Florida Agenda

BOCA RATON, FL – Relive the most infamous radio broadcast in radio history live on stage at the Caldwell Theatre. Seventy-two years ago, audiences were thrilled and horrified by a radio broadcast that took place Halloween night. Aliens were invading! No one was safe! Only a select few knew it was all a creation of the brilliant Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater.  H.G. Welles’ “War of the Worlds” went down as the most infamous radio drama in history.

South Florida audiences have the opportunity to relive this amazing broadcast — live on stage at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton. “War of the Worlds” will be presented at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on October 31 on the Caldwell Theatre’s main stage.  Local favorite Gordon McConnell will direct a cast including Avi Hoffman, Dan Leonard and Laura Turnbull that will not only enact multiple roles, but also recreate the amazing sound effects utilizing authentic devices used in radio drama in the 1930’s. Another aspect of the production is that all the locations will be transferred from New Jersey to Palm Beach County. Thrill to aliens landing in a Delray Beach pineapple grove. Listen in horror as the invasion marches down Clematis Street. It’s the perfect entertainment for Halloween and, best of all, the audience gets to be part of the action with the actors and stage manager cueing you to provide the additional sound effects.

“War of the Worlds” is a presentation of AirPlayz, a company dedicated to the art of radio drama, produced by 2Watts Productions. Admission is $10, and reservations can be made by calling 561-632-0517 or send an email to airplayzartsradio@gmail.com.

The year-round Caldwell Theatre Company in Boca Raton is an A-1 class act.

By Warren Day

The class shows in the challenging plays they perform, and not the endlessly-repeated comedies and classics that compose the repertory of many a theater company. The class shows in the sets, which are not only beautifully designed, but also add meaning to the characters and the story. It also shows in the theater building itself, the Count de Hoernle Theatre, one of the most effective and pleasant performing spaces in all of Florida. And usually, the class shows in the high-quality of the acting, with their casts filled with professional talent who’ve earned their Actors Equity union cards. Under the creative leadership of Clive Cholerton, it’s simply one of the best theatre companies in the Sout

Their premiere production for the 2011- 2012 season, “After the Revolution” by Amy Herzog, hits the mark on most of its high standards and speaks well for the season ahead.

First of all, the play was picked by the New York Times as one of the ten best of 2010. It deals with a situation and a theme that has an importance and an appeal outside of its own historical context. What do you do when you discover that the pride of your family, someone who you’ve emulated in your personal and professional life, turns out to have a secret that reveals a much darker side to his character? To some degree, we all need heroes in our lives, but it can be quite dicey to have a family member as one, because if anything should go wrong, the fallout can extend into so many relationships.

In “After the Revolution,” the pride of the family is the grandfather, a kind of Alger Hiss character who achieved fame in the 1950s by not naming names at the McCarthy hearings and for being a spokesperson against the witch hunts of the times that treated every person on the far left as a traitor. The play takes place in 1999, 18 months after the grandfather has died. His granddaughter Emma has just graduated from law school and started a legal defense fund to promote his ideals. Her dreams, values, and career are tied up with the heroic image of her grandfather, and then she learns he wasn’t who he seemed to be.

It’s a dilemma that’s been faced by other families, such as the televangelist who’s caught paying for the services of a male prostitute, the politician who highly embellishes his military service or family background, or the father who everyone thought was a genius businessman but instead has been running a ponzi scheme, and, of course, the lesser and more common experience of finding out at sixteen that your parents simply aren’t as perfect as you once thought they were at six.

The drama and the comedy of “After the Revolution” is in how Emma reacts to learning about her grandfather’s unsavory past, a past about to be revealed to the world in a new book. And it’s also where the play (and casting) runs into some trouble. Emma is not a sympathetic character because she suffers from the same fault of almost everyone on the far left or far right – she’s filled with self-righteousness. The fault is partly in how she’s written, and even more so in how she’s played by Jackie Rivera, who goes more for the anger than the hurt, more for the petulance than the vulnerability. You begin to feel sorrier for her family and boyfriend than you do for her. The rest of the cast find more shadings and nuance in their performances, such as Gordon McConnell as her father, Nancy Barnett as her stepmother, and particularly Howard Elfman as a kindly and wise benefactor who learned long ago that the bigger the man, the more likely, the bigger the fault.

