Combative and compassionate, ‘Henry V’ conquers at the Wells Theatre - The Virginian Pilot Review

NORFOLK — “O for a muse of fire” to properly praise this ambitious, wise, contemporary-in-spirit, production of Shakespeare’s best-loved history play by Virginia Stage Company and Norfolk State University.

It stars invincible NSU and Brown University acting alum Christopher Marquis Lindsay at the perfect age, physique and point in his burgeoning career to embody England’s warrior king in the last (1599) of what’s known as the bard’s second tetralogy. This quartet of plays includes “Richard II” (about Harry’s father Bolingbroke’s usurpation of the throne to become Henry IV); “Henry IV, Part One” (about Harry’s, a.k.a. Hal’s, misspent youth hanging out with Falstaff); “Henry IV, Part Two”(more Hal and Falstaff); and our play “Henry V,” about Hal/Harry’s own kingship and conquest of France).

Derrick Moore, left, as the Duke of Exeter and Christopher Marquis Lindsay as Henry in "Henry V" at the Wells Theatre through April 30. (Samuel Flint)

Shakespeare buffs will recognize “O for a muse of fire,” as the prologue/chorus’ opening line which is replete with similar “greatest hit” speeches (e.g., “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” in Act 3; “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…” in Act 4 and “A little touch of Harry in the night,” also Act 4. The great speeches have thankfully been preserved in this judiciously cut version.

Though “O for a muse of fire” was nicely performed on April 13 by NSU alum Terrance Livingston, Jr., Livingston will cede that part to the play’s director Tom Quaintance at selected performances (check with the box office). Other illustrious former Spartans in the show include Derrick Moore as the Duke of Exeter; Corey Edward as Earl of Cambridge/Michael Williams; and KeeAjah Baldwin as Duke of York/Sir Thomas Grey. The older pros are joined by eight current students, some playing major roles such as Princess Katharine (Vania Aursby, who’s already made her mark locally at the Generic and Old Dominion University Rep.)

Add in a good handful of local and imported VSC regulars — e.g., Ron Newman as King of France/Sir Thomas Erpingham; Jeffrey Haddock as the insufferable Dauphin (who first appears, hilariously, with the other French nobles in the tony Wells’ box seats); and Julian Stetkevych as Canterbury/Fluellen/Orleans)—and you have two armies’ worth of actors on a mostly bare, intentionally rough-hewn looking thrust stage, created by designer Dahlia Al-Habieli. The open-to-view under-thrust doubles nicely as siege trenches or “mines.”

Costumes by resident designer Jeni Schaefer are well-worn contemporary outdoor garb, occasionally embellished with low-tech coats-of-arms ribbons or torn, dirty armbands to help keep double-and triple-cast actors identifiably English or French. Women actors Sarah Manton (Montjoy/Hostess), Meg Rodgers and Anna Sosa play both genders, Rodgers stepping up as the feckless corpse-robbing Pistol and Sosa as the acne-challenged Bardolph.

The latter two n’er-do-wells, plus Nym (Miguel Girona), are part of what one might dub “Team Falstaff,” the group of lowlifes with whom then-Prince Harry hung out in his youth. When “Henry V” begins, Falstaff is a bed-ridden offstage character suffering from his life of drinking, whoring and Prince Harry’s stunning rejection of his company in “Henry IV, Part 2.”

Falstaff expires, still unseen, in Act 2, with only the Hostess (Manton) to witness and skillfully convey the manner of his going: “For his nose was as sharp as a pen,” [odd for a notoriously fat man] and he “babbled of green fields.” Perhaps his last moments were, after all, some bucolic dream. With Falstaff gone, the audience watches to see how King Harry will treat his former buddies from Team Falstaff (Pistol, Bardolph, Nym, etc.). He consistently shuns them, in some of the play’s coldest, but, as we’re made to think, necessary moments.

The play — in fact, the whole tetralogy — invariably comes down to how audiences judge this Henry’s all-important character. Henry at any age can be cruel — indeed the historical Henry V, according to most historians and critics such as Herschel Baker, was by no means a charmer. But Shakespeare’s Henry V is, and, perforce, must be one, since the whole second tetralogy leads up to his miraculous victories at Harfleur and, especially, Agincourt.

