Stageview Fall 2015 by Syracuse Stage

SEPT 2015 - JAN 2016 SYRACUSE STAGE: [1] THE UNDERPANTS [3] PETER PAN [6] THE SANTALAND DIARIES DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA: [7] KISS ME KATE [9] AGAMEMNON

IDIOTS DELIGHT &YODELING,TOO Director Bill Fennelly (A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hairspray) has high praise for the cast of

The Underpants.

“They’re so smart and extremely funny,” he says, and best of all, “they’re not afraid to be total idiots.” That’s a great compliment and a great asset, Fennelly explains, because the cast will be tackling the work of the man who arguably could be considered the world’s most accomplished idiot—Steve Martin. Martin is the adapter of The Underpants, the 2015/2016 season opener. The play is based on a 1911 German farce, The Bloomers, by the Expressionist writer Carl Sternheim, considered in his day to be the acknowledged master of stylized comedy. The Bloomers was part of a collection of comedies by Sternheim called Scenes from the Heroic Life of the Middle Classes. In these plays, Sternheim revels in skewering the bourgeois attitudes and ambitions of the German middle-class. Sternheim fancied himself a German Moliere, and like Moliere he uses comedy to mask his biting social critique. One critic has likened Sternheim to Noel Coward, only more savage.

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In adapting Sternheim’s work, though, Martin veered away from the specific criticism relevant to Wilhelmine Germany (1888 – 1918) in order to emphasize the domestic comedy and sex farce that truly drive the play and have more universal appeal. Briefly (no pun intended, ok, maybe), The Underpants follows the course of events unfolding (oops) from a scandalous and very public sartorial mishap. While watching a parade for the king (presumably Kaiser Wilhelm II), Louise Maske, young wife of proud civil servant Theobald Maske, loses her drawers; that is her underpants slip down around her ankles as she stretches up to catch a glimpse of the passing monarch. While Theobald fears scandal and frets about the possible consequences for his career, Louise suddenly finds herself a person of great interest, especially for two men who had been at the parade, and who, coincidentally, turn up at the Maske’s flat to inquire about renting a spare room neither really needs. Fennelly says that upon his first reading, he found The Underpants “laugh-out-loud funny.” He could envision Steve Martin playing each role, he explained hence the need to cast actors who are also accomplished clowns, or idiots as the case may be. As a farce, the play is fast-paced, very funny, and the stakes are very high for the characters. It is demanding work for the actors. Digging a little further into the text, the director also found an amusing portrait of the “German man” as embodied by Theobald. “There’s something horrifying and hilarious about him,”

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Fennelly says. “He’s a big brute and a big baby. It’s absolutely ridiculous, but at the same time it is this dichotomy that makes him deeply human” One strength of Steve Martin’s writing, Fennelly notes, is that his characters are deeply human and never simply archetypes. Fennelly also suspects that for all his bluster Theobald may not be the most ambitious of civil servants: “I get the sense that he is aiming squarely for the middle. In fact, I think they are little below the middle.” In fact, what they remind him most of is a famous television couple, Ralph and Alice Kramden of The Honeymooners. “It was the first thing I mentioned when we had our initial design meeting,” Fennelly says. The simply furnished, drab interior of the Kramden’s apartment mirrors the petit bourgeois existence of Louise and Theobald. Veteran designer William Bloodgood (Other Desert Cities, The Piano Lesson, The Whipping Man, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, among others) is responsible for the set for The Underpants. His design builds on Fennelly’s idea for the Maske flat, but it also expands to reflect the bold theatricality of German Expressionism. The humble flat where the action takes place will be framed by a red and gold proscenium adorned with symbols of German power, including a German Eagle. An intriguing and somewhat naughty portrait of Wilhelm II might also raise an eyebrow or two in a playful spirit. Fennelly is adamant that the play is not vulgar. “Anyone can be vulgar,” he

says. “It takes smarts to be naughty.” The distinction is important.

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Fennelly also believes it is important to recognize that for all of the delightfully funny innuendo and double entendre, the play is much more about marriage than infidelity.