A Stage Review by WARREN DAY

There’s a long and cherished tradition in the American theater to base comedies around one or more eccentrics, going from “You Can’t Take It With You,” to “Auntie Mame,” to even big musicals like “Hello Dolly” and “The Producers,” to current productions like “The Addams Family.”

Yet, not every eccentric makes for a satisfying comedy, as is the case with the Caldwell Theatre’s world premiere production of “Stuff” by Michael McKeever.

Based on a true story, it concerns two brothers named Homer and Langley Collyer who lived, if you can call it that, from the Gilded Age of the late-19th century until the mid-20th.  In 1909, along with their doctor father and ex-opera singer mother, they moved into a large brownstone in what was then fashionable Harlem.

The father abandoned the family in 1916 and, over the next 28 years, the brothers descended from eccentricity into madness. They became the stuff of legend, living as hermits, filling the multi-rooms of their mansion with everything from the chassis of an old Model T to fourteen pianos (both grand and upright) and thousands of newspapers. Eventually, the living space in this four-story townhouse was reduced to a few square feet as they lived out their lives without electricity or heat, and with only narrow tunnels through the junk to get them from one packed room to another.

It’s a story that has fascinated many writers including, not surprisingly, Stephen King, as well as E.L. Doctorow, the prize-winning author of “Ragtime.”

In the two acts of “Stuff,” the playwright has picked but two nights out of their lives, one in 1929 when their mother was still alive, and then in 1947 when literally their lives, and their junk, were crashing around them. And that’s a central problem: There’s no gradation of development, because you go from when the hoarding was manageable to when it was chaotic insanity. The play starts at a sad place and jolts toward a much sadder one.

The playwright offers no penetrating insight into why the brothers were the way they were, instead pulling out the old chestnut of the domineering mother (the fallback cause in many a play and novel as to why someone was an unhappy homosexual).

For over two hours, the brothers bicker and sling insults at each other and, while the audience laughed a good deal, it’s hard
to make a consequential evening at the theater of two inconsequential people who did nothing consequential with their lives. You end up with the uncomfortable feeling of being asked to laugh at two people who were mentally ill.

The play itself may be lacking, but as usual for the wonderful and adventuresome Caldwell Theatre Company, the direction by Clive Cholerton is top notch, the set by Tim Bennett is outstanding, and the acting is at a highly professional level, with
the playwright Michel McKeever giving a fine  performance as Homer.

Running through July 31 at the Count de Hoernle Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton, FL 33487. For performance times and how to buy tickets, go to www.caldwelltheatre.com or call (561) 241-7432.

They Just Do One Person Shows

By Warren Day

Whether it be the world premiere of a new comedy, as they will do in July with Stuf by Michael McKeever, or the regional premiere of a recent Tony-winning drama, as in God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza this past May, the professional Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton presents engrossing productions that usually can’t be found anywhere else in Florida.

Such was the case the first week in June, when they presented the legendary actor Ed Asner in FDR by Dore Schary.

Legendary is not too strong a word for this veteran actor of stage, screen and, especially, television, who has won seven Emmys and five Golden Globes, and was recently the lead voice actor in the Academy Award Best Animated Feature Up.

At the age of 81, most actors have retired by necessity, but Mr. Asner has been making appearances around the country playing our 32nd president of the United States in a demanding and grueling one-man show.

Over the last couple of decades, it’s been something of a phenomenon to have performers travel in one-person productions. Sometimes these shows are an evening recap of their careers, as Lena Horne did for several years and which Elaine Stitch is still doing. Other times they are fictional works where the sole actor plays all the parts, as Lily Tomlin did in The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe.

Most often, these shows consist of a single actor playing a famous person, i.e., Henry Fonda as the lawyer Clarence Darrow, or Tovah Feldshuh as either Golda Mier or Talluhah Bankhead (now there’s a stretch for you).

These live performances can be great theater when the actor and the historical person seem a natural fit for each other, as with Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight. Other times, all the magical ingredients can seem to be there, as when Vincent Price played Oscar Wilde, but actually end up offering a rather bland and predictable evening, something the real Mr. Wilde never did.

