Significant Other - UMD Theatre

Significant Other a Solid, Sad Look at Young Gay Man's Life

Dennis Kempton

Duluth News Tribune

November 9. 2018.

There's an essential loneliness present in the lives of gay men that few outside that tribe can fathom. No matter how many of the most amazing friends gay men have, and no matter how many of the girls at work love them, single gay men, as they age and remain single, find their own personal relationships diminished by the omnipresence of heteronormative family life.

That's the weighty material laid out bare on stage in playwright Joshua Harmon's 2015 dramedy, Significant Other on stage now in the Dudley Experimental Theatre at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

The play needs an intimate theater. UMD's choice to put it in the smaller Dudley space in the Marshall Performing Arts Center may limit the seating capacity, but the emotional impact would disappear in a larger setting. The opening night performance was sold out.

The cast of seven, with Eukariah Tabaka and Patrick Timmons carrying the weight of three characters each, is tightly woven in their performances on stage. Perhaps this is due to the inevitable closeness that develops in the weeks of rehearsals before a show opens. Maybe it's because they're all pretty near the age of their characters, and the lives they lead on stage are so near in their own life cycles. 

Whatever the case, director Ann Aiko Bergeron has assembled an impressive company of friends.

The action centers on Jordan (Liam Jeffery), a gay man in his late 20s. He's a single professional, Jewish, and insecure. Weaving in and out of his life are his three besties, Laura (Erin Hartford), Vanessa (Megan Graftaas), and Kiki (Sarah Dickson). As each of them follows the heteronormative track of dating, engagement and marriage, Jordan finds his circle tightening and his relevance diminishing in their lives. Jeffery inhabits the role with remarkable depth. From his plain, unassuming appearance in the costuming — at one point, Vanessa remarks, "Your clothes are so sad!" — to his posture and pacing, there isn't a minute on stage wasted in Jeffery's performance.

He is able to plumb the depths required for Jordan's life with moments of joy and uncomfortable rawness. Any gay man can identify with what's happening on the stage not just because the writing is good, but because the actor is fully committed to the role. The three young women in orbit around Jordan are less intense, but equally committed. Dickson's Kiki is vapid and profane, but loyal. 

Hartford's Laura is that one dark but devastatingly blunt friend who knocks us off our foundations when they get traditional. And, of the three actors in Jordan's trio, Graftaas is the most memorable. Vanessa's relationship with Jordan runs deep, and the two of them powerfully convey all that entails in one of the more painful scenes on stage during Vanessa's bachelorette party. The two men in the show are, rightfully, window dressing and peripheral. But both Tabaka and Timmons faithfully provide what's needed in the telling of Jordan's fraught relationships. Tobacco shines as the unattainable Will.

Veteran actor Ellie Martin adds a sad warmth with pops of humor as Jordan's grandmother, Helene. In her brief moments on stage, she's able to convey her worried love for her grandson. The technical crew hits every emotion credibly, and the mechanics of the scene changes are smooth. The play runs at 2 hours, 30 minutes and honestly could use some editing to reduce its run time.

Significant Other is a piece of contemporary theater performed at the college level as competently as any main stage production in the city. The student actors have executed a solid show that pulls at hearts and tear ducts alike.

Dear Finder 2018 - UMD Theatre

UMD's Dear Finder Packs a Mighty Message
Dennis Kempton
Duluth News Tribune
October 11, 2018

The poet Emily Dickinson once wrote, “The mind was built for mighty freight.” It is within the spirit of this quote that the latest iteration of Dear Finder, written by Tom Isbell, Valerie Buel, Denise Dawson, Jamison Haase, Kourtney Kaas, Julie MacIver, Andrew Nelson and Julie Unulock, dwells as it opened Thursday night at the Marshall Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth.

The provenance of the play is well known by now within our community, so there’s no need to delve into it. The rightful focus is on these stories told on stage by a group of students riding on a freight train of their own into the storytelling of the Holocaust.

I’ve not seen the previous productions of this play, so I have nothing to compare. The impact was jarring, deeply disturbing and, at moments, almost propelled me from my seat into the lobby to gasp for breath.

That’s all due to the 16 actors on stage. More a dramatic witnessing and retelling of survivor stories and the rise of German National Socialism than a traditional play, the actors are taking raw, jagged cuts of real life and throwing them down before the audience, in a manner that, directorially, is more confrontational than entertaining.

It’s a necessary and vital direction. In this load of mighty freight, there’s no place for nuance. And the actors refuse to give it to those in the house seats.

