2012 Rogue's Gallery, part 5

Costume Design

Nancy Richard, Endgame, The Abreact
•Barbie Amann Weisserman, Same Time, Next Year, Two Muses Theatre
•Karen Kangas-Preston, Red, White, and Tuna, Williamston Theatre
•Vince Kelley, A Bright Room Called Day, Ringwald Theatre
•Liz Moore, Mary Stuart, Meadow Brook Theatre

Weisserman deftly tumbled her characters forward five years at a stretch, as they alternately seized and missed the changing mores of a turbulent era. From housecoats to half-shirts, camo to cashmere, meticulous Kangas-Preston distilled the denizens of Tuna into a portrait gallery of oddballs. Kelley’s panoply was impressively broad, but its true success was in the effortlessness of the period style. Moore took a magnifying glass to every last thread of her dozen-plus tapestry, offering a visual smorgasbord of a history lesson. However, the conspicuous filth of Richard’s rags and makeup effects, culminating in the dusty misery of two ancient wretches, lent breathtaking veracity to a surreal exercise.

New Play or Adaptation

Joseph Zettelmaier, Dead Man's Shoes, Williamston Theatre/Performance Network Theatre
•Gray Bouchard and Jason Sebacher*, The American Crowbar Case, The New Theatre Project
•Audra Lord, Fugue, The New Theatre Project
•Franco Vitello, Burn the Red Banner, or, Let the Rebels Have Their Fun, The Abreact
•Don Zolidis, White Buffalo, Purple Rose Theatre Co.

*Created by Bouchard, book by Sebacher, music by Match by Match

Bouchard and Sebacher cleverly tied together the loose associations of Match by Match’s florid concept album in tantalizing exaltations to the unknowable past. Nobody knew that what the theater world really needed was a hysterical send-up of ponderous Russian storytelling until it sprung fully formed from Vitello’s gloriously batty imagination. Patience was Lord’s chief virtue in a long, taut narrative thread that explained little and resolved less, opening willingly to incredulous interpretation. Zolidis gave his inciting incident real transcendental heft, justifying the armful of hard-hitting stories that converged upon it. But nothing could top the glorious mesh of genres, the contemporary-folksy, slapstick-gruesome, editorial-immersive, laughing-crying precision machinery that capitalized on every last one of Zettelmaier’s literary strengths.

Ensemble (2–4)

Montag and Marbles, Go Comedy! Improv Theater
•From My Hometown, Meadow Brook Theatre
•God of Carnage, Jewish Ensemble Theatre/Performance Network Theatre
•Heroes, Stormfield Theatre
•The Mystery of Irma Vep, Tipping Point Theatre

Espousing and eventually bridging their preferred musical hubs, the three fresh-faced rising stars of From My Hometown were a wonder of competitive collaboration. God of Carnage’s warring couples reared back and vomited their bilious attitudes and politically correct superiority all over themselves and each other with riotous abandon. Unlikely adventurers all, the trio of Heroes grew cantankerous seeds into rocky, but ultimately fruitful, camaraderie. Trust and clockwork timing made The Mystery of Irma Vep feel misplaced in the 2–4 category, stuffed to the gills with a rotating stable of characters. Yet the finesse and superior teamwork required to believably execute — and then effectively depart from — the ventriloquist/puppet illusion made Montag and Marbles the unparalleled winner.

Ensemble (5 or more)

Godspell, The Encore Musical Theatre Co.
•Ain't Misbehavin', Performance Network Theatre
•The Altruists, Magenta Giraffe Theatre Co.
•The Cripple of Inishmaan, Hilberry Theatre
•White Buffalo, Purple Rose Theatre Co.

Exceptional song and dance was only part of the equation for Ain’t Misbehavin’; the ensemble’s secret weapon was its loose, genuine essence of revelry. Awkward and nosy and fretting and pugnacious and sometimes cruelly hateful, the people of Inishmaan engineered devastating-to-comic tonal shifts quick enough to cause whiplash. It took a village to elevate the legend of White Buffalo’s miracle calf, which this group delivered with an intoxicating blend of reverence, mysticism, and intensely personal connections. As for The Altruists, I defy you to find a passel of jerks more deserving of each other than this tangle of hilarious scum. Still, no production was as vitally dependent on — nor rewarded as handsomely by — its communal spirit than Godspell, whose ten performers convened into a vibrant and supremely engaging collective.

Best Rogue

Seth Amadei, Burying the Bones, Detroit Repertory Theatre [TIE]
Drew Parker, Dead Man's Shoes, Williamston Theatre/Performance Network Theatre [TIE]
•Darrell Glasgow, Burn This, Performance Network Theatre
•Robin Lewis-Bedz, The Dead Guy, Williamston Theatre
•B.J. Love, Imagining Madoff, Jewish Ensemble Theatre

Love’s imagined conception of a real-life bottom-feeder was a tower of vile proclivities and unapologetic disdain that fairly pleaded for hatred. Conditioned to see not people but characters, and not lives but ratings, puppet master Lewis-Bedz betrayed inklings of remorse and awareness, but persisted with smooth spin and easy cajoling. Glasgow smoldered as the bad boy thrust into unfamiliar orbit, seeking relief in his own ruin and casting about to drag someone down with him. As for the first-ever Rogue’s Gallery tie, to give one the win over the other made me ill. So make room for both Amadei’s brutal torturer, made somehow worse by his underlying humanity, and for the devil-may-care confidence and smoky inscrutability of Parker’s sullen outlaw, as each delivered the absolute best a scoundrel has to offer.