Late Nite Catechism results in hilarious flashbacks
by Patricia Sindelar
The nuns in my Catholic school were stodgy, old, crabby, Polish curmudgeons who lost their senses of humor decades before I was conceived. These grey-haired Franciscans didn’t want children to enjoy school or have fun learning — and believe me, when they were around, we didn’t.
So, sitting in the Howard Drew Theater at the Omaha Community Playhouse, Late Nite Catechism, which is loosely described as “an adult catechism class,” I’m thinking this will be about as much fun as repeating my times tables to a wrinkled windbag who wears ankle-length wool in May.
Theater Arts Guild to announce ’08-’09 award nominees
by Warren Francke
Broadway has its Tonys and Omaha has the Taggies with more than 150 nominees in more than 30 categories ready to be revealed Sunday, July 5, by TAG, the Theater Arts Guild, in a 7:30 p.m. gathering at the Pizza Shoppe Collective in Benson.
Taggie may not match Tony, Oscar or Emmy for hoopla, but it has a history going back decades to the Maggies (when the group was known as the Metropolitan Actors Guild) and it keeps evolving with ongoing efforts to fine-tune the process. The latest Saturday found a team of about 20 sorting through nominations based on some 170 productions starting with the likes of last summer’s Great American Trailer Park Musical.
* I can’t resist, writing this on a Sunday, guessing who’ll win the Omaha Community Playhouse Fonda-McGuire awards Monday, even if most readers will know the actual winners by the time my choices appear.
How about Thomas Becker for his lead juror in Twelve Angry Men, a drama that should net others supporting honors? And if Judy Radcliff doesn’t win for Mama Rose in Gypsy it’s not because she wasn’t a powerhouse in the OCP’s biggest show of the season.
The Witching Hour airs its dirty bedsheets at the Downtown Space
by Warren Francke
They’re having SEX at the Witching Hour, but the caps aren’t mine. The young people and one elder who developed the show named it SEX! The Musical for blunt brevity: to make sure we know it’s about sex.
The aging developer is Jennifer Pool, who recently turned 30. She directs the cabaret-style revue in the Downtown Space after weekend performances of Reefer Madness the Musical, which the same blunt brevity would rename Potnuts. We chatted about SEX to a rhythmic beat that turned out to be nothing more erotic than her sewing machine.
Mary J. Goodwin-Clinkscale considers herself “a survivor.” That’s why, when a June 29, 2008. arson fire destroyed the auditorium of the Greater Beth-El Temple, the black Apostolic church that sponsors her nonprofit GBT (Growing and Building Together) Academy of the Arts at 1502 N. 52nd St., she and fellow church officials resolved to rebuild. Proceeds from GBT’s July 2, 7 p.m. Through the Fire program at the UNO Strauss Performing Arts Center will help refurbish the auditorium, now just a shell awaiting a new floor, ceiling and stage, plus seating.
* An audition brings familiar faces and a few strangers. When I tried for a role in Chanticleer’s production of Mr. Roberts a half-century ago, a man I’d never met stood up and blew everyone away when he read for the title role.
It turned out later that he wouldn’t have time to take the part made famous on stage and film by Henry Fonda. But no one who attended that audition would forget hearing Jack Reilly deliver lines with such presence.
The Blue Barn gets high as a kite with musical satire
by Warren Francke
The movie Reefer Madness may have been shock and awe propaganda in 1936, but Reefer Madness the Musical! may sell out the Blue Barn as a hilarious example of iconic overkill with its outcry of “teen-age dope slaves” and “the devil’s harvest.”
Whatever else it is, the cult movie turned tuneful spoof is “a true Blue Barn campy show,” according to director Susan Clement-Toberer, the sort of send-up that used to fill its December slot as an irreverent antidote to more sugary Christmas offerings.
The ‘Scottish play’ takes to the outdoors by Warren Francke
The Weird Sisters return to Elmwood Park, reminding us that in the world of Will Shakespeare’s Macbeth “fair is foul and foul is fair.” Not paired with the usual comedy, for cost-saving in this time of recession, the great tragedy gives Nebraska Shakespeare Festival drama which is most fitting for a storm-tossed night.