As Roosevelt, Ed Asner falls somewhere between success and failure. He doesn’t fit FDR in age, looks, or accent; neither does he have that patrician air that was so much a part of this upperclass, but populist, president.

The fact that his performance works as well as it does is a tribute to his acting chops, as when he captures the joy in being able to stand for a few seconds without his canes (FDR had polio), or the believable and quick transition to anguish he makes at another point. Another plus is that Mr. Asner’s admiration for the President who led us through the depression and World War II shines through and is contagious. The audience obviously had great admiration for Ed Asner, and gave him a standing ovation at the end, but I think that was more for what Roosevelt had done in real life and for what Asner had done in other parts.

Photo: Award Winning actor, Ed Asner, will be appearing in FDR as President
Roosevelt at the Caldwell Theatre

By ALEX VAUGHN

The Caldwell Theatre company continues it’s trend of ‘first in the region to produce’ with the launch of the Pulitzer Prize nominated and Tony Nominated smash, Next Fall, by Geoffrey Nauffts. A play that wrestles with religion, family dynamics and honesty to oneself.

The play is about a cross generational gay couples’ struggle, not so much with age difference but their totally opposite religious beliefs. Luke, the younger is a gay Christian and Adam, the older, a devout Atheist!

Next Fall presents not just the above but a range of issues facing many gay couples who are so far apart in age.

The play opens with a tragic accident that pulls together those who are closest to the couple. Adam’s self- help loving candle shop owning friend Holly, Luke’s parents Arlene and Butch and Luke’s Christian friend Brandon.

Arlene (Pat Nesbit) steals the opening scene, her southern drawl and comments are incredibly comical and serve to take you right out of the tragedy and into a sitcom. Immediately you get the sense of the fact the friends are hiding Luke’s sexuality from his mother. This serves for both comic and tragic exchanges that leave you as uncomfortable as the characters. This resonates throughout the play. Slick dialogue and witty one liners keep the play light whilst dealing with sensitive subjects such as age gaps, coming out and of course religion.

The entrance of Luke’s father Butch (Dennis Bateman) is fantastic. He is a hard-nosed southern man who believes in the bible without question. He manages to ignore all the obvious signs his son is gay throughout the play. Close shaves throughout keep you glued to your seat.

During the production you are taken through various events in Adam and Luke’s five year relationship, each scene has a great balance between the underlying theme of an age difference and the main theme of their contrasting religious beliefs. Holly (Irene Adjan) does feature, first as Adam’s employer than as his friend and confidant. She represents a typical New York ‘Fag Hag’ and does it with similar timing and biting sarcasm as Grace on Will and Grace. Brandon (Christopher A. Kent), is underused. He is almost surplus to requirements. It isn’t until very near then end in a heartfelt monologue he explains that though he is a devout Christian, he loves to sleep with black men. That is where it stops, falling in love as Adam and Luke have is totally unacceptable in his eyes. Kent really makes his one major monologue resonate with the audience.

One of the most impressive parts of Next Fall is the sensitive portrayal of one of the most insidious by products of discriminatory relationship laws. One partner is not considered family and is therefore not allowed to visit with the other who is in a coma.

One particular scene that stands out is when Butch arrives at Luke and Adam’s apartment, while Luke is out. An altercation between him and Adam is suitably cringe worthy yet, the love Adam (Tom Wahl) has for Luke (Josh Canfield) prevents him from overstepping the line. When Luke returns home the fear is evident and after a massive faux pas he decided to sit his father down to tell him. Butch evidently has realizes yet cuts his son off before he can tell him. The scene is extremely poignant and Canfield delivers a mature performance.

The cracks begin to show, and both the lead actors play perfectly the issues that truly affect and older and younger men who come from two different backgrounds and belief systems. The issues at stake for this play don’t distract from some very amusing banter. The issues are addressed however perhaps too lightly. The questions left open by the play aren’t answered which is excellent because you leave re-evaluating your beliefs and experiences.

Next Fall is definitely a play to be seen, if you have ever experienced differences with age or the importance of coming out, it’s amazing to see it on stage handled without judgement.

The Caldwell Theatre Company
7901 N.Federal Highway, Boca Raton,
FL 33487 | 561 241 7432
Runs till March 27 2011
i