Christmas on Mars

Harry Kondoleon's Christmas on Mars is about looking for redemption in the wrong places, not outer space or even Christmas per se. Directed by Jamie Warrow, this Who Wants Cake? production pins its hopes on moving forward at the expense of the past. Can one baby save four people? In the world of this comedy, probably not.

Audrey (Warrow) works at a casting agency, where she met charming model boyfriend Bruno (Jon Ager); at the play's start, they're scoping out an empty Manhattan apartment (set design by Warrow). Marriage and children aren't necessarily on their radar, until he proposes and she reveals that she's pregnant. Yet even as they plan for their future, it's their pasts that keep dogging them; their respective baggage takes human form, that of Bruno's desperate roommate, Nissim (Joel Mitchell), and Audrey's wealthy mother, Ingrid (Leah Smith). Nissim holds forth about his ten years living with Bruno in an incredible series of paranoid monologues; Mitchell is a churning font of self-indulgent stories about sad childhoods and pity-based friendship, fairly sweating out his codependent need for Bruno. Audrey's naked distaste and distrust for her mother is explained by Ingrid's pathetic story of regrettable, irrevocable decisions and inability to resist male attention. When fast friends Ingrid and Nissim learn about the baby, they use the news to wrangle another chance with the person bent on cutting them out.

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Of Mice and Men

Venerated author John Steinbeck had a magical knack for writing the Saddest Thing Ever, and his Of Mice and Men is no exception. The Hilberry Theatre tackles the stage adaptation of the classic novel, handling the Great Depression–era subject matter with gravity but not dramatics. Directed by Anthony B. Schmitt, this tale of loyalty, partnership, self-preservation, and meager hope comes alive in a production that’s as glorious as it is unbearable.

Before a word is uttered, set designer Peter Schmidt captures the void of abundance in his dustbowl-evoking soaring burlap horizon, with saturated sunset courtesy of Thomas H. Schraeder’s primary-colored lighting. The flat expanse of stage adapts to portray an unremarkable patch of California nothing by a river, which the protagonists pass on their way to a job at a ranch, and the crowded bunk house where they take up residence. The narrative follows traveling companions George (Peter Prouty) and Lennie (Erman Jones), migrant workers with a goal of scraping together enough money to buy their own place and work for themselves, at a time when they and most of their kind alternated between scraping by and starving. That they are able to dream at all is at once a sign of hope in a vicious world and cruelly utopic.

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Greater Tuna

The world becomes smaller and more homogeneous every day, with the far reach of media and the ubiquity of chain restaurants and big-box stores, and yet: rural Texas. For a Michigan crowd, much of Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard's Greater Tuna may feel as remote as an alien race that doesn't let their pet dogs in the house. But for all the idiosyncratic, folksy humor in Williamston Theatre's production, directed by Tony Caselli, there's little condescension; the best mockery comes from a place of love, and the affection inherent in this text translates.

From sunup to sundown, the play covers a representative day in Tuna, Texas, as just two actors (Aral Gribble and Wayne David Parker) adjust voices, statures, and costumes to play nearly a dozen roles each. The title is derived from the listening area of local radio station OKKK (and its hosts, delivering all the news it's fit to chatter about), whose daily programming provides a loose thematic framework and effective transitions. The diminutiveness of a city home to fewer than 500 is evident in Donald Robert Fox's forced-perspective set, which makes the main downtown intersection look like the meagerest hub ever created. Lighting design by Daniel C. Walker keeps up with the changing places and focal points, discerning brief radio spots and other one-off material from the lingering fuller scenes. Although Karen Kangas-Preston's surprisingly thorough quick-change costumes are a useful visual aid to the character changes (and a wealth of potential for wardrobe malfunctions), props by Erin Roth and sound design are intentionally scarce; sound effects frequently originate in the actors' own mouths, and abundant use of pantomime keeps the stage free of clutter. In Tuna, it's a simple existence, and its residents know what's most important: family, church, rivalries, firearms, socially ingrained racism, and their own brand of justice.

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The Drowsy Chaperone

They just don't make 'em like they used to. Contemporary musicals have evolved to find new ways around and through the discomfiting "they-just-break-into-song" effect; gone are the days of full-cast numbers in which half the characters have no justification to be in the scene — we crave smart, edgy, believable. Yet the strictures in place for modern musicals tend to keep them from achieving the kitchen-sink, freewheeling fun of their ancestors, when threats of violence could morph into a questionably appropriate song about cooking and nobody asked questions. Incredibly, the Performance Network Theatre has its cake and eats it, too, in The Drowsy Chaperone. Written by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, the production is a showcase of follies-style vaudeville indulgence whose meta-commentary still lands it squarely in the present.

In the world of the play, The Drowsy Chaperone is a 1928 musical about a plot to foil the ingenue's impending marriage and retirement from the stage. As the charismatic bride, Janet, Andrea Mellos sparkles while demurely grandstanding that she's through being a showoff. Nervous but dedicated groom Robert (Brian Thibault) is just dim enough for the silly plot; at his right hand is gee-willikers best man and de facto wedding planner George (Matt Andersen), who's a whirling dervish on tap shoes. Plotting against the wedding are Janet's boss, cigar-chomping producer Feldzieg (Mark Hammell), and a couple of wise guys (Pete Podolski and Phill Harmer), even as Feldzieg's airhead assistant (Eva Rosenwald) maneuvers to take the spotlight. Mild conniving pits a Latin lover with all the subtlety of a silent film star (Scott Crownover) against Janet's protector, the boozy belter of the show's title (Naz Edwards); the interaction of the half-wit Don Juan with the half-gone happy drunk is certainly something to behold. Musical direction by R. MacKenzie Lewis and choreography by Phil Simmons are equally strong with solo numbers and wall-of-song feats by the dozen players, backed up by the big sounds of a four-piece combo. The self-consciously dated feel of the Jazz-age performances feels like the best kind of fun we're not allowed to have any more since the world got all serious.

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Best Damn Holiday Show

The second Go Comedy! original holiday sketch show, Best Damn Holiday Show, is largely grounded in the here and now. Current events figure prominently in the production's few dozen sketches; add to that the severity of Michigan's particular hardships, and this is one holiday offering that looks for its humor in dark, bleak places.

Framing the nearly 90-minute production is a pair of sketches in which the cast's attempts to sing an original Christmas tune are repeatedly shut down by imperious killjoys — as the Go Comedy! space used to be a Secretary of State office, bureaucratic equal-opportunity political correctness still applies. The song's repeatedly amended, increasingly vague lyrics are quite sharp, pushing the absurd concept to its limit; it's an effective mechanism to set up a show that strives to be about more than just Christmas. Between these bookends lie much more diverse characters and places, but the topical feel largely remains. Rumination on the lousy presents of a down economy, a visit with the rescued Chilean miners, and a sketch pitching hot new toys to kids of various stereotyped Michigan cities deny escapism, priming the viewer for a scathing closing medley that skewers everything in sight.

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