Upper WET Side
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6/4: Pay It Forward (and Make It Real)
June 4, 2012
His BIG annual Bobfest celebration of Dylan’s birthday has grown to notch its first edition at the Count Basie Theatre…he’s performed the Nat’l Anthem at BIG League ballparks…and he counts among his BIG Scary Friends the Lt. Gov of NJ (aka his sister-in-law). That said, Pat Guadagno isn’t above scaling down his bigger ambitions to grace practically every bar up and down the Upper Wet Side with his presence all throughout the calendar year; rescuing the noble calling of “saloon singer” from Sinatra tux-’n-toupee stereotype and playing every room like it’s Camden Yards. This Wednesday, the veteran entertainer racks up another BIG credit…when he plays the Ed McMahon/ Doc Severinsen role to BIG Joe Henry, as the supersized DJ presents a live taping of a new radio variety show at the ONLY venue that’s round enough to contain him: McLoone’s Supper Club!
Whatta weekend: rained upon torrentially while hustling home from the Clash Fest tribute at The Press Room on Fri-dur-day night; rained upon intermittently while trying to meet up with some friends at Sunday’s Pride Fest. Stayed on the Dry Side for First Saturday’s round of gallery opening events, and took in the afternoon Pride Parade from the corner of our (alternately Sesame and seedy) block, under skies the color of 1960s-vintage Blue Laws.
But enough about you: we’re wringing out the mildew from our fave bowling shirts, and with a seven-day slate of activity staring us into submission, we’re primed to milDEW it AGAIN, beginning with the first of our June 4-10 picks that pick up right around the cattywampus corner…
5/11: A ‘Wonderful’ Season in the Homestretch
May 11, 2012
Susan Heyward stars as Winnie, the “nearly nine year old” central character in MY WONDERFUL DAY, the Alan Ayckbourn comedy going up May 15 as the final show of the mainstage season at Two River Theater.
As the author of nearly 80 produced plays, he’s been a magnet for gleaming trophies, plaques and medallions that include the Tony, the Olivier and the Moliere Award, not to mention five honorary doctorates and — what was that other one? Oh yeah, a knighthood.
You’d think then with all of that precious metal clanking about, Sir Alan Ayckbourn would make a healthy amount of noise on this side of the Atlantic — but regrettably, the works of the dramatist best known for theNorman Conquests trilogy and Absurd Person Singular are apparently in no danger of challenging the likes of Nunsense for dominance outside of America’s biggest cities and universities.
Beginning this Tuesday, May 15, Two River Theater Company endeavors to change all that — as indeed they’ve worked to change the standard set of expectations for a “suburban” stage operation — when the professional troupe caps its 2011-2012 mainstage season with a new production of the 2009 comedy My Wonderful Day.
5/8: Once More Unto the Breach for TRTC
May 8, 2012
Veterans of Broadway, major awards AND the Two River Theater, Michael Cumpsty (MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING) and Chuck Cooper (IN THIS HOUSE, JITNEY) return to the Red Bank stage in 2013.
“I feel like I’m having a dream,” said the playwright and performance artist Lisa Kron as she faced a capacity crowd at Two River Theater on Monday night.
“In high school, we, the theater people, were like the outcasts…this is the pep rally we never had.”
The occasion for the spirited assembly was the annual new season announcement by Two River Theater Company — one of the most highly anticipated such events in New Jersey stage circles, and one presided over by John Dias, now in his second season as TRTC’s artistic director.
As introduced by the nationally renowned producer and some celebrated associates, the 2012-2013 schedule builds upon the successful template established in the current 2011-2012 season — a season that climaxes with the production of Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s My Wonderful Day, going up in previews on May 15.
Utilizing both the mainstage Rechnitz auditorium and the “black box” Marion Huber space at TRTC’s branded Bridge Avenue arts center, the new slate of eight shows mixes classics of the English language with new American voices; intimate solos with exquisite ensembles, and new faces with a whole lot of returning favorites — with words from the likes of Noel Coward, August Wilson and a guy by the name of Shakespeare.