In this play, Shakespeare reaches the heights of his patriotic theme: England now and forever. And Henry V, warts and all, IS England, sometimes mistaken (the scenes in which corrupt bishops support Henry’s genealogical claim to the French throne via Edward the Black Prince and Salic law are comically obtuse), but always, somehow, winsome. That’s because Henry V, even when he’s hard (ordering French prisoners to be killed or allowing a miscreant such as Bardolph to be hanged) is consistently self-questioning, self-effacing (especially with his betrothed, Kate) and patriotic.

Julian Stetkevych, right, and the cast of "Henry V" playing at the Wells Theatre through April 30. (Samuel Flint)

That’s why the play was so popular during World War II. Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film adaptation fit its times; Kenneth Branagh’s heroic 1989 film aspirationally still fits ours.

The play is always being done somewhere where English (and a bit of mangled French) is spoken or translated. And speaking of the brief French scenes, NSU theatre’s producing artistic director Anthony Mark Stockard served as voice and speech coach with no other dialect or French coach listed.

The actors’ French was somewhat rough (sometimes part of the plot), but it always flowed — the theatrical illusion of fluency (e.g., for the French Princess Katherine) being far more important than linguistic accuracy. Perhaps more could have been done to suggest Fluellen’s Welsh accent (Irishman MacMorris and Scotsman Jamy having been cut from the play). One loses thereby Shakespeare’s comic interplay of U.K. subcultures.

But never elided is the other glorious theme of this play: theatricality itself – both its limitations and infinite possibilities. “Can this cockpit hold/ The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram/ Within this wooden O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?” The answer is no; of course, you can’t fit thousands of soldiers on a stage. But the answer is also a triumphant yes; you can conjure up such an image in your audience’s imagination, even as you deny it.

In the play’s first moments, Livingston stepped forward to deliver the familiar pre-curtain speech: “We wish to thank our sponsors … ;” “Please turn off your cellphones,” but then … theater happened!

Livingston unexpectedly lifted his voice to speak the famous first words of the show, leaped onstage and took us to where only art can go. As important as historical accuracy may be (the real Henry V probably was a jerk), we got the patriotic, still revelatory “Henry V” we need for today: Shakespeare’s own words, skillfully rendered and triumphantly true. Theatricality conquers all.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

Black women rule in Virginia Stage Company’s ‘Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous’

Left to right: Teri Brown, Patricia Alli, Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew and Bethany Mayo in Virginia Stage Company's production of "Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous." (Samuel Flint)

NORFOLK — Blow, Gabriel, blow! We now have the first anti-August Wilson problem play, though it ends up being more a tribute to him than a bashing.

Audiences are again convulsing at the Wells, this time at a comic tradition — Black women fussing and cracking each other up — even more venerable than the British music hall tradition of Virginia Stage Company’s last comic gem “The 39 Steps.”

The current offering with the tough-to-remember title was written by Pearl Cleage, a Black playwright with an outsized rep (though not so large as that of Wilson — the late author of the “Century Cycle” of 10 plays, one depicting each decade of the 20th century, the most famous being “Fences”).

Cleage’s play, expertly directed by Virginia Commonwealth University theater scholar Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, concerns four Black women united by their profession — theater — though one of them, former diva actor Anna Campbell (Patricia Alli), hasn’t had a role in two years. (She has, notably, been living for decades in Amsterdam trying, until recently, to drink up everything but the canals.)

The other three women are her best friend and manager Betty Samson (Teri Brown), her producer Katie Hughes (Bethany Mayo, also VSC’s director of education) and Precious “Pete” Watson (Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew). The last one is Anna’s replacement in her best-known role, but, at the evening’s start, Anna doesn’t know this. (She thinks she herself is reprising it.) Did I mention “Pete’s” theatrical connection involves dancing and poles?

Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew as Precious “Pete” Watson in Virginia Stage Company's production of "Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous." (Samuel Flint)

Anna has been invited to current-day Atlanta for a theater festival giving her a lifetime achievement award and presenting a performance of “Naked Wilson” (which, so far as I know, exists only in Cleage’s imagination). Kate reminisces about the day a much younger Anna invented her signature part: “One brave woman doing all those fabulously male monologues, alone on the stage, naked, just to make a point about the silencing of women. It was nothing short of revolutionary.”