The scenic design by Ashley Ann Woods is a slab tableau of gray, iron, dirt and despair, punctuated dramatically and with haunting precision by Jon Brophy’s lighting design. Notable is a scene where the actors play out prisoners in a cattle car on their way to die at Auschwitz. Brophy’s lighting cast an almost yolky yellow fog of light around them while stripes of dull white light flashed in front of the actors. The effect of movement was powerful and full of foreboding. The dirt on stage is its own powerful property. The actors use it to maximum effect, causing one to recoil, cry and rage at the carnage acted out on it, throughout the play.

Rachel Williams turns in a riveting performance, assuming the role of a survivor of one of the many death camps. As she recounts, in a lengthy and masterfully delivered monologue of falling into a pit of the dead and wounded, feigning death in order to survive, the tension in the theater increased noticeably. The ability to pull that much power from the stage is just one reason every actor is important.

Amanda Hennen, as the prosecutor, and assuming other ensemble appearances during the documentary storytelling, is also a captivating presence on stage. Her delivery rises from bold questioning and indignation to the near whispers of a woman who can barely believe what she’s charged with unearthing.

I wanted a stronger performance in Anna Matthes and Addison Sim as the reporter and playwright, respectively. The contrast in passion between the two and the rest of the cast was noticeable. It was the only weakness in a production of considerable passion and total commitment to roles.

The play ends with a drumbeat of modern-day offenses mirroring the rise of deadly authoritarianism in Germany, reminding us that history rhymes, in the most stunning revelations.

This is not cultural appropriation. It’s witnessing. And this play is still vitally necessary, year by year, victim by victim. It’s the definition of how theater can transform through the ages. It would usually be hyperbolic for one to say they were undone by the performance. But, I am.

Icarus - UMD Stage 2

Plays in a Day - UMD Stage 2

Into the Woods - UMD Theatre

Be Careful What You Wish for in UMD’S Into the Woods

Sheryl Jensen

Duluth New Tribune

April 13, 2018

“The cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, the slipper as pure as gold.”  With these reverberating words, a childless baker and his wife set off on a frenetic treasure hunt in UMD’s production of the musical Into the Woods.  The other characters, taken from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, are each following their heart’s desire into the dark recesses of the forest.

Composer Stephen Sondheim is notoriously challenging to sing.  UMD’s 20 cast members have varying degrees of success with the nuances of his songs and with the layers of wit and double entendre of James Lapine’s book.

The evening’s musical highlight is “No More,” with the Baker (Zach Churchill) and the Mysterious Man (Brendan Finn).  Churchill and Finn blend beautifully, and Churchill’s solo work is stunning.

The accusatory song “Your Fault” is filled with lyric and musical landmines.  The Baker (Churchill), Jack (Jake Nelson), Little Red (Rachel Williams) and Cinderella (Amelia Barr) make this intricate musical blame-game seem effortless.

“No One is Alone,” with the same quartet, is a gorgeous musical statement of the play’s ultimate theme of both caution and caring, about growing up but still needing support from each other to depend on in times of trouble.

As the Witch, Amada Hennen struggles to project her lines and music in Act I where her large prosthetic nose and chin muffle her to such a degree that she is difficult to hear and understand.  When she hits her stride is in Act II and has transformed into the beautiful witch, we can hear the power, resonance and beauty of her voice in “Last Midnight” and “Children Will Listen.”

Rachel Williams is on point as Little Red with the right mix of adorable little girl and cute  bloodthirsty avenger.  Cinderella’s Prince (Reese Britts) and Rapunzel’s Prince (Ole Dack) are the comic standouts of the evening with their hysterical “Agony,” played with royal arrogance and preposterous swagger.  With the dark tone of the show, humor is needed.  These three provide the comic relief that is, at times, missed elsewhere.

Brandin Stagg’s colorful and inventive costumes and Mags Scanlon’s evocative lighting design help to create the fairytale world.  Curtis Phillips’ set features two large stacks of aged fairy tale books that work well as multi-leveled acting spaces.  Less successful is the set’s monochromatic brown (with nary a green leaf or vine is sight) and the towers that look like an Arizona landscape with stacked rocks.

While music director Andy Kust’s eight-piece orchestra is a little thin at times on what is a lush score written for twice that many, they do provide a solid underscore to feature the singers.

UMD’s production, with even-handed direction from Ann Bergeron, is successful on many levels in creating the lighter fairy tale world in Act I and the much darker vision in Act II where not everyone does get to live “happily ever after.”

  Yet even that dark ending is tempered with the final words “I wish,” echoed from early in the show, that they each can somehow achieve their dreams.

