She Loves Me - UMD Theatre

UMD’s Delightful Holiday Musical Rom-Com Prods Audiences to Fall in Love All Over Again

Sheryl Jensen

The Duluth News Tribune

December1, 2016

She Loves Me is one of the most under appreciated musicals in the American theater canon. The UMD theater department production gives audiences the gift of this effervescent little gem of a show.

The classic rom-com plot device of two unassuming people who fall in love through love letter correspondence, while hating each other in person, was central to the original 1937 play by Hungarian writer Miklos Laszlo. The story was also used in the films “The Shop Around the Corner” and “You’ve Got Mail.”

In 1963, in the hands of Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics), who would next write Fiddler on the Roof together, the familiar story takes on a rosy glow, awash in an evening of delightful songs.

As Amalia Balash, the distaff side of the anonymous correspondents, Rebekah Meyer has one of those crystal clear, glorious soprano voices, perfect for musical theater heroines. Her takes particularly on “Dear Friend,” “Vanilla Ice Cream” and “Will He Like Me?” are the show’s heart and soul.

Playing Georg Nowack, the other “Dear Friend,” Ole Dack utterly charms from his first entrance. His firecracker performance of the title song “She Loves Me” was the highlight of Act II.

Every supporting player brings magic to the stage. The ever-adorable Brian Saice shines as Arpad, the delivery boy who aspires to greater things. Simon Van Vactor-Lee gives a charming performance as an unassuming, wise and intuitive store clerk, who ultimately saves the day.

In a small gender-bending role as a head waiter, Erica VonBank, channeling a cross between Cruella De Vil and Morticia Addams, has a wonderfully comedic turn in “A Romantic Atmosphere.”

Baby-faced Luke Hanger (Kodaly) may not look the part of a Lothario and home-wrecker, but he finds his inner cad and slays both of his tunes, the sexy “Ilona” and his hilarious exit song, “Grand Knowing You.” Playing opposite him, Emily Sue Bengston has great fun as well with the ditzy, jilted woman role.

While student designer Jenna Mady’s set is serviceable, it lacks some of the glitz of an upscale European parfumerie. Patricia Dennis, however, brings her experienced hand to beautiful period costumes, helping to recreate the magic of another time and place.

Under the crisp direction of musical director/conductor Patrick Colvin, the nine-piece orchestra brings wonderful European nuances to the sumptuous score. Rebecca Katz Harwood’s choreography, especially in the cafe number, is clever and witty.

Guest director Michael Brindisi, Chanhassen Dinner Theatre’s longtime resident artistic director and one of the co-owners, has been instrumental in building an alliance between UMD’s theater program and the Chanhassen.

With this whimsical production, he was able to work with some potential future actors for his Chanhassen stage and to share his considerable talents and insights as a seasoned director with the students on their home stage.

As Brindisi puts it in his playbill director’s note, in seeing She Loves Me he hopes that “you fall in love, or fall in love all over again.” For holiday audiences, what a lovely theatrical present to unwrap.

Almost, Maine - UMD Stage 2

Shakespeare in Motion - UMD Theatre

Making Shakespeare Dance and Giving the Folio Feet

Sheryl Jensen

Duluth News Tribune 

October 20, 2016

Shakespeare not only gave his actors the most eloquent and poetic speeches ever written to say, he also provided them with opportunities to dance. Many of his plays include references to masques, balls and dancing epilogues where Will’s company members got to kick up their heels with wild abandon.

UMD Theatre Department and artistic director Rebecca Katz Harwood use the theme of Shakespeare in Motion for their fall dance concert to celebrate the Bard’s First Folio, on display at Tweed Museum, just steps down the hall.

The evening includes pieces choreographed by members of the theatre/dance department staff and by UMD students. A fun bonus to the program are interludes of the “Shakespeare Jukebox” with student vocalists performing songs from the Shakespeare-inspired musical theater canon. The songs and vocalists will vary each show of the run.

As is the case with many student showcases, there are varying levels of performance and of choreographic finesse. While there are moments in the student choreographed pieces that seem under-rehearsed, lacking in polish and tenuous in concept and execution, there are also moments when the glimmers of future potential come through as the fledgling choreographers and dancers test their wings and at times take flight.

The evening’s most sophisticated, interesting and bold choreography, however, comes from department members LilaAnn Coates White, Rebecca Katz Harwood and Matthew Wagner.