Decades later, however, they’re having trouble selling tickets to the reprise of “Naked Wilson,” because “August Wilson is a powerful presence and people are afraid the piece is disrespectful.”

And that was indeed my reaction on first hearing about Cleage’s play “bashing” Wilson for being chauvinistic. “But what about Ma Rainey in ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ (1982) and Rose Maxson in ‘Fences’ (1984) and Berniece in ‘The Piano Lesson’ (1986) and Aunt Esther in ‘Gem of the Ocean’ (2003) and (indirectly) in ‘Radio Golf’ (2005)? Aren’t they all great parts for Black women?”

But, as Cleage seems to counter, Wilson did do more for Black men.

Says Anna: “But the story was always and forever about their blues, not ours.”

Betty concurs: “That’s what we were so mad about.”

But since then, Betty and Anna, now both 65, have declared a “truce” with Wilson, chauvinist or not.

This is the first time the VSC has produced a play composed only of Black women actors and directed by a Black woman, Pettiford-Wates, who brought a gifted cast of designers from VCU.

The play is set entirely in a swish Atlanta hotel suite, true in its stage appearance to its supposed $500-a-night price tag. Betty, Anna’s manager and companion, is already there, serving as glue for the evening. Her compulsive solitaire-playing and whispered blessing/prayer “Ashay” (“Amen” in some African and Asian cultures) take us from scene to scene. Brown bears the burden of lots (perhaps a bit too much) “time-is-passing” stage business. But Brown bears up nicely, also bearing, in character, with her friend’s diva-like ways. Anna enters in fabulous African-patterned silk pajamas (courtesy of VCU-trained costume designer Nia Safarr Banks). She is obviously looking forward to what she thinks will be her big comeback. She’s prepared to bare her 65-year-old body; unfortunately, she has misinterpreted the Atlanta festival invitation. As the audience soon learns, festival producer Kate has always intended that a younger actor play the “Naked Wilson” part.

The first hurdle is disabusing Anna of her misconception. The second is getting her to accept her replacement, the untrained “Pete,” a tall, voluptuous woman whose flashy clothing and makeup choices (too much bronzing) along with her body language (a louche slouch, with feet on the furniture), epitomize the generational and educational gulf between her and Anna. The two clash, loudly and repeatedly, with Anna eventually reporting Pete’s impending nude performance to the police.

But then Pete, a performance artist at heart, holds a nighttime solo show atop, of all places, Margaret Mitchell’s House. As the author of “Gone With the Wind,” Mitchell represents the purest remnant of Lost Cause racism. Pete has only seen only the 1939 film version, but she almost instinctively disses Mitchell by performing Rose Maxson’s self-assertion speech from “Fences,” and singing “Oh! Susanna,” in Spanish for extra — if unintentional — alienation effect. Her performance is brilliant, perfectly transgressive, and even honors Anna, whose real full name is Susanna, for the character in a Langston Hughes poem. While atop the roof, Pete is mistaken by a street lady for a Wilsonian angel figure. (Think Gabriel in “Fences.”) A video of the performance goes viral and suddenly things are looking up for “Naked Wilson” — if only the constant rain will stop at the outdoor venue. Will benevolent Wilsonian ghosts prevail?

Toward the end of the play, Anna confesses the motive behind her first miraculous performance of “Naked Wilson”: “I didn’t do it because I was mad at August. I just wanted to feel his words rolling around in my mouth and see if I could feel them coming out through my skin, which is why I had to take my clothes off. I was so in love with the words.” Cleage is none too shabby a wordsmith herself.

Wherever you are, Mr. Wilson, Ashay. Pearl Cleage has your back.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

___

If you go

When: Through March 19

Where: The Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $35

Details: 757-627-1234, vastage.org

Original Article Sourced Here

"Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous" at the Wells Theatre on Coast Live

See the Original Story Here

NORFOLK, Va. — Actresses Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew and Patricia Alli join Coast Live to share a special look at "Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous," a wild and fun show from Virginia Stage Company that you can catch now through March 19 at the beautiful Wells Theatre in Norfolk!

"Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous"
Written by Pearl Cleage
Directed by Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates
March 1-9, 2023
Tickets available at vastage.org or by calling the box office at (757) 627-1234.