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“I didn’t realize it at first,” he says, “but the play is really about righting a marriage. Something is out of balance and needs to be righted. The dropping of Louise’s underpants sets in motion a series of events that are about saving the marriage. Theobald and Louise go from not even really seeing each other to seeing each other as fully sexualized human beings. It’s about looking at the person you want to spend your life with and still finding them wildly sexy.”

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Now that’s something to yodel about, and Fennelly is equally adamant about this: yodeling there will be.

PHOTOS

SPONSORS:

OPPOSITE ABOVE: WILHELM II WAS THE LAST GERMAN EMPEROR AND KING OF PRUSSIA, RULING THE GERMAN EMPIRE AND THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA FROM JUNE 15, 1888 TO NOVEMBER 9, 1918. ABOVE: SET DESIGN MODEL FOR THE 2015 PRODUCTION OF SYRACUSE STAGE'S THE UNDERPANTS. COURTESY OF WILLIAM BLOODGOOD.

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An interview with Paul Barnes Interviewed by Joseph Whelan “I’m in the city where everyone won’t grow up,” says Paul Barnes. Barnes has stopped in Las Vegas, Nevada, while traveling to Tennessee to direct Of Mice and Men at the Clarence Brown Theatre. Barnes is scheduled to return to Syracuse Stage to direct this season’s Stage/Drama co-production, Peter Pan. Previously at Stage, Barnes directed The Miracle Worker and Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.

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PETER PAN COSTUME RENDERINGS BY SUSAN BRANCH TOWNE

JW: Have you directed Peter Pan

JW: What is the enduring appeal of

PB: I’ve done the non-musical version

PB: It’s magical. There’s something in

before?

once and the musical twice.

JW: This production features a male

Peter Pan (Department of Drama student Troy Hussmann who appeared as Link Larkin in last season’s Hairspray). Have you experienced that before and what effect do you think it will have?

PB: I have experienced it before in the

non-musical version. The musical was written for Mary Martin, for her specific voice, and her following. Part of the key to casting includes finding a male actor whose vocal range matches Mary Martin’s, which in the case of Troy, is part of the good fortune of working with students at Syracuse University’s BFA actor training program. Troy not only has the requisite boyishness and Lord of the Flies-like wild child in him, he can also sing the role . . . beautifully! Also, when you cast a male as Peter, it brings more truthfulness to the relationship between Peter and Wendy. There is more texture to their connection and attraction. Why is Wendy drawn to Peter? What gets stirred in Peter when he meets Wendy?

this story?

all of us that wishes we could stay young forever—that childhood could always be our state of consciousness, the time before we’re saddled with adult cares and woes. We lose freedom as adults. Plus, there’s flying and that’s a fantasy or dream most of have had at some time. It’s a desire in us and it triggers our imaginations. I remember at an intermission of one performance of one of the productions I directed there was this little boy trying to leap from a couple of stairs pretending he could fly. That’s what it’s about.

JW: Do you anticipate anything in

particular in working with the students on this play?

PB: Only that they’ll experience a ter-

rific story and get to work with so many components—flying, creating Tinker Bell. It’s also about home: what is home, being away from home, returning to home. The students are living this. They’re away from their homes.

JW: Any additional thoughts? PB: I think it is going to be a great

production that’s going to be fun from beginning to end. It’s ideal for the holidays.

JW: Several recent productions have

made changes to deal with aspects that are rightly deemed offensive, specifically the depiction of Tiger Lily and the Indians. What kind of alterations are you planning?

PB: What back in 50s might have

seemed acceptable is no longer. We’re making small adjustments to bring the play into the 21st century. So we’ll have Tiger Lily’s “troupe” of all female warriors, which recalls the mythical Amazons. But we’ll also borrow from J.R.R. Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and his idea of elves.