4/19: RENT Controlled ‘n Ready
April 19, 2012
Original Broadway cast members of RENT, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp perform both solo and in tandem in a Saturday night concert event at Monmouth University.
We spoke of many things — of baseball (esp. the Cubs and the Mets) and Spider-Man; of a band named XTC, and what it’s like to have a father in law who won the Nobel Prize. We even found a few moments to speak of a little phenom called Rent.
Illinois native Anthony Rapp was already a seasoned veteran of the stage (at age ten, he played the title role in the ill-fated musical The Little Prince) and screen (Adventures in Babysitting, Dazed and Confused) — and Adam Pascal was a native New Yorker whose only stage experience was in fronting a band called Mute — when the two became castmates (and their characters became roommates) in a show that did nothing less than change the face of latter-day Broadway.
Set in the once-forgotten but fast-transitioning landscape of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the AIDS-ravaged 1980s, Jonathan Larson’s magnum opus borrowed the framework of Puccini’s La Boheme for a production that would win a fistful of Tonys AND a Pulitzer (not to mention a whole new generation of diehard Rentheads), fueled by real grass-roots buzz and the mind-bogglingly sudden death of its creator on the eve of the show’s first preview.
In the original cast of the 1996 Off Broadway premiere and its Broadway incarnation later that same year — a cast that also boasted Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs and Law & Order‘s Jesse L. Martin — Pascal played Roger Davis, the HIV-positive musician, with Rapp as Mark Cohen, Roger’s filmmaker friend and roomie (the two roles were riffs on Boheme‘s Rodolfo and Marcello).
The actors would eventually go their own ways — Anthony would come out and advocate tirelessly for LGBT rights, while Adam would “marry up” and form a partnership with playwright and superstar cookbook author Cybele Pascal (prominent in the food allergy community, and daughter to the Nobel-winning Eric Chivian). And, while the show would launch the Broadway careers of the two young stars in earnest (Pascal would play lead roles in the Elton John-Tim Rice Aida, in David (Bon Jovi) Bryan’s Memphis, and in the 1998 revival of Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret; Rapp would essay the title role in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown), it would also draw the Adam & Anthony team back together for the 2005 film version, and a 2009 tour.
On Saturday night, April 21, the colleagues reunite once more, in a concert presented under the name Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp: Original Stars of Broadway’s RENT — a touring production that comes to Monmouth University‘s Pollak Theatre for one 8pm show.
The three-part program is set to kick off with Pascal performing with his three-piece combo “Me & Larry,” a project that finds the singer adding his powerhouse vocals (as well as his underrated guitar and bass skills) to pianist Larry Edoff’s bold sound in a set that draws from their album Blinding Light, with some eye-opening new takes on some familiar showtune standards, to boot.
Rapp, who documented his own voyage through life and Rent in his memoir Without You, will be performing a mix of savvy originals and surprising covers with his own five piece band — and the two co-headliners team up again for the concert’s climactic segment, an interlude in which the stars share stories and signature songs from that most game-changing (and career-defining) of shows.
UpperWETside spoke to Adam and Anthony separately, and in that order. What follows is a merry mashup of those back-to-back phone conversations.
4/18: Watson, the Needling
April 18, 2012
Wynn Harmon, Rich Silverstein and Gary Marachek look at THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES from a frantically farcical new angle, in the comedy going up April 19 at NJ Rep in Long Branch. (photo by SuzAnne Barabas)
You know the story: the creepy old mansion adrift on the ruddy, mist-shrouded moors of the West Country. The bloodline curse, the Great Grimpen Mire and the glowy-eyed hound from Hell. The celebrated sleuth, his easily flummoxed sidekick and the supernaturally-tinged suspenser that launched a thousand parodies, pastiches and pale imitations.
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought back his famous creation Sherlock Holmes in 1901 (by what could diplomatically be called Popular Demand), he resurrected the iconic detective in grand style, with The Hound of the Baskervilles. The third Holmes novel — the author’s first Holmes tale of any sort since controversially killing off the character eight years earlier — was a jolly-good ripping yarn that immediately caught the public’s fancy; an instant classic that served to reinforce the fact that the brilliant deductive brain from Baker Street was bigger (and, for many, more real) than his walrus-mustached creator.