Synopsis of the play from vastage.org:
Tickets Available Here

"When actress Anna Campbell is invited to restage her radical performance piece of re-imagined scenes from August Wilson’s play, she is surprised to learn she will not be taking center stage. A much younger entertainer will be stealing the spotlight at a new women’s theatre festival. Will they be able to build a bridge between their generations, or will the curtain close on Anna’s career? "

‘39 Steps’ at Virginia Stage Company is flat-out funny

By Page Laws

The Virginian-Pilot | Jan 31, 2023 at 1:46 pm

NORFOLK — What’s so funny?

Well, I’d have to be a psycho to try to explain why “The 39 Steps” at Virginia Stage Company is so flat-out funny. I’m getting vertigo at the very thought of such scholarly acuity and daring! But here goes.

Step aside, Aristotle. Dr. Laws will attempt to explain why this MacGuffin-filled takeoff on Alfred Hitchcock and other old spy-thrillers can make a body ache with laughter.

My first indication of monkey business was the presence of two new mezzanine-level theater box seats built far downstage right and left, plus a new large cameo portrait — the outlined profile of a chubby man’s face — at the apex of the proscenium. The profile seemed to match a curious disembodied slow and creepy voice that intoned “Good eeeevening,” and proceeded to warn the audience to turn off cellphones or face dire consequences. But why “remodel” a theater that’s on the National Register of Historic Places?! Why add fake box seats (later seized upon by the actors for their antics) when there were already lots of them available? Perhaps they didn’t want the genuine ones covered with blood?

But don’t bother looking for 39 steps — to the mezzanine or anywhere else. What are “The 39 Steps”?

Shtick around. Maybe someone will let us know. …

But first let us dispense with the provenance of the production in question, taken from the Samuel French print edition: “The 39 Steps, adapted by Patrick Barlow from the novel by John Buchan from the movie of Alfred Hitchcock licensed by ITV Global Entertainment Limited and an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon.”

For a sense of historical context, the novel dates from 1915 and Hitchcock’s movie from 1935.

The VSC production has a similar hero, Richard Hannay, played by an agile, cheeky fellow named James Taylor Odom who is tasked with saving England and therefore the world from a dastardly Nazi masquerading as a British Professor Jordan (who, like his castmates, plays many other parts). The actor is one Steve Pacek, last seen as Miss Tracy Mills in “The Legend of Georgia McBride.”

Pacek is also billed as “Clown #2,” implying the presence of a “Clown #1,” who indeed exists and is deftly played by Michael Di Liberto (a master of half-audible, comic, mumble speak). Kristen Hahn joins in as Annabella Schmidt, Margaret, Pamela, and any other female role that sashays her way and hasn’t been grabbed by one of the men.

All four actors are brilliant physical comedians, guided by a clearly sadistic director, one Mark Shanahan, who is surely making actors run and jump and role-switch much faster than Actors Equity allows. To prove my point, the stage directions on Page 96 of the French edition read: “Quite a lot of this show depends on your actors’ level of Olympian fitness. It has proved an invaluable aid to weight loss.”

Weight loss? As if that were ever desirable!

At any rate, there are four actors playing dozens of witty/witless characters. Their goal? Apparently to mock every conceivable cliche from the Golden Age of Cinema, with special attention to the portly Master of Suspense and his oeuvre. (“Good eeeevening!”) Someone is also out to disembowel the very notion of a spy mystery, using slow, terrifying cruelty and questionable wigs.

Here are just a few of the shticks that poke at the ribs of spy-thriller fans.

Hannay, our world-weary hero, begins his efforts to cheer himself up with a trip to the theater, where he meets the English (or is she a Nazi?) agent Schmidt watching an elaborate music hall number. Mr. Memory (Di Liberto) and his “compère” (emcee, played by Pacek) do an outrageous act where Mr. M is supposedly asked questions by the Wells audience. (When the compère “repeats the question,” he’s actually planting a planned query for his partner to answer onstage.)