A.) CAPTAIN HOOK B.) WENDY DARLING C.) NANA D.) PETER PAN

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NEVERLAND REVISITED

PETER PAN

Fifteen years ago during the 2000 – 2001 season, Syracuse Stage and the Syracuse University Department of Drama presented the first official co-production, Peter Pan. Directed and choreographed by Anthony Salatino with musical direction by Dianne Adams McDowell, the cast featured Drama faculty members Rodney Scott Hudson as Captain Hook/Mr. Darling and Marie Kemp as Mrs. Darling/ Wendy grown-up. Four additional Equity actors took principal roles (Wendy, Peter, Tiger Lily and Smee), while local children portrayed John and Michael Darling. The rest of the cast was made up of 20 Department of Drama students. Peter Pan was a hit with audiences and critics alike, and since then, there has been a Stage/Drama co-production every year, usually a large scale musical and usually at the holidays.

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This season Peter Pan returns with 25 Drama students in the cast, including three who will take on principal roles. Troy Hussmann (Link Larkin in Hairspray) plays Peter, Delphi Borich is Wendy, and Ana Marcu plays Tiger Lily. Anthony Salatino will once again provide choreography. Paul Barnes directs and the musical director is Drama faculty member Brian Cimmet.

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The John Ben Snow Memorial Trust

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PING CHONG RECEIVES NATIONAL MEDAL OF ARTS Theatre artist Ping Chong received the National Medal of Arts on Thursday, September 10. Chong was one of 11 artists to receive the award presented by President Barack Obama in a ceremony in the East Room of The White House. Chong’s citation read: "Ping Chong for his contributions as a theatre director, choreographer, and video 5

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and installation artist. Mr. Chong’s innovative performances explore race, history, technology, and art to challenge our understanding of humanity in the modern world." Chong has twice worked at Syracuse Stage. He developed Tales from the Salt City in 2008 with seven members of the Central

New York community, and in 2012 with Syracuse Stage dramaturg Kyle Bass and five members of the Syracuse Congolese community, he developed Cry for Peace: Voices from the Congo, which was also presented in New York and Washington, DC.

THE SANTALAND DIARIES

n 2008, Syracuse Stage presented David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries in a stage adaptation by Tony Award-winning director Joe Mantello. The Stage production starred Wade McCollum as Crumpet, an outof-work actor turned Macy’s elf, and was directed by Wendy Knox. This season McCollum and Knox return to Stage to remount The Santaland Diaries and to share Sedaris’ off-beat and delightfully skewered holiday humor. From churlish children to peevish parents to notso-jolly Santas, Sedaris reveals and revels in the forced merriment and pre-packaged cheer that too often accompanies the “most wonderful time of the year.” “It’s like looking at the world through the point of view of someone who is 30% off balance,” Knox observed. “Sedaris sees an everyday event and spins it into words in a way that is so delightful. He can pick up a detail and assign it a meaning and it just becomes so funny.” PHOTOS Top: Wade McCollum performs in Syracuse Stage's 2008 production of The Santaland Diaries. Opposite Page: Left: Ping Chong at a Syracuse Stage rehearsal 2008. Right: Cast of Tales from the Salt City Photos: Mike Davis

Still, there is a self-deprecating pitch to Sedaris’ work that prevents it from becoming condescending. Sedaris makes us understand that Crumpet does not necessarily feel superior in any way to those he lampoons so freely. He has hardly achieved the success he wishes. Rather, he is fully aware of his own shortcomings, which allows us to laugh at his predicament as much as we laugh with him when he turns his acerbic wit on others. “He is not arrogant,” Knox explained. “He is simply so much fun.” This is what has made The Santaland Diaries a holiday favorite since Sedaris first read it on NPR’s Morning Edition in 1992. As Knox noted, Sedaris’ ability to be scathingly honest and screamingly funny offers welcome relief in a season too often overrun with saccharine commercialism and nightmarish consumerism.

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“In the artistic life of a composer—whether light or classical—he ordinarily creates only one perfect work. For Bizet, it was Carmen; for Mozart it was Don Giovanni; for Cole [Porter] it was Kiss Me, Kate.” -Dr. Albert Sirmay* He came with champagne. December 30, 1948, the opening night of Kiss Me, Kate on Broadway, and in a penthouse at the Mayflower Hotel, a small group has gathered after the show to call newspapers for the reviews before they hit the street. The news was more than favorable. Kiss Me, Kate, it quickly became apparent to those present, was going to be a hit.

