guidance of director Zachary Centers and musical director Michelle Bahr, both long-time TITG veterans. The result is a show that offers some spectacular performances, strong vocal ensemble work, and really nice choreography, but is still a somewhat uneven production.

On one level, South Pacific is a tale of heroism and sacrifice on a small Pacific island group during World War II. Two brave men, one a young Marine and the other an expatriate French planter, risk their lives to hide on a deserted island and report Japanese military activity to a nearby U.S. Naval base. The real story, and the one that has made the story an indelible classic, is the courage of its authors in boldly confronting racial intolerance in a major musical – in 1949, when the show opened on Broadway, much of the American public was not perceived to be ready for a story that openly confronted the racism so endemic in our society. It is the emotional journey of two young white G.I.s overcoming their cultural biases against interracial relationships that engages the audience – we may be charmed by the show’s abundant humor, but we are moved by the way love allows Little Rock hick Nellie Forbush and Philadelphia Main Liner Joe Cable to move beyond their ethnocentric backgrounds. Comic numbers like “Honey Bun” and “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame” and romantic numbers like “Some Enchanted Evening” are the show’s big blockbusters, but it is the quiet “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” that carries the essential message of South Pacific.

The show is anchored by its amazing female lead, Alison Luey, whose Nellie Forbush is a nonstop delight from curtain to curtain. Luey can out sing, out dance, even out giggle any Forbush I’ve ever seen, and her presence on the stage makes the whole experience worthwhile. Another real showstopper is area newcomer Andie Moreno, an opera singer whose larger than life Bloody Mary is hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly fierce.  Her bio indicates that this is her first major role in a musical – I find this hard to believe, and L.A.’s loss is definitely our gain.

TITG veteran performer Dan Bahr is delightfully uninhibited as the scheming, outlandish Seabee Luther Billis; he leads the men’s chorus in a rousing version of “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame” and lets it all hang out with abandon, displaying impressive abdominal control, during “Honey Bun.” Although his performance rarely matches that of his love interest, Luey, Seth Yohnka handles the challenging vocals of Emile de Becque nicely, especially the poignant “This Nearly Was Mine.” As Lieutenant Cable, Robert Altieri achieves believable chemistry with a genuinely lovely Kathleen Shew (Liat), but some of the songs are a bit out of his vocal range, forcing him to hold back in his key numbers. Both the men’s and women’s ensemble work is superb – fun, boisterous, embracing both the vocals and Jeananne Kelsey’s whimsical choreography and repeatedly bringing the show to life.

Even it it’s not a perfect production, South Pacific is a perfect way for Theatre in the Grove to kick off their 50^th season – big, bold, rooted firmly in the past but still relevant today, and willing to tackle any challenge, much like the troupe that presents it. Local audiences are fortunate to have such a remarkable resource in their community, and they should turn out in droves to celebrate both the show and the dedicated folks who bring it to them.

South Pacific is playing at Theatre in the Grove, 2028 Pacific Avenue, Forest Grove through October 27^th, with performances Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.