The funniest part is their exaggerated bows to one another and the repetition of “Thankoo” (cockney for “Thank you”). This is just the start of the ongoing accent shticks, hilariously mocking Oxbridge English, German and Scottish (Schmidt constantly switches her English V’s for W’s, and D’s for T’s — classic giveaways of a native German speaker). The “ch” at the end of German words is gargled and fairly spat across the stage; likewise, the “ch” ending on Scottish words is delivered with a choking bark: “Alt-na-Shellach!” (It takes about 10 seconds to expectorate that one.) Another nice trick when accent-mocking is using naughty words (untranslated) from that language. Annabella Schhhhhh-midt (“Sch” is lengthened) is fond of saying “Scheisse” for … well, ask your local German.

Talking funny is coupled, as mentioned, with pure physical comedy of the highest and fastest order (except when exaggerated slow motion is called for). The overall joke of the play is the playwright’s implicit insistence that anything film can do, theater can do better. We, therefore, get exaggerated light, wind and sound effects meant to recall every train scene in cinematic history. Though you can’t easily put a train car onstage, you can place two actors closely standing across from two other actors to mime moving within the close quarters of a train compartment. Awkward intimacy is involved each time somebody comes or goes. It’s mime time sublime.

My favorite related film shtick is the “wind” effect, necessary each time the train compartment door opens and repeated later out on the heath where Hannay runs to escape his assailants. There’s no real wind, just a lot of choreographed clothes-shaking to simulate the wind hitting cloth.

I’ve never seen a better example than Odom’s wind shakes. Odom’s likewise a hit in his “escaping from beneath the female corpse” and his “escaping as a handcuffed couple” routines, both of which also require the antics of the talented Hahn. Di Liberto and Pacek deserve commensurate awards for their quick-change “hat tricks” and duck-and-cover instant costume changes. In the climactic melee back at the London Palladium (Mr. Memory is on again), Pacek gets to spout a line not in the script that definitively and hilariously shatters the “fourth wall” between the audience and players.

As his evil Nazi guy Jordan gets shot by an unknown assailant (all four actors are standing innocently onstage), Pacek shouts in a final complaint: “It was supposed to be a cast of four!”

One final bit of praise for this manic masterpiece: Some of its silliness is soulful. Listen for the scripted “extemporaneous” speech Hannay is forced to make when he tries to hide out on the lam at a political rally.

Hannay calls for “A world where no nation plots against nation! Where no neighbor plots against neighbor, where there’s no persecution or hunting down, where everybody gets a square deal … A world where suspicion and cruelty and fear have been forever banished!”

What a funny idea! (Not.)

And what are “The 39 Steps”?? A gang of Nazis, a secret aeronautics plan, a MacGuffin (red herring, in Hitchcock-speak)?

You got me! Or maybe I got you … .

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

——

If you go

When: 7:30 Wednesday through Friday; 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: The Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $35

Details: 757-627-1234, vastage.org

The 39 Steps Goes Off Without a “Hitch”cock! Review from HR Spotlight

Dial “M” for “Must-See”…wait, wrong movie…

Words by Nathan Jacques. Images courtesy of the Virginia Stage Company.

It was a dark and wintry night on the streets of Norfolk, Virginia. A frigid breeze chased us down Granby street to the elegant Wells Theater. Alleyways on all sides were abounding with eerie shadows and unsettling sounds. Who (or what) could have been lurking in them? Yes, the setting was reminiscent of those often pictured in stories and films, saturated in intrigue and mystery; what on earth was in store for us? As we arrived at the remarkably ornate auditorium, we were met with…an exceptionally written and uproariously clever comedy based on an exceedingly dark film and book. Wait, what?

The 39 Steps first teased the brains of readers as a novel by John Buchan, published in 1915 during the thick of World War I. The public is likely more familiar with the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock adaptation of the novel, which is lauded as one of the best entries in Hitchcock’s filmography. Patrick Barlow adapted the story for the stage in 2005 and took quite the liberty in doing so – this new, improved version of The 39 Steps took one more step in a new direction; he went and turned it into a sidesplitting comedy that absolutely nails every gag and gaff within the script, well-earning each giggle and guffaw it elicits from its audience. It remains a classic tale of a man on the run, encumbered with the fate of his nation, but the refreshing, new tone of this staged version will prove itself as a classic, too. Unlike Hitchcock, I do not offer you a perplexing mystery; rather, let me offer a clear answer on whether you should see this production or not. To put it plainly, you’d have to be a “Psycho” to skip out on this one.