PHOTOS top: COLE PORTER AND BELLA SPEWACK above: COLE PORTER right: JESSIE MUELLER '05, MICHAEL PENNA '05 IN THE 2005 DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA PRODUCTION. Mueller won

the 2014 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.

An impromptu party erupted starting when members of the chorus and cast arrived. Soon Cole Porter appeared with some friends, all bearing bottles of bubbly. Given long hand transcriptions of the soon to be printed reviews, the composer fondled them “like a treasure,” one colleague recalled, adding, “I never saw anyone enjoy good notices as much as Mr. Porter.” Porter had good reason to be especially pleased by Kiss Me, Kate’s success. The show not only marked his return to top form, it saved him from being written SPONSORED BY:

DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA

off as a has-been whose best work was well behind him. In the years just prior to working on Kiss Me, Kate, Porter had suffered through a series of resounding flops capped by two bombastic misfires: The Seven Lively Arts produced by Billy Rose and Around the World in 80 Days, adapted, produced, and directed by a 30-yearold Orson Welles, who also appeared on stage in a series of supporting roles. The Seven Lively Arts was an all-around contentious affair, which Porter for the rest of his life regarded as his unhappiest experience in the theatre. It ran for only 179 performances. Around the World had an even shorter run, 74 performances, but at least it was a better experience as Porter enjoyed working with Welles. “Orson Welles has been a tower of strength,” Porter wrote a friend. “The whole company loves him and rightly so … so if the show flops, I shall have had a great experience with a wonderful guy.” That proved to be the best of it. Critics were less than enthusiastic about the show and about Porter’s score, deeming it “undistinguished” at best. When Around the World closed, the word around the Broadway world was that Porter had lost his touch. Audiences no longer craved his signature style and erudite wit. Moreover, the Broadway musical itself had undergone a major change with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma. The so-called integrated musical, in which the musical numbers became integral to the plot, was now the expectation. Porter was behind the times. The idea for Kiss Me, Kate originated with a stage manager named Arnold Saint Subber who took inspiration from the backstage squabbles he observed between Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne during a run of The Taming of the Shrew. Subber enlisted the well-known costume designer Lemuel Ayers to serve as co-

producer, and to develop the idea, the pair turned to playwright Bella Spewack, who with her husband and writing partner Sam had a long string of Broadway credits. It was Spewack who suggested Porter for the project. Subber and Ayers rejected the idea. “He hasn’t had a hit in three years,” they protested. “The last show he did was a flop.” Spewack told them to leave her apartment and never return. They relented and Spewack arranged a meeting with the composer. She found Porter full of doubt. He was frightened by Shakespeare, which he deemed too esoteric and highbrow for Broadway. Shakespeare revivals never lasted long, he protested. Moreover, how could he expect audiences to understand something he couldn’t grasp himself. Spewack, too, initially had shared the same concerns. However, once she formulated the idea for the book, she was confident it would work and was unrelenting in her pursuit of Porter. She framed the show in accessible terms: “It’s a story about this theatrical couple playing The Shrew, who have been divorced,” she explained. “This will be wonderful.” Still, Porter hesitated. Finally, Spewack prevailed by suggesting possible song titles. Then, as she recalled, “it just came like an avalanche” as Porter started producing wonderful songs, so many in fact that eventually Spewack and the producers had to make him promise to stop writing. There was no more room in the show. Still, a couple of songs, like “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” and “Bianca”, were too good to leave out. Much of the score reflected Porter’s best Broadway tunes. “Another Op’nin’,