The basis for several straightforward screen adaptations (including some good ‘uns with Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing) and a slew of romps, The Hound of the Baskervilles hits the stage of New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch as a rollicking show-within-a-show — one that goes up in previews on Thursday, April 19 and opens on Saturday, April 21.
In the script by Steven Canny and John Nicholson, a ragtag troupe of small-time actors barnstorms their way around the countryside with their own production of The Hound — an endeavor that’s complicated by the fact that the three thespians (Wynn Harmon, Gary Marachek, Rich Silverstein) are forced to take on all of the parts in the show — male, female, canine and force of supernature.
The show that continues through May 27 marks the play’s New Jersey premiere, as well as the NJ Rep debut of director Mark Shanahan — an actor, playwright, voice artist and educator who’s intimately familiar with the concept of multitasking.
You wouldn’t be out of line to think that Hound would certainly fulfill one’s minimum daily requirement for farcical, fast-change thrills drawn from some of the most time-honored conventions of the “veddy British” mystery tale — but you would be wrong, my dear Inspector. There’s another Shanahan-helmed play in “town;” one that raises its first curtain some 72 hours after opening night at NJ Rep — and one that, incredible as it may seem, could even outpace Hound in the chaos department.
That other play is The 39 Steps, the Tony winning 2007 tour-de-farce adapted by Patrick Barlow from a vintage spy thriller by John Buchan — or, cutting to the chase, the 1935 screen version directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The show goes up on Tuesday, April 24 as the final production of the season at George Street Playhouse, continuing at the venerable New Brunswick venue through May 20.
A tale of mistaken manhunts, stolen secrets and confounding conspiracies comes equipped with wink-wing/nudge-nudge allusions to other works from the Master’s canon, along with a devilishly crowdpleasing device in which the supporting players in the four-person cast take on dozens of parts (including inanimate objects) in a breathless series of lightning-quick changes.
Shanahan, who understudied the lead in the show’s 2008 Broadway run AND directed two previous productions (when he wasn’t teaching a course in Hitchcock’s films at Fordham University), wrangles a cast that stars Tony nominee Howard McGillin as harried hero Richard Hannay. Stacie Morgan Lewis costars as all of the play’s female characters, with Michael Thomas Holmes and Mark Price as pretty much everybody and everything else.
UpperWETside managed to flag down the beyond-busy director as he galloped between Long Branch and New Brunswick on Route 18, like a man with a hellhound on his tail…
4/13: Right Here in River City
April 13, 2012
Brett Colby IS Professor Harold Hill…and Father Alphonse Stephenson IS everyone’s favorite Pentagon-based Broadway conductor/ Catholic priest/ Jersey Shore legend…when THE MUSIC MAN takes over the stage of the Algonquin in Manasquan beginning April 20.
Hide the passed hors d’oeuvres; squirrel away the plastic tumblers of merlot — we’re back in First Nighting mode, for another freewheeling, freeloading round of adventures in local theatah, up and down this thing we called the Upper Wet Side.