These Shining Lives - UMD Theatre

Performances Glow in UMD's These Shining Lives
Sheryl Jensen
Duluth News Tribune
March 2, 2018

"This isn't a fairy tale, though it starts like one.  This isn't a tragedy, though it ends like one."

Setting the framework for Melanie Marnich's lyrical script, These Shining Lives, the play's central character, Catherine Donahue (Sarah Dickson), warns us early on about the fateful journey we are about to go on with her.

Set in the 1920s and '30s outside Chicago, the play is based on the true story of women who worked at the Radium Dial Company, painting the glowing numbers on watches and clocks.

The lethal effects of exposure to the radium-based paint became even more direct since the women would moisten the tip of their paint brushes in their mouths and then dip them in the radium, repeating for every number.

After years of exposure, the women got increasingly sick as they moved slowly toward their excruciatingly painful deaths.  Denying the effects of the radium, the cold-hearted company fired the women when they were too sick to work any longer.

Sarah Dickson brings a nobility, elegance and luminosity to Donahue, who was one of the real-life "Radium Girls."  Donahue's courage and tenacity in fighting against the company helped pave the way for worker protections.

Lovely character work is also performed by the actresses playing Donahue's friends at the factory: Charlotte Purcell (Grace Kelly Smith), Frances O'Connell (Andrea Leonard) and Pearl Payne (Tolu Eskisola).

Each of the women has chances to shine as they show first their humor and camaraderie, and eventually their horror over what is happening to them.  Charlotte laments, "They did this, and they knew it!  They threw us away for a few watches!  That's what we're worth!"

Addison Sim has a sweet turn as Tom, Catherine's husband.  Mitchell Dallman is convincing as Rufus Reed, the smarmy company foreman who keeps silent, even as he knows too well what is happening to his workers.

Ellen Monzo's elegant costumes are spot on, both to evoke the time period and also to establish the characters' personalities.

Projections are used effectively on several panels to give a sense of time, place and mood through stills, film, abstract stars and constellations.  Newspaper clippings from the period also add power and veracity to the play's themes.

Performed without intermission, the scenes flow one into another with minimal changes in between.  Director William Payne decided to add period music sung by the cast as a chorus for pre-show music, as underscore for some scenes, and during shifts.

While the singing adds to the period flavor, at times it slows the pace.  Sometimes two or three verses are used where one might do.  The music is haunting but there are occasional pitch problems with harmonies.

The strongest of the vocal pieces is the stirring "Bread and Roses," an anthem that came out of the early women's trade union movement.

While this could just be a play about dying, the women's transcendent spirit to support each other, and to worry about those who followed them, keeps the torch of that anthem aflame.

Charlotte's Web - UMD Theatre

“Some Pig” Charms in UMD's Charlotte's Web

Sheryl Jensen

Duluth News Tribune

February 2, 2018 

Author E.B. White once wrote, "Although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them, too — truth about the way people and animals feel and think and act."

In the University of Minnesota Duluth's magical and charming play adaptation (by Joseph Robinette) of White's Charlotte's Web, that truth shone through to the delighted opening night audience of children and adults Thursday.

White's beloved tale has been a favorite with readers since it was first published in 1952. It tells the life story of Wilbur, a rambunctious piglet, and his dear friends, Fern, the little girl who rescues him from the "chopping block," and Charlotte, the spider who makes him an unlikely superstar.

Recreating the world of White's classic, director Tom Isbell, the cast and production team also bring home the themes of valued friendships and heartbreaking separations.

Luke Harger captured all of "the runt of the litter" pig Wilbur's innocence and playfulness, with his leaping, cavorting and sliding around the stage. Amelia Barr's sweet, understated portrayal of Charlotte was a lovely contrast as she showed the spider to be the unlikely heroine of the show and, as Wilbur describes her, "a great friend and a great writer."

Many of the supporting cast play multiple roles. Ensemble standouts include Alyson Enderle and Brendan Finn as the frenzied Goose and Gander, Cally Stanich as the pessimistic sheep, and Ryan Richardson playing the snarky self-centered rat.

Curt Phillips's whimsical barnyard set, lit beautifully by Mark Harvey, provides just the right mix of a realistic farm ambiance with the "magic" of Charlotte's mammoth web as the central focus.

While Leah Benson-Devine's delightful animal costumes don't aim for realism, her selective choices for tails, ears, colors and fabrics are adorable representations of each barnyard creature.

Composer and musician Blake Thomas provided a subtle but effective underscore to the proceedings on guitar and banjo.

Charlotte's Web is one of those stories that appeals to children on one level and another to adults who get the subtler elements of comedy and pathos. This simple tale of friendship and salvation was well told in ways that touched the heart and elicited laughter and joy.