Another Show”, “Always True to You in My Fashion”, and “Why Can’t You Behave?” proved that Porter had not lost his touch in the least. Porter also took direct aim at Shakespeare’s verse in such numbers as “I’ve Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua” and “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple”, apparently overcoming whatever apprehension he had about tangling with the Bard. The reviews Porter read at the Mayflower on opening night confirmed both his and the show’s success. “If this isn’t the best musical comedy I ever saw, I don’t remember what the best musical comedy I ever saw was called,” wrote one reviewer. Walter Kerr declared Porter’s score “one of the loveliest and most lyrical yet composed for the contemporary stage.” And, summarizing what many believed, Variety called Kiss Me, Kate “the triumphant return of Cole Porter, the prodigal composer, to the ranks of the theatrical great.” Kiss Me, Kate played for 1,077 performances and won Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score. A national tour stayed on the road for the three years. By the mid-1960s, it had been translated in 18 languages, and it is produced with frequency to this day. The show that returned Porter to the ranks of the theatrical great continues to guarantee that he remains there, as well it should. As David Lowenstien, who directs the Department of Drama production notes, “Kiss Me, Kate is Cole Porter’s love song to the theatre.” Joseph Whelan

* DR. ALBERT SIRMAY WAS PORTER’S CLOSE FRIEND AND LONGTIME MUSICAL EDITOR.

Presented by Syracuse University’s Department of Drama in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Kiss Me, Kate: Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter, Book by Sam and Bella Spewack. October 2 - 10, in the Archbold Theatre at 820 East Genesee Street. Tickets are $16-$18, available at 315-443-3275 or by visiting http://vpa.syr.edu/drama. DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA

It is as it is. It shall end as it must From London to Stratford-on-Avon, across the Irish Sea to Dublin, over the pond to Brooklyn and Greenwich Village, and through the Catskills to the Syracuse University Department of Drama, the Greeks are taking the stage. Euripides, Sophocles, and especially Aeschylus are red hot with major companies currently mounting or soon to present productions of classic Greek tragedies. This fall SU Drama presents Aeschylus’ Agamemnon directed by Rodney Hudson.

Eumenidies) is not that audiences will know the story ahead of time, but rather, that they won’t know enough of the story. Actually, within the play proper, there’s not much story to know and what is there has been well-known since centuries before the play’s premiere performance at the Great Dionysia of 458 B.C. Agamemnon, commander of the Greek forces at Troy, returns home to Mycenae in triumph where he is slaughtered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. The pair also kill the prophetess Cassandra whom Agamemnon has brought home as a slave.

It took a pilgrimage of sorts to bring director Rodney Hudson to an ‘aha’ moment concerning his upcoming production of Agamemnon in the Department of Drama. Last summer, Hudson and a few friends traveled to Palmyra, New York, to attend the Hill Cumorah, an annual pageant performed outdoors by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormons. The pageant is a sweeping epic of the church’s history told by a cast of some 750 costumed volunteers with Hollywood quality music and special effects. In short, it covers a lot of time, a lot of ground, and a lot of story in a highly theatrical way. Aha! The problem with staging Agamemnon, the first of three plays in Aeschylus’ Oresteia (The Libation Bearers and The

As Hudson points out, for most audience members the play goes by so fast that it is half over before they’ve caught up to what is going on. So the directorial challenge is one of contextualizing the emotionally charged and dramatic events presented on stage. Something is certainly rotten in Mycenae and has been since long before the fires that signal the

end of Trojan War and the beginning of Agamemnon are lit. But how is the audience going to get all that information when it is not included in the play’s text? Agamemnon and The Oresteia actually provide a conclusion to two intersecting ancient epic narratives. One concerns the Trojan War and the other the curse of the House of Atreus. The former pertains most directly to the events of Agamemnon, but the latter is significant. The Trojan War began when Paris, promised the most beautiful woman in the world by the goddess Aphrodite, stole away from Sparta with Helen, wife to Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus. Incensed at Paris’ betrayal of his hospitality, Menelaus rallies the various kings of Greece, who were bound to him by a pledge, to assist him in attacking Troy and retrieving Helen. One thousand ships gather at Aulis under the command of Agamemnon. Ill winds sent by the goddess Artemis, however, prevent the fleet from setting sail for Troy. With the men growing increasingly desperate, the soothsayer Calchas reports that the goddess has spoken to him and that the only way to appease her is with a sacrifice. Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, which he does. Ten years later, Agamemnon returns home after defeating Troy and rescuing Helen, only to face the consequences of that terrible sacrifice— Clytemnestra’s deadly vengeance for the death of their daughter.