We’ve already clued you in on the current engagement of Maureen McGovern and her show Carry It On at Two River Theater — and in days to come we’ll be posting interviews with ace director Mark Shanahan (who’s got not one but TWO fun projects opening imminently in Long Branch and New Brunswick), as well as original RENTmates Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp (coming on April 21 to the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University). Beginning right NOW, however, we’re kicking things strictly COMMUNITY, where everybody knows your name, and the star of the show probably has to help strike the set…
Simonelli Sez, all over the place. A longtime Monmouth County resident and a prolific playwright whose more than one dozen comedies and dramas are seen regularly on regional stages, Joe Simonelli has been an especially busy guy in recent months, at The First Avenue Playhouse in Atlantic Highlands (where his best known play Men Are Dogs continues a special monthly engagement) , at The Grange Theater in Howell — and at the Traco Theater in Toms River, the newly established downtown movie revival house where his original script Old Ringers begins a two weekend stand on Friday, April 13. A semi-sequel to Dogs, the “adult bawdy comedy” brings back two of that earlier show’s characters for a stand-alone scenario involving a quartet of senior ladies and an entrepreneurial adventure in the phone sex industry. The show continues through April 22 with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3 p.m. Traco Theater, 16 Washington St., Toms River • April 13 at 8pm (through 4/22)
Simonelli returns to the Traco in May with a fresh production of his With This Ring — but before that he’ll be back home on the Grange with a new staging of Roommates, an odd coupling involving a swinging ladies’ man, his divorced friend who comes to crash (and becomes the Thing That Would Not Leave), various meddling neighbors and still more mirthmaking machinery. Roommates opens at 8pm on Friday, April 27 and continues for four more shows on April 28, May 4 and May 5 (plus a 3pm matinee on April 29); tickets ($15) can be reserved by calling (732)768-2709. The Grange Playhouse, 4860 Route 9 South, Howell • April 27 at 8pm/ $15 (through 5/5)
That’s what’s opening tonight; flip the paperless for more going up tomorrow (April 14) and in weeks to come…
4/1: Maureen McGovern Carries the Show
April 2, 2012
Chart-topping vocalist, stage actress, “Disaster Theme Queen” and “Stradivarius Voice” Maureen McGovern begins a three week stand in Red Bank, as her show CARRY IT ON takes the stage at Two River Theater. (Photo by Deborah Feingold)
Any performer who’s been in (and sometimes out of) the game for more than 40 years could be forgiven for treating some of those years like baggage best left at the dock. In the case of Maureen McGovern, however, not only does she bring it with her when she travels — she prefers to Carry It On.
The pop singer and stage actress, who hit the ground running in 1973 with the Number One hit “The Morning After,” will be unpacking her bags for an extended stay in Red Bank, where she brings her solo show to the stage of Two River Theater beginning with a first preview on Tuesday, April 3.
If you remember the “disaster film” craze of the 1970s, you’ll know McGovern as the crisp and clear voice of the aforementioned theme song from The Poseidon Adventure — a record that went gold, topped the Billboards, won an Academy Award and garnered a Best New Artist Grammy nomination for the hitherto unknown singer.
It’s an opening act that she followed up with “We May Never Love Like This Again” from 1974′s The Towering Inferno — and thus was branded the Disaster Theme Queen, a status she spoofed with her memorable role in 1980′s genre-killer Airplane!
There’ve been many more acts to Maureen McGovern’s career, of course — including a Broadway career that began when she was picked to succeed Linda Ronstadt in the smash 1980 production of The Pirates of Penzance. The neophyte actress would go on to co-star with Raul Julia (Nine) and Sting (in The Threepenny Opera) in addition to originating the role of Marmee in the musical adaptation of Little Women.
A run of acclaimed albums interpreting signature tunes from the likes of George Gershwin and Harold Arlen gained Maureen McGovern a couple more Grammy nods, and a landmark salute to Gershwin at Carnegie Hall gained her a whole new career as a sought-after concert performer. It was her most recent release, the 2008 Sixties songbook A Long and Winding Road, that led to the development of Carry It On — a musical exploration (co-authored with director Philip Himberg) that “brings her story to life with extraordinary interpretations of the songs of her generation.” That means everything from a very singerly take on Bob Dylan, to Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Lennon-McCartney, Stephen Sondheim and the title tune, a Civil Rights anthem from folk artist Gil Turner.
Of course, you can’t have multiple acts without a few intermissions — including, in McGovern’s case, a curious stretch in which the financially strapped headliner took a secretarial job under the name Glenda Schwartz. The whole story of Maureen McGovern and her times is all in a night’s work for the singer that composer David Shire dubbed “The Stradivarius Voice” — a story told through words, music and vivd images in Carry It On.
UpperWETside spoke to this representative of the Top 100 Irish Americans back in March, as the green cardboard shamrocks of the Muscular Dystrophy Association‘s Shamrocks Against Dystrophy (a campaign that McGovern chaired for many years) bloomed at supermarkets and convenience stores coast to coast.