Coates White’s interpretation of “The Scottish Play” presents an unusual take on the three witches whose symbiotic relationship is displayed in visually stunning reconfigurations of the three women’s heads and bodies. Far from the stereotypical Halloween hags, the witches here are beautiful and seemingly benign creatures, who, nonetheless, manipulate and control Lady Macbeth with her bloody hands and Fleance, the boy who would be king.

“If I Were a Women,” Katz Harwood’s timely and haunting piece, uses Shakespeare’s words on the subject of women echoing throughout. The six women expressively dance the various shades and nuances of being a woman, while phrases like “Frailty thy name is woman. . .” and “Do you not know I am a woman, when I think, I must speak . . .” reverberate to connect text and choreography beautifully.

The concert’s final piece, choreographed by Matthew Wagner, is the evening’s most visually stunning and the most fully realized. Titled “Shipwrecks,” the dance takes its inspiration from “The Tempest,” “Twelfth Night” and “Hamlet” to recreate the whirlwind of poor souls being cast about on a seething sea and then being tossed on an alien shore.

Using a powerful music composition called “Lloyd’s Register,” “Shipwrecks” is also the concert’s best representation of making the thrilling intersection between a perfectly selected piece of music and the themes and motifs of the dance.

Shakespeare himself linked water and dance in his “A Winter’s Tale,” when Florizel says, “When you do dance, I wish you a wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do nothing but that . . .” Wagner’s shipwrecked dancers caught the wave and captured the audience’s imagination.

Shakespeare in Motion with its diverse mix of choreographic visions, styles, music and imagery shows that Shakespeare’s eternal plays can not only still speak but they can also dance.

Miscast - UMD Stage 2

One River - UMD Theatre

One River Gives the St. Louis its Due

Sheryl Jensen

Duluth News Tribune

September 29, 2016

Lake Superior gets all the attention — splashy showoff that “she” is.

In their premiere performance of One River, playwright and UMD professor Tom Isbell and his strong 11-member ensemble celebrate that other body of water in our backyard by telling stories about the less glamorous, but also breathtakingly beautiful St. Louis River.

Isbell was inspired by the “One River, Many Stories” project, which challenged area journalists, writers, poets, historians and anyone else with a point of view to collect, write and present stories about life on the 192-mile St. Louis River.

An evening of vignettes, quotes and history, UMD Theatre’s original production includes shining moments of purposeful acting and impactful storytelling. Music is also used effectively throughout, both as underscore and to present some of the show’s themes.

The events kick into gear with the comic “One River Rap” relating the evolution of the project. The song ends with an homage to the musical “Hamilton,” complete with period costuming and iconic posing.

As a pair of amorous beavers on the banks of the river, Erica VonBank and Ryan Haff have a hilarious scene showing the semi-aquatic rodents’ awkward mating ritual. Their Canadian accents, the stuffed animal beavers perched atop their heads and their understated discussion about a “passionate” proposal make this a comic highlight.

Another comically effective scene relates, with silly props and purposefully overly dramatic action, the myths and legends surrounding the 1871 digging of the Duluth ship canal. This satirical take on the “war” with Superior over which city would have the most accessible port portrays how some of the animosity between the two halves of the Twin Ports “equation” originated.

In one of the show’s strongest character portrayals, Rebekah Meyer, as area ornithologist Laura Erickson, is both funny in her breathless amazement at the world of river birds and sweetly touching in her simple close encounter with a chickadee and in her sadness at the plight of the endangered piping plovers.

Sara Thomsen’s folk song, “Precious Water,” sung hauntingly by VonBank, relates one side of the agonizing conflict over copper-nickel mining and its potential for damage to both the river and the lake. Helping it from becoming too preachy, the scene shows the equally strongly held beliefs on the other side, including the positive economic impact of the mines and America’s ever-increasing need for copper.

As a new, never before produced work, not all of the pieces succeed as well as others, nor do some of the segues flow quite smoothly enough. The pieces about the geological history of the river, the history of Clough Island, and the recounting of the 2012 flood go on a bit too long, losing some of their impact.

This moving theater presentation, however, accomplishes what Isbell set out to do, blend a mosaic of many voices into one lyrical artistic whole, leaving the audience with the desire to go down to the oft-ignored river to see for themselves why it is such a glorious Northland treasure.