I am chuffed to inform you, dear reader, that Virginia Stage Company’s production delivers a farcically genius rendition of this very same play. Director Mark Shanahan, his production team, the cast, and crew all exhibit pure aptitude in bringing a tantalizing Broadway-quality performance to Norfolk audiences.

This cast does not suffer from “Stage Fright”. The principal, James Taylor Odom, is nothing short of spectacular. His performance as the hunted Richard Hannay oozes with charisma; with that said, Mr. Odom is every bit an athlete as he is an actor. The script calls for a seemingly insurmountable order of physical comedy but – have no fear – Mr. Odom makes it look easy! Don’t worry- the rest of the four-person cast, who all embody an exceptionally long laundry list of characters, are fantastic as well. Kristen Hahn offers an equally brilliant performance as various characters, including Pamela. Michael Di Liberto and Steve Pacek cover (literally) everyone else. Ms. Hahn, Mr. Di Liberto, and Mr. Pacek all offer performances for the ages, effortlessly morphing into different personalities that all manage to have distinct attributes and dialects. Never once did I find myself confused about who someone “was”. I did, however, find myself baffled about how such a miniscule cast could possess such incredible skill. Bravo, all – you got a standing ovation from me! If I keep going, you, dear reader, might become “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, so I will refrain from spoiling any surprises.

Such marvelous performances are impossible without the production teams and crews that make them happen. “I Confess” that costume designer Jeni Schaefer deserves special recognition for the Herculean effort of clothing all the quirky personas the cast members embody throughout the night. My hat goes off (ha!) to all the costume change specialists backstage as well, who go unnamed in the playbill.

Scenic designer D. Craig M. Napoliello and Assistant Scenic Designer Chen Wei-Liao take the “less is more” approach, and it pays off – such a fast-paced fiction requires a setting that can keep up with it. Richard and the cavalcade of characters that follow him move quickly, and the scenic designers have masterfully crafted a set that never once falls behind. A special round of applause is in order for Lighting Designer Alyssandra Docherty, Sound Designer Ryan Rumery, and Sound Engineer Shyloh Bailey, too – not a single cue felt “off”. In fact, many scenes where no set was present at all felt complete and full of life, thanks to well-timed sound cues and superb lighting schemes. The team director Shanahan pulled together is truly first-rate. I might not be able to keep myself from telling any “Strangers on a Train” I meet about how much I loved this production. It’s got me in a “Frenzy”.

The 39 Steps is one of Virginia Stage Company’s finest offerings thus far. I must admit, I have not seen the original Hitchcock film on which this play is based, but after seeing VSC’s version, I fear that the film might not hold my interest like this production did.

“Verti-go” to the box office website right this minute and procure a ticket at https://tickets.vastage.org/5646.
Original Article at HR Spotlight | https://www.spotlightnews.press/post/the-39-steps-goes-off-without-a-hitch-cock

Virginia Stage Company's "The 39 Steps" on Coast Live

HAMPTON ROADS, VA - Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel, add a dash of Monty Python and you have "The 39 Steps", a fast-paced whodunit from Virginia Stage Company.

We talk with the show's director Mark Shanahan and actor Steve Pacek about the production, playing through February 5th at the Wells Theatre in Norfolk.

Presented by Virginia Stage Company
Box Office: 757.627.1234
VAStage.org
Checkout CoastLive for all your local news needs!

Thrilling, Humorously Delightful 39 Steps w/ Veer Magazine

by Jerome Langston

“I make no apology for loving both a good comedy, and a good mystery,” says Mark Shanahan, with both a smile and an emphatic tone—following a day full of rehearsing the latest Virginia Stage Company production, a play that will run at the midway point of the acclaimed theatre’s Season 44. Shanahan is a New York City based director/actor/playwright, who previously directed VSC’s The Hound of the Baskervilles for season 39, and penned A Merry Little Christmas Carol, a new take on the Dickens classic which wrapped an extended run here at the Wells just a few days ago. He is back in Norfolk to direct The 39 Steps, the fast-moving whodunit which won both Tony awards and the prestigious Drama Desk Award, for its Broadway run back in 2008.