3/16: Decisions, Decisions…
March 16, 2012
Polly, Unsaturated: Poet, painter, priestess of (re)purpose Kathy “Polly” Polenberg — taking a brief breather from creating the scenery and the awesome “Audrey II” for the Forrestdale School production of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS — is among the artists represented in AWAKENINGS, the new installation at Gallery U in Red Bank.
“Freedom of Choice is what you got/ Freedom FROM Choice is what you want” sang the sage men in the flowerpot hats back around 1980-’bouts. It’s a bluesy lament we can simp-athize with, if for no other reason than the fact that our nights generally present such a senses-shattering range of options, invites and tentative commitments. The situation practically guarantees that somebody, somewhere who was kind enough to invite us to their event will be stood up in favor of some equally nice person (or, as happened all too many times this winter, a “Dirty Stay-at-Home” night of cartoon reruns).
Beggars, they say, can’t be choosers — but for experienced freeloaders, the world’s an erster. See if you can help us choose between competing options over the next seven days, March 16 through March 22..
FRIDAY 3/16: AWAKENINGS in Red Bank… Since they hit the Red Bank ground running with the opening of their second gallery space (a hiptown homestead of the original Montclair location), the folks at GALLERY U have brought a “freath o’ bresh air” back to the borough’s largely dormant artscape — and beginning this evening, the busy Broad Street hive hosts a new “mixed medium group show;” an assembly of more than 20 “established and emerging artists” spearheaded by Laura Brunetti (of Caring Canvas Project fame). There’s live music by The Aster Pheonyx Project — and among the many other creative folk represented will be one of our fave locals, Kathy Polenberg, a seemingly tireless creator of indoor/outdoor art, poetry, prose, theatrical scenery (including an awesome made-from-scratch killer plant for a school staging of Little Shop) and home accents that’ll make YOUR expensive decorator take a long walk off a very short Pier One. Gallery U and Boutique, 80 Broad St., Red Bank • 6-9pm/ FREE
…or Colin & Brad at the Basie? In an interview we did several years back with rubberfaced improv action figure Colin Mochrie, the star of TV’s long-(re)running Whose Line Is It Anyway? opined that “We have more of a communal, collaborative relationship with the audience than an adversarial one…you’re laughing from a different part of your brain.” For the better part of the past decade, Mochrie and his fellow Whose Line veteran Brad Sherwood have made an entirely planned and non-spontaneous point of performing an annual show at the Count Basie Theatre — and on March 16, The Two Man Group returns to Red Bank for another evening of impishly improv’d interactions including, but not limited to, “Standing, Sitting, Bending,” “Helping Hands” and the dreaded Blindfold Mousetrap Alphabet Game. Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank • 8pm/ $19.50 – $49.50
…but that ain’t the 1/7 of it; flip the pixelated page for enough pulse-pounding choices to knock you clear into next Thursday…
3/8: The THRILL of First Nighting!
March 8, 2012
The cast of GOD OF CARNAGE — Laurie Devino, Samantha Ambler, Carl J. Nolan and James Walsh — is helping to make little old First Avenue Playhouse a very interesting place here in March.
Ah, the Theatah…”the thrill of first nighting,” as they say in “Autumn in New York;” only this ain’t autumn, New York, or even opening weekend for much of what we’re about to describe. Still, it IS worth our while to do the occasional Footlight Parade Roundup, especially given that it remains the primary beat of this correspondent (who admittedly doesn’t follow the music thing like he used to). To those who believe we’ve been dwelling upon stage stuff pretty heavily in recent days (see our home page for timely stories on the latest offerings from New Jersey Repertory Company, Two River Theater, and the all new L!VE Asbury Park), you’re absolutely right…but as we “spring ahead” clockwise and leave the Winter That Wasn’t in our periscope, we find much randomness of interest to call your attention to, here on the Upper Wet Side of NJ…
DOGS and CARNAGE on First Avenue. We’ve always been fond of the scrappy little storefront “dessert theatre” known as First Avenue Playhouse, but all those who think of the year-round Atlantic Highlands institution as purely the province of Neil Simon and Nunsense might want to take a closer look as March 2012 transitions quickly from Lion-esque to Lamb-y. On stage NOW and continuing through March 24 is a very recent international comic favorite that’s being seen ’round these parts for the first time — God of Carnage, adapted by Christopher Hampton from the French script by Yasmina Reza (Art).