Presented by Syracuse University’s Department of Drama in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Agamemnon, by Aeschylus, directed by Rodney Hudson November 6-15, 2015, in the Storch Theatre at 820 East Genesee Street. Tickets are $16-$18, available at 315-443-3275 or by visiting http://vpa.syr.edu/drama.

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“What we did was what was fated,” Clytemnestra tells the Chorus. And, there is more to Agamemnon’s fate than retribution for his brutality against his daughter. Agamemnon is the inheritor of a curse, the curse of the House of Atreus that began with a grievous transgression against the gods perpetrated by his great-grandfather Tantalus. Tantalus was a son of Zeus and beloved of the gods. He alone among mortals could eat at their table and taste of their nectar and ambrosia. The gods even accepted an invitation to his palace where, for unknown malicious reasons, Tantalus served them a banquet of his own son, Pelops, whom he had killed and boiled in a large cauldron. Incensed, the gods condemned Tantalus to a pool in Hades, where he suffered from thirst and hunger, and wherein he would be eternally tantalized by the nearness of the water in the pool, which receded whenever he tried to drink, and by fruit on overhanging braches that blew upward out of reach whenever he tried to grasp it.

Atreus was king, Thyestes was unable to exact revenge. He fled with his remaining son, the infant Aegisthus, later Clytemnestra’s lover. The vengeance left unsatisfied in Thyestes’ lifetime is visited upon Atreus’ son, Agamemnon, upon his return from Troy.

“I want to capture a primal quality of theatre and offer an opportunity to connect with a deeper level of acting, and also of our being.” Thus, when Agamemnon arrives on stage, he brings with him much more than the captive Cassandra. He brings the entirety of this dreadful history, his own cursed fate, and an awareness that, though this may be his hour of triumph, his doom may well be at hand. “It is as it is. It shall end as it must,” chants the Chorus. Aeschylus’ audience would have known all this. A contemporary audience may not, and so the pageant. It is Hudson’s plan to provide the necessary background, the crucial exposition, to Agamemnon by presenting the telling events, pageant-like, in a series of scenic pictures.

The gods also restored Pelops to life and he had two sons, Atreus and Thyestes. Thyestes fell in love with Atreus’ wife and successfully seduced her (some versions say he raped her). In revenge, Atreus killed his brother’s two young sons, chopped them up, and served them “We’re making pictures and telling a story. in a stew to Thyestes. When he realized Some people have told me I’m what had happened, Thyestes called for trying to make the movie version,” doom against the house of Atreus, but as Hudson jokes. “But I’m inspired by

directors I’ve worked with such as Andrei Serban and Robert Wilson. They made use of spectacular visual images.” Moreover, as Agamemnon is an ancient story, and a part of world theatre, Hudson intends to blend influences and languages from numerous cultures and traditions and weave them into the production. “Tonight is the first rehearsal,” he explained in a recent interview. “First the cast is going to learn a Greek chant, then the Muslim call to prayer, and then the Japanese Yoshi walk. It’s important that this reflect—and that the students work with —different kinds of theatre. Not just American theatre.” The audience can expect a cacophony of languages, he explains, including Greek, Korean, and Farsi, among others. Cultural influences will draw from Iranian, Japanese, and Yoruba traditions. Music will be a blend of original compositions by local musician Emmet Van Slyke and work composed by Elizabeth Swados for the New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of Agamemnon in the late 1970s. (Hudson was a cast member in that production.) The multiplicity of cultural references Hudson believes will underscore the universality of Aeschylus’ play. “We all have an idea of what it must be like to lose a daughter, go to war, and to want vengeance,” Hudson explains. “I want to capture a primal quality of theatre and offer an opportunity to connect with a deeper level of acting, and also of our being.”