Marvin's Room - UMD Theatre

Laughter Through Tears at UMD's Marvin's Room

Sheryl Jensen

Duluth News Tribune

March 3, 2017

Finding laughter in a play about death, disease and dependency seems like a stretch. Yet, that is exactly what happened with the audience at UMD Theatre's opening night of Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room.

At the heart of the story is Bessie (Alyson Enderle), a big-hearted soul, who, for 20 years, has taken care of her dying father Marvin (Bud Gibson), and her aging Aunt Ruth (Maggie Thompson) who suffers from debilitating back pain.

To add to Bessie's overwhelming burdens, she is diagnosed with leukemia and needs to turn to her estranged sister Lee (LJ Klassen) and two troubled nephews, Hank (Paul Icenogle) and Charlie (Austin Becker), as possible bone marrow donors.

Enderle gives a lovely performance in a role that could come off as too saint-like without the deeper humanity and understated sense of humor she brings to the part. Klassen's flashier Lee is also well-played, showing how two very different sisters took markedly divergent paths.

The role of Hank has the potential to be a stereotypical one, a young man consumed with anger and teenage angst. Instead, Icenogle imbues the character with an innate dignity and sensitivity that adds to the richness of his portrayal.

As the younger nerdy brother Charlie, Becker creates some delightfully humorous moments, whether "trapped" in his sleeping bag or sporting a Goofy hat at Disney World.

At the comical core of the play is zany Aunt Ruth, whose back ailment is treated with an electronic anesthetizer. Humorously, when she turns up the dial of the device in the kitchen, the automatic garage door goes up.

Thompson convincingly plays well beyond her years and elicits many of the laughs, as Ruth is confused about the minutiae of daily life, but can remember every detail of what is happening on her soap opera.

At two and a half hours, (with intermission), the show feels long. Slow pacing makes things drag at times, particularly in Act I.

Standing set pieces from scenic designer Suzannah Weiss are stone monoliths that do not seem to enhance the themes of the show in any meaningful way. Except for one rock piece that is used effectively for the outdoor locale, the other Flintstones-like indoor pieces are incongruous and jarring.

However, Curtis Phillips' projections, in a series of framed screens, provide an intentionally distorted, and at the same time artistic backdrop, effectively setting the ambiance for each scene. Marvin's room (and the only way we see the title character) is the center screen lit in silhouette.

One of Marvin's few pleasures is when light is refracted from a compact mirror and his lamp to create fairy-like patterns on the walls and ceiling. It is in the dying man's room that we experience the magic of what love and compassion can do to connect souls.

How a family who bonds together can begin to heal each other emotionally, if not physically, is at the heart and soul of Marvin's Room. Director William Payne and his talented ensemble mine the depths of this show for both its laughter and tears, getting to the core of McPherson's lyrical script.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) - UMD Theatre

High-Speed Shakespeare Delivers Fun, Laughs


Mark Nicklawske
The Duluth News Tribune
February 2, 2017

Anyone who has a passing interest in live theater has been bonked over the
head with a heavy Shakespeare quote at one time or another.

The 16th century British playwright is a cornerstone of all modern drama from "Purple Rain" to the Super Bowl pregame show.



But his work is not for everyone: Too many "Wherefore art thous" and puffy shirts.



That's where the University of Minnesota Duluth School of Fine Arts' staging of the uproarious and irreverent The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) can help. It's fair to say all of the 200-or-so opening night audience members left the Marshall Performing Arts Center on Thursday with a good laugh or two and new understanding of the Hamlet death scene.

First performed in 1987 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the play is one wacky Saturday Night Live skit after another, skewering Shakespeare's best work with foam swords and burying it in Silly String. Using just three actors and some spontaneous help from the audience, all 37 of Shakespeare's plays are jammed into a 100-minute roller coaster ride.


Director Jenna Soleo-Shanks uses a set that resembles a ramshackle river raft draped in mismatched red curtains to establish the off-kilter and daring theater delivered in the comedy. The play is fast-paced, fun and current — as the ghost of rock star Prince and a Twitter-obsessed president make delightful cameos.



Using the freewheeling style of the original play, Soleo-Shanks even finds a place to bring a little bit of Duluth into Stratford-upon-Avon: Two actors find themselves "bridged" and late for the second act.

And if the actors are late, they can be excused: All three are talented, strong and deliver a nice variety of personal flair to the performance.



Reese Britts, who confessed to feeling under the weather, showed no signs of slowing down. Wearing a T-shirt featuring Shakespeare in Blues Brothers sunglasses, he demonstrated a remarkable gift for physical comedy, bending and flopping around the stage like Gumby. The man can wrestle a ladder and make it funny.

Brendan Finn, who resembles late-night funnyman James Corden both in size and volume, flaunted an array of bad wigs, ill-fitting dresses, golf clubs and pool toys with style. His serious reading of a Hamlet speech earned an unexpected round of applause

 .

Tolu Ekisola tied the trio together with a performance that combined the intelligence of a college professor with the grace of a Pro Bowl running back. In one of the funniest scenes in the play, Ekisola steals the Tweed Museum of Art's copy of Shakespeare's First Folio only to see it ripped in half by Britts and Finn.



True to the original staging, audience members get dragged on stage and the theater crowd sings/yells a "round" during the Othello performance. But that's how we all get know Shakespeare better: by screaming along with Ophelia after someone hits a gong.

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.