Reset for American audiences to the gentrified precincts of millennial Brooklyn, the four-character comedy centers around a very civilized discussion between two sets of parents, one of whom have a son that injured the son of the others. To say that the level of discourse doesn’t stay civil for too long would be an understatement of course, and things devolve to a point that makes the playground seem like the Oxford Union by comparison. This is the play that netted a Tony for Marcia Gay Harden (who shared the Broadway stage with Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini), and was filmed last year by Roman Polanski with an Oscar-lauded cast (Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly). Samantha Ambler, one of our fave players on the local community stage scene (and one of the people who’ve brought you the offbeat entertainments of Thirst-E Productions), joins Laurie Devino, Carl J. Nolan and James Walsh for a show that gets served up with dessert TONIGHT, Fridays, Saturdays (plus March 22) at 8:30pm, with a Sunday matinee on March 18.
But that’s not all: Atlantic Highlands-based playwright Joe Simonelli — a prolific creator of original comedies AND dramas who’s premiered many of his works right there on First Avenue — returns to First Ave this Sunday, March 11, for the first in an “every second Sunday” stand of Men Are Dogs, his most popular play and an ensemble piece that’s been published and produced Off Broadway. This exclusive NJ engagement of the comedy (in which a therapist who runs a support group for single and divorced women has issues of her own with Mom and that new delivery guy) has Roberta Davis directing a show that’s been a proven crowdpleaser AND a hit with area actresses. First Avenue Playhouse, 123 First Ave., Atlantic Highlands • all tickets $20 (check website for info on dinner theater packages)
…and there’s more where that came from, theater fans…
3/5: Seeking SANCTUARY at NJ Rep
March 5, 2012
NPR radio host, performance poet and playwright Al Letson recaptures a SUMMER IN SANCTUARY, in his solo show going up this week in Long Branch.
Actor, writer, producer, “multi-disciplinary artist,” dyslexic, son of a preacher man — Al Letson is all those things and then some; a real one man show who made his mark as a nationally competing Poetry Slam champion on stages as big as the 2004 Final Four Pre-Game to Def Poetry Jam.
To a burgeoning body of listeners, he’s a familiar presence on the radio dial; not as a shoot-from-the-lip talker with three daily hours to fill, but as the host of NPR’s State of the Re:Union, a series of exquisitely produced and provocative hourlong documentaries that took shape when the native of Plainfield won the nationwide Public Radio Talent Quest in 2008.
The 39 year old Letson is also a prolific playwright — an author whose “poetical” blends of song and story include Griot (a “three centuries of culture in 90 minutes” exploration of storytelling, from precolonial Africa to hiphop America) and Julius X (a “mash-up” of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with the life of Malcolm X). Beginning with previews this Thursday and opening on Saturday, March 10, Letson comes to Long Branch for an extended stay, when he brings his solo stage piece Summer in Sanctuary to New Jersey Repertory Company for an engagement that continues through March 25.
Sanctuary, it turns out, is not just a concept but a very real place — The Sanctuary on 8th Street community center in Jacksonville, FL to be precise. It was there, in the midst of the poverty-ravaged Springfield section, that Letson wore yet another hat over those trademark dreadlocks — that of educator, during a 2006 interlude in which the once-shy kid who never went to college endeavored to teach Creative Writing to a classroom of inner city teenagers. The extent to which he succeeded or failed sits at the heart of Sanctuary, a work about which the author says, “This is a play in which the bad guy is me…the person named ‘Al’ is the anti-hero.”
For his stint on LB’s lower Broadway, Letson teams with director Rob Urbinati, whose Minstrel Show caused something of a stir at NJ Rep back in 2007. Performances will take place in the playhouse’s intimately scaled Second Stage space, and tickets are being offered at a substantial discount to full time students age 25 and under.
UpperWETside caught up with the continent-crossing creator of compelling content, somewhere in America…