Playgoers planning to picnic on the grass hope “storm-tossed” applies only to last year, described as “the rainiest ever,” by artistic director Cindy Melby Phaneuf. Schedule no storms, please, for June 18-21 and 24-28. Given good weather, director D. Scott Glasser will depend on his cast and the decaying look of the tree branches that form the set design to create that foreboding “nighttime world” of this “deeply superstitious” drama.
* Does drama heighten when it appears unexpectedly as you’re stumbling around half-awake at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning? Dare we call it theater when it’s simply a half-hour of investigative reporting on ESPN?
If your answer is a resounding, “NO!” note that I’ve written elsewhere in this Reader about two other plays — and I’ll go ahead here with what I intended to say about Late Nite Catechism which brings Mary Zentmyer back for a one-month encore as the scolding Sister at the Omaha Community Playhouse.
I wrote about it last year before it opened, so what do we know now that we didn’t know then? That Omahans took to it with as much enthusiasm as audiences in Chicago, Arizona and elsewhere.
Professional dance — especially modern dance — can be an insider’s game. Some genres like tap and ballet are easily visible, and some recent TV shows (“So You Think You Can Dance” and “America’s Best Dance Crew”) have highlighted dance styles rarely seen.
But the Omaha Modern Dance Collective (OMDC) wants the public to experience modern dance first-hand. Part of the OMDC’s mission is to provide “opportunities for local modern dancers to perform in a concert setting.”
Norfolk hosts intersection of comedy’s past, present, future
by Leo Adam Biga
The June 14-20 Great American Comedy Festival in Norfolk, Neb. honors the legacy of hometown legend Johnny Carson by celebrating comedy’s past, present and future. Twenty-four stand-up comedians from around the country compete for a grand prize.
The comics qualified via auditions held in 10 cities. Many already boast impressive credits: appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman,” “Saturday Night Live,” Comedy Central and gigs at top clubs. Others are still waiting for that big break.
For audiences of a certain age, however, the real attractions are two venerable comedy stars — stand-up David Brenner and writer-performer-producer Bill Dana. For the June 20 gala finale at the Johnny Carson Theatre, Brenner’s the emcee and Dana’s the Comedy Legend recipient (2008’s was Dick Cavett). They’re among the competition’s judges.
* If you know a fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” you’re going to want to give them a big ol’ platonic, nonthreatening hug, as news has broken that a new big-screen version is moving forward ... without creator Joss Whedon. This is akin to the planet moving forward with rotation, without gravity. The recent groundswell in support for all things vampire has resulted in this strange move, which can only be redeemed by the inclusion of original Buffy movie stars Paul Reubens and Kristy Swanson, both of whom were last seen in 1994.
* Awhile back I made an off-handed joke about Short Circuit, forgetting the rule that whenever a project from the ’80s is mentioned (even as a joke), it must be remade. Dan Milano, a writer on “Robot Chicken,” has been brought on to once more bring Johnny 5 to life, which indicates the whole thing may be surprisingly funny. No mention has been made of Steve Guttenberg. So help me, if this proceeds without “The Gutt,” the hell that I will reign down upon this project will be legendary.
You had to listen carefully to Tony winner Gregory Jbara’s acceptance speech. If you weren’t distracted by his voluptuous wife, you might have heard him mention Tanner Pflueger, the Nebraska boy, who recently played the title role in Billy Elliot the Musical.
Tanner, 14, was in the New York audience with his mother, while dad, Marty Pflueger, watched the television show at home in Norfolk as Billy Elliot dominated the awards night. Dad and Tanner’s big brother, Tyler, had seen him perform last week. (Only 14 months older, Tyler at 5-feet,11-inches and 200 pounds, is nearly a foot taller and much heavier than his dancing sibling.)
The title and the venue let you know what to expect from SNAP! Productions The Secret of the Old Queen: A Hardy Boys Musical Adventure. If that’s not enough, the phone message promises parody.
But, just in case we didn’t get it, two nearby audience members found every gay double entendre laugh-out-loud funny, so there was little danger that we might miss a single reference to “rising to the occasion” or any other priapic allusion. Laughter can be contagious or it can squelch a milder reaction.
That would have made for a rather long evening: you quickly get the core comedy and the book by Timothy Cope soon seems belabored. Thank goodness three other points (please, not phallic ones) went a long way toward saving the show.
You can’t count the ways the Great Plains Theater Conference stimulates an already lively theater community, but here’s how two events hit this writer with realities:
First, a staged reading of Take Me to the River by Constance Congdon gave an audience at the Omaha Community Playhouse a look at the work of a prolific playwright and raised this question: How come such an intelligent, compelling story full of complex and believable characters doesn’t get produced, much less make it on or off Broadway?
The next day, Congdon joined Martha Boesing, a more political playwright, in a panel at the hosting Metropolitan Community College. Boesing’s My Other Heart, the story of a European woman and a slave girl taken from the New World by Columbus, was produced years ago by the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
* Once upon a time theaters took a summer break with a few musical exceptions. The first weekends in June make that sound like a nostalgic fairy tale.
It requires a quick trip to Bellevue to catch the last three performances of The Foreigner, closing Sunday as the Bellevue Little Theatre completes its 40th season, still celebrating the life of Ed Swanson, who shared his wife Bette’s passion for the stage.
But a pair that opened last weekend (see below and elsewhere on this page) will be joined by High School Musical at the Rose and by Nebraska Wesleyan University’s production of Princess Diana, the Musical featuring 32 songs that follow her life and tragic death. It’s not new to Omaha, but this time the show by Karen Sokolof Javitch and Elaine Jabenis runs June 4-7 in Lincoln and June 11-13 at the Scottish Rite Temple in downtown Omaha. For info, call the campus box office at 465.3284.
It sounds like a scene from Gypsy, the musical Patrick Roddy is choreographing for the Omaha Community Playhouse. Mama brings her two boys to audition for the show, and the older brother, Jimmy, lands a key role.
They let the younger brother, Patrick, “do my whole tap routine,” he recalled. But at age 9 he was too young. Mama Jeanne Roddy didn’t give up.
“Put a blonde wig on him,” she said, “and Patrick can play Baby June.”
That was in 1967 when Gypsy opened the Playhouse season. This weekend it closes the season with Judy Radcliff as Mama Rose, that stage mother who sings, “Everything’s Coming Up Rose’s.”
Any resemblance between that famous character and your mother, Roddy? “Oh, of course.” Like Mama Rose who pushes daughters June and Louise, the future Gypsy Rose Lee, into the spotlight that didn’t shine on her, Jeanne Roddy had dancing aspirations, but the Great Depression and World War II got in the way.
* They’re not zombies, but frisky theater folks returning from dead venues and rejoining the living companies for the rite of spring known as the Great Plains Theater Conference. We said goodbye to the Grand Olde Players, but not to its founders, Bonnie Gill and Mark Manhart, both back directing play readings at the conference.
Bonnie is looking for a space so she can direct The Family Tree, another play by Marilyn MacCrakin whose Dressing Matilda she tackled earlier. Gill encountered both the plays at the annual conference, now in its fourth year at Metropolitan Community College.
The Living Picture Project hasn’t been active lately, but its founders, Anthony and Kim Clark-Kaczmarek took roles in Constance Congdon’sTake Me to the River directed by Amy Lane.
Year four of the Great Plains Theatre Conference, May 23-30, is less about the past and more about the present and future.
This tweaked emphasis comes from two leading Omaha theater figures, Kevin Lawler and Scott Working, who joined the GPTC staff last summer. Each is a playwright and director who started theaters from scratch. Lawler helped launch the Blue Barn Theatre; Working birthed the Shelterbelt.
GPTC founder Jo Ann McDowell enlisted them for their new roles. The former Metropolitan Community College president oversees special projects for Metro, host of the citywide event since its 2006 inception. The conference is still her baby. Looking for fresh ideas and more sustainability, she brought in Lawler and Working as creative director and Writer’s Workshop coordinator, respectively.
*Don’t miss Ariel Ibsen as Cinderella in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical at Chanticleer Community Theater in Council Bluffs. If you haven’t seen this lovely young performer at Westside High or in B&D summer productions, May 31 could be the last chance to catch a rising star before she heads a day’s drive away.