Spring Awakening - UMD Theatre

A Provocative Anthem for Doomed Youth

Sheryl Jensen

The Duluth News Tribune 

April 14, 2016

Teenage sex, abortion, child abuse, incest, suicide and homosexuality.

With these “taboo” topics at its core, it was no wonder that the original version of the play Spring Awakening was considered scandalous. The 1891 work, by German playwright Frank Wedekind, was banned and then later underwent censoring when it was first performed in 1906.

Composer Duncan Sheik and book writer/lyricist Steven Sater used Sederkind’s controversial work as the basis for their provocative musical of the same title that premiered on Broadway in 2006 and won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2007.

UMD’s production hits most of the chords of Wedekind’s story of repressed youth, addressed anew in this modern musical adaptation. Dressed in 1891 period costumes, the cast members perform like rock stars in the show’s anachronistic mix. With all the pain, angst, sadness and anger they can muster, the 17-member cast sings about the bruises and wounds from the repressed society in which they live, and the aching for the spring awakening they hope to find.

Amelia Barr breaks the audience’s hearts as the hopelessly romantic character Wendla who has no idea where babies come from, until she becomes pregnant. Barr’s solo moments are particularly powerful, revealing the innermost soul of every teenage girl, beginning with the show’s opening number, “Mama Who Bore Me.”

Dylan Rugh plays Melchior, Wendla’s love interest, and the most outspoken in word and thought against the closed society of overbearing parents and autocratic teachers. Rugh is utterly believable and honest in every moment onstage as his character tries to beat the system that is intent on breaking him down. His strongest vocal moments come in his solo “All That’s Known” and solo parts in “Left Behind.” Rugh and Barr’s Act II plaintive duet “Whispering” was another musical highlight of the evening.

Erica VonBank, as Ilse, the most free-spirited of the teenage characters, has a lovely duet with the tragic Moritz, played by Thomas McDanel, as they overlap “Blue Wind” and “Don’t Do Sadness.”

In multiple roles as all the adult female and male characters, Kayla Peters and Wes Anderson get to stretch their acting chops by playing both sympathetic and unsympathetic parents and other characters with the most improbable of names such as Fraulein Grossenbustenhaulter, a lusty piano teacher, and Herr Knochenbruch, a really nasty professor).

Strong supporting cast and ensemble members play all the varieties and stripes of angsty teenagers with conviction, moving seamlessly from the exuberance of their explosive musical numbers back to their drab, daily lives. The show’s finale, “The Song of Purple Summer,” beginning with VonBank’s gorgeous solo, and then adding full company, is the evening’s musical tour de force.

Director/choreographer Rebecca Katz Harwood creates both masterful stage pictures and interesting, angular choreographic movements, and has full command of how to make the show’s complex themes relevant for modern audiences. Music director Andy Kust conducts a strong seven-piece onstage orchestra that helps to drive the show’s more hard-pounding rock songs and to underscore the lush ballads.

And while Spring Awakening is ultimately a Tragedy of Childhood, its original subtitle, UMD’s talented cast members bring the audience into the universal collective memory of that ethereal Netherworld, between being a child and becoming an adult.

Rhinoceros - UMD Theatre

The Rhinoceroses are in Charge in UMD's Absurdist Play

Sheryl Jensen

Duluth News Tribune 

March 4, 2016

Snorting, galumphing and stampeding rhinoceroses have taken over. And while that may sound eerily like the current presidential political campaign, it is also the state of things in UMD's compelling production of French playwright Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros.

The plot is as absurd as it sounds. The populous of a small French village is astounded to see a runaway rhinoceros wreaking havoc in town square. Gradually, in a device worthy of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," one by one, the townspeople inexplicably transform into rhinoceroses and join the marauding herd.

Part black comedy, part horror story, and part cautionary tale, UMD's production fires on all cylinders on both the technical and acting sides of the aisle. The audience is corralled by enclosing walls with an abstract pattern of angled wood and ominous black openings. The intimacy of the German Expressionist style setting from Jenna Mady makes the audience feel even more claustrophobic when the proliferation of the rhinoceros takes a serious uptick.

Mitch Newport plays Berenger, the play's Everyman, who sees the horror around him growing and mounts a fierce internal battle to resist the allure of becoming just another one of the mindless, myopic beasts. Newport's earnest and mature performance makes an alcoholic underdog into a solitary hero by show's end.