Mark has directed The 39 Steps multiple times before, but never with this talented cast of four actors who collectively portray more than 150 characters over the course of two hours. “I love this play because I’ve had a long history with it,” he says during our recent chat at a large rehearsal space in downtown Norfolk. The set is still very much a work in progress on the Wells stage. Mark and I are joined by actor James Taylor Odom, who plays the show’s lead role of Richard Hannay. The three of us discuss VSC’s take on this Hitchcockian, suspenseful and zany romp of a play—and how audiences are really craving such escapist, laugh-inducing smart entertainment these days, especially considering the collective stress of this mercilessly ongoing pandemic.

Photo Credit Sam Flint

When Mark was just a young lad of 10 years of age, his father took him to see the film version of The 39 Steps, which was part of a double bill at a second run movie house in NYC’s East Village. An Alfred Hitchcock directed classic from 1935, the suspense thriller was paired with another Hitchcock classic, The Lady Vanishes. That early experience with the artistry of the English master of filmmaking, inspired a young Mark in various ways.

“It was the granddaddy of a lot of spy stories that we still see today,” the actor/director says, referring to The 39 Steps film. His love of the film made him initially apprehensive of Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of it, based upon the John Buchan novel, into a play, till he saw an early version of it in London. Remarkably, Mark would later serve as the cover for the lead role of Hannay, during the highly successful Broadway run of the play, and did actually go on in place of actor Charles Edwards for several performances. “I got to really study the way the play was constructed, and see some wonderful actors do it,” Mark says about the experience.

His success with the play on Broadway led to the many offers to direct regional productions of the play, which was initially billed as Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps. He notes that “every production has to be handled differently,” though, and the premiere of it at Norfolk’s foremost professional theatre house is no exception. “I think it fits really beautifully in the Wells,” the director says.

“We wanted to create a set that sort of felt like an extension of the Wells itself,” Mark says, about his set that is being designed by D. Craig Napoliello. “This movie and play begins and ends in a theatre.” The creative team includes Jeni Schaefer as costume designer, with lights and sound handled by Alyssandra Docherty and Ryan Rumery respectively. Besides the aforementioned James Taylor Odom, the cast includes actors Kristen Hahn, Michael Di Liberto, and Steve Pacek, all of whom have worked with Mark before, but not for this play. Many of the cast members have portrayed characters in prior productions of The 39 Steps, however.

“We’ve all had experience with it, but we’re getting to come back to it after many years away from it, and reinvestigate it together, and make a new version of it for this theatre,” says its director, who also wrote and directed the inventive A Sherlock Carol, which ran Off-Broadway at New World Stages, and was a critic’s pick by The New York Times in December 2021. “I know from doing ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’ that this audience loves a good comedy, but it loves a comedy that’s smart…and shows you excellence on stage,” Mark says, regarding VSC patrons.

In The 39 Steps, Richard Hannay is a guy who goes on the run after being falsely accused of committing a crime. Along the way “he has to discover himself, fall in love, and save the world in order to save himself,” explains Mark. It’s quite a lot to portray during the show’s two acts, but Mark felt that James was the ideal actor for the role of Hannay. “His Hannay is very particular to what he’s rehearsing and finding…” he adds.

“Through this wild, espionage romantic thriller throwback, it’s a fun journey of self-discovery,” James says early on, about his character. “Richard Hannay is kind of going through a bit of a crisis himself. He has no friends, no partner, really no family…is stripped of any kind of specific identity, which is a great setup for where this character is going.” James and Mark have known each other for many years but are working together for the first time in this play. Mark tells me towards the end of our chat that working with this great cast is part of the joy of directing this production.

“You’re in the hands of really great actors for a two-hour evening, where you can forget your worries, but also be mesmerized by their expertise. And that’s the joy of it.”

WANT TO GO?

THE 39 STEPS 

January 18-February 5

Virginia Stage Company

Wells Theatre | Get Tickets Here

VA Pilot Review: Merry meta Christmas play! ‘Twelve Dates’ a slightly racy, contemporary one-woman show

Emel Ertugrul stars in The Twelve Dates of Christmas, a co-production with Core Theatre Ensemble.

NORFOLK — Yes, “The Twelve Dates of Christmas” is X-rated — for a bit of naughty language — but the X on this shiny bauble of a play really stands for “Xmas.”

