Southern Comforts

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a widowed man of a certain age, must be in want of a honey-drawled woman to penetrate his harmlessly cantankerous exterior. On the face of it, there is Kathleen Clark's Southern Comforts in a nutshell. Yet there's something more to the play, especially in this Tipping Point production directed by Joseph Albright: a real relationship.

Actors Thomas D. Mahard and Ruth Crawford are superbly cast; from the first meeting between Gus of New Jersey and Amanda of Tennessee, they have an instant rapport. Theirs never feels like an unlikely partnership — even as Gus grumbles about something or they find themselves in disagreement, it’s apparent that these aren’t two lonely people settling for each other’s companionship. Indeed, a scene at the end of the first act makes it clear how many more obstacles are in place for two seniors combining their filled-out lives than exist for young people just starting out together. Long-established preferences, deep-seated unwavering opinions, and especially a lifetime’s worth of possessions and furniture do not happily commingle; to willingly weather the strain, they must be in love.

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Thursdays at Go Comedy!

On its one night dedicated to scripts and sketches, Go Comedy! keeps a rotating stable of shows, with at least one new offering each month. This considerable strength of keeping the material fresh is tempered by drawbacks, the major ones being theme and flow: with staggered opening and closing dates, it's unlikely that the show(s) in the 8:00 hour of any given Thursday will complement the 9:00 programming, and so on into the 10:00 late shift. Viewers should take it as a given that variety is the word of the night, and expect to be drawn in more by some shows than by others.

Debuting in May and running through June is Bro. Dude. Bro., written by Garrett Fuller and directed by Bryan Lark. Fuller and Jamen Spitzer are Beezy and Diesel, respectively, once an inseparable pair of club rats and gym rats given to drinking, fighting, and being overwhelmingly unlikable. (They're the kind of people perfect for reality TV: great fun to watch, so long as one doesn't have to interact with them.) Now Diesel, fresh off a prison stay and probation time, is father to an infant girl and trying to make something of his life. Spitzer plays his role with understatement and a serious streak, in glaring contrast to Fuller's caricature, although the latter's over-the-top approach makes possible a dance-cry scene that is ludicrously funny. The play feels a little long, like Fuller wanted to plug these not-all-that-deep characters in too many scenarios, but the committed performances and the clever use of the Go Comedy! space keep it moving.

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Don't Be Cruel: The Life and Times of the King

In its one act, Don't Be Cruel: The Life and Times of the King is approximately sixty minutes biography set to music, fifteen minutes tribute concert. This multimedia play at Andiamo Novi stars Max Pellicano as Elvis Presley, narrating his own life and singing songs to fit the story. Ironically, it's only after arriving at Elvis's death that Pellicano comes to life in a joyous coda that surges with energy and fun.

Appearing alone on a narrow strip of stage, the character barely ripples the surface of Elvis's well-known and sometimes troubled life, treating events like his mama's death (sad) and meeting his future wife (happy) as though they were revelatory. Other shocking developments include: Elvis bought Graceland, and Elvis had a drug habit. The production gets plenty of support from backstage in the form of a live band and two performers whose silhouettes and voices stand in for many of Elvis's family, friends, and collaborators. Falling short of rock 'n' roll's raw power, the onstage stillness in which the man of the hour must recollect things the audience already knows feels like Walk the Line by way of Disney's Hall of Presidents.

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The Blackbird Theatre's RAW Weekend

Having left its longtime home, the Blackbird Theatre recently found itself in flux, without a space in which to stage the latter half of its season. Although several of the planned shows are bookmarked for next fall, a theater that thrives largely on ingenuity and fearlessness cannot stay dormant. This is why, despite staged readings not being my normal repertoire, I eagerly took the opportunity to drink in the new plays of the RAW Weekend.

The location chosen for the readings is noteworthy because Ann Arbor's \sh\-aut Gallery and Cabaret will also be one of the two homes of the Blackbird's next production, the mainstream-deriding original musical Patty Hearst. The open first story of a converted residence, empty save the art on its walls, holds a transient feeling that reminded me of college — students setting up chairs in dorm lounges or parks, staging plays for the sake of it, free to choose the edgy and out-there material that drives them. In this respect, raw was certainly an apt descriptor of the space, and to some degree the shows presented as well, but any lack of polish was overcome by a thrilling surge of passion, a high for any fan of new or unconventional theater.

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Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Making musicals based on the life's work of a musician or band is the new black, and here is the entry for the great Neil Sedaka. In his prolific (and ongoing) career, Sedaka has written approximately four hundred million songs, so the catalog from which Breaking Up Is Hard to Do is assembled makes for an impressive and instantly recognizable score. On the script side (concept by Marsh Hanson and Gordon Greenberg; book by Erik Jackson and Ben H. Winters), the play has in its favor a show-within-a-show framework that opens up song possibilities as well as a kicky premise that practically owes royalties to Dirty Dancing.

To be clear, this musical is more Mamma Mia! than Spring Awakening; there is not a single element as untoward as much of the plot of the above-mentioned Patrick Swayze film. Yet the