Phil Hoelscher is a standout as Berenger's fussbudget, fidgety friend Jean who is one of the first to become a rhinoceros. Hoelscher's onstage transformation — with body contortions and aided by Ben Harvey's fabulous sound mix for Jean's voice alteration — is an acting tour de force.

Director Ann Aiko Bergeron calls the story "a comedy — of sorts." The first act is filled with funny moments, both with the verbal dexterity of the actors in their supposedly "logical" overlapping conversations and in the physical comedy of this very capable ensemble of 11 actors, many playing multiple roles. Kelsie Bias' whimsical costumes also help create what has the feel, at first, of a witty French farce.

The comedy all but disappears in the second half, however, when it becomes clear that we are seeing the results of what can happen when people do not fight evil with the spirit of their better angels. The symbolic lighting on the stage floor of green scales, the increasingly louder thundering herd sound effects and the actors menacingly encroaching, wearing simple but genuinely creepy rhinoceros masks, build the tension and change the play's tone entirely.

Recalling his own escape from his home country of Romania during WWII, Ionesco wrote Rhinoceros in 1959 to portray allegorically the Nazism and fascism he had seen spread across Europe. His message is clear, that chaos ensues when basically good people succumb to mass hysteria, unscrupulous leaders and mindless propaganda. Society degenerates into savagery where the human qualities of kindness, love, respect, compassion and trust are all mercilessly stomped on by hobnail boots.

"I am not joining you" is Berenger's plaintive but determined assertion when he is the last man standing against the pack of horned pachyderms. That refrain has never seemed more urgent or immediate than right now, proving that Rhinoceros has never been more relevant than it is today.

All's Well That Ends Well - UMD Theatre

All’s Well in UMD's Shakespearian Romp
Sheryl Jensen
Duluth News Tribune
February 4, 2016

Most often in the Shakespearian canon, it is abundantly clear which plays are comedies and which are tragedies. For a few of the plays, however, the lines seem less clearly drawn. All’s Well That Ends Well falls into what are called the “problem” plays with a foot in each realm.

In the University of Minnesota Duluth’s production, director Kate Ufema has mostly solved the “problem,” landing her production decidedly more in the comedy camp. While there are still darker elements, characterizations and plot devices, particularly in the last half of the show, over
all it showcased the comedic talents of the actors to the delight of the opening night audience.

Although the cast is predominantly underclassmen, with just a few of the more seasoned veterans in the theater program, each actor is at ease with the language; they “iambed” and “pentametered” their way through the proceedings with aplomb.

Any production of All’s Well ultimately rises and falls on the actress playing Helena. In this fairy tale-like story, Helena cures the ailing King of France and receives her pick of any husband in the kingdom in return. Her choice, alas, is her long unrequited love, the young and handsome Bertram, who weds and then spurns her. The main plot line follows Helena as she uses her wit and ingenuity to win his love.

Erin Hartford brings an endearing earnestness and sweetness to Helena, a role that is a balancing act where the audience needs to see her not as a doormat, but rather as an intelligent woman who knows what she wants and how to go about getting it. Hartford finds that balance and charms both the audience and eventually the recalcitrant Bertram.

Two supporting standouts are Brian Saice as Lavache, the clown, and Ryan Fargo as Parolles. Saice is establishing his wheelhouse in broad comedy, playing one of Shakespeare’s patented wise fools. From his first entrance in his wildly colored motley vest and hat, he evokes a long-lost Marx Brother, playing the fool’s physical and textual comedy to perfection.

Ryan Fargo sinks his considerable acting chops into the role of the arrogant blowhard, Parolles, who is all talk, pomp and bluster early on but gets his well-deserved comeuppance by evening’s end. Fargo also finds the fine nuances of the text and the appropriate physicality to bring the role to ostentatious life.

In a fun bit of casting, Lendley Black steps out of his UMD’s chancellor’s office to return to his theatrical roots. He holds his own with the talented students surrounding him, bringing a regal air and gravitas to the story.

The show is visually stunning, with Curt Phillips’ elegant towering arched wall and parapet, marvelously lit by James Eischen. Laura Piotrowski’s costumes are, as always, gorgeous, with the men this time getting the more colorful palette, dashing in military outfits in bold shades of red, white and blue, and the requisite plumes, sashes and tassels.

Ultimately, the enjoyment of a Shakespearian play comes down to making it accessible for modern audiences. This production does so delightfully from the opening pantomime to the epilogue, reminding us of how many ways Shakespeare can continue to be both relevant and entertaining.