Most exciting to people who groove on Greek prefixes is that this one-woman play, starring Emel Ertugrul — an impressive stalwart of the Virginia Stage Company and the Core Theatre Ensemble — is meta all the way, standing beyond and reflecting on not one but two other Christmas chestnuts. The first: the VSC’s current “A Merry Little Christmas Carol,” with which it shares a set and runs in repertory. The second: the original “A Christmas Carol,” from which it largely derives. Thus it’s doubly meta.

Are you finding this confusing? Well, what’s the meta with you?

Before Facebook changed its name to Meta and the regrettable portmanteau word “metaverse” (for “meta universe”), literary critics threw about the prefix “meta” with abandon, latching it onto anything that, in Merriam-Webster’s words, seemed “cleverly self-referential.” So it goes here.

While “The Twelve Dates of Christmas” is contemporary in feel and appeal (and also references the hoary old song) the central character Mary — Ertugrul plays her and 12 others — happens to be a classic struggling New York actor who, while vacationing in her native Virginia (one fills in the state where the show is performed), spots her fiancé on camera at the Macy’s parade, sucking face with his co-worker.

The show follows Mary through her difficult but enlightening post-breakup year as she struggles to banish the ghost of her fiancé past and find happiness — with a dozen suitors, who turn out to be a dubious, soul-testing bunch.

All must be conjured by Ertugrul through narration, the kind in which she deftly steps in and out of voices and accents. This kind of play can be done by the actor’s racing from spot to spot onstage, laboriously delivering both sides of a conversation. Ertugrul, as directed by Laura Agudelo, also of Core Ensemble and frequently VSC, thankfully forgoes that shtick, more subtly suggesting the switches as needed. (Ertugrul’s glasses-wearing, interfering Aunt Kathy is particularly winsome with her Tidewater drawl.)

Playwright Ginna Hoben created and premiered this now one-woman show at American Shakespeare Center in Staunton before moving it to Manhattan Repertory Theatre and elsewhere. Hampton Roads’ Core Theatre Ensemble, and Ertugrul, is similarly peripatetic, having performed in Italy, Lithuania and all over this region. They often choose literary adaptations such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (a still-memorable hit, also starring Ertugrul).

Here, the mood is somewhat literary — in that Ertugrul’s character Mary is employed during her post-breakup year as Lady Macbeth and then as a familiar Dickensian figure. Mary explains the irony: “So, while I am trying to thwart the Christmas spirit, I get hired to be the Christmas spirit. Specifically, the Spirit of Christmas Past.”

But she and we the audience are mostly focused on her parade of suitors, which she describes as the “125 jackasses it takes to meet one decent man.” While not quite that many are depicted, they do deserve the comparison.

Mary has a one-night stand with good-looking Irishman Aidan O’Reilly, who says in parting, “The only thing I enjoyed more than your fine wit … is your fine (X-rated body part).” There are folks like Emil, a “One-Hit Wonder” who “unwittingly ruined himself with (her) by showing up in a Stars and Stripes fanny pack. God bless America!” There’s “Psycho Joe,” who activates an app on Mary’s phone to track and stalk her. And there’s Mr. Tim, the father of Mary’s co-actor, Tiny Tim, a 5-year-old heartthrob who easily beats out any adult for a place in her heart. Can you hear someone’s biological clock ticking?

Sometimes there are two suitors at a time. Mary takes to one, breaks things off with the other, and then the one she liked ghosts her.

With each suitor’s departure, she drops a Christmas tree ornament into a box and we hear a “ding.” (The original script has it the opposite — her hanging an ornament — but this way seems more appropriately ironic.)

Like all one-actor shows, this 90-minute, no-intermission show demands enormous, tour-de-force acting. Ertugrul, slightly restrained on opening night, seemed to be pacing herself for a dependably bravura run.

As a meta-member of the inspired-by-Dickens club of plays, “Twelve Dates” is not all jokes and raucousness. It conveys a modern but still Dickensian quest for finding oneself, which everyone hopes to do before life’s final chimes ring out our season on Earth. In that sense, this slightly racier-than-Dickens Christmas show also proves salvific.

In Mary’s words, “The best date I had all year involved a 5-year-old.” Christmas, after all, was started by and for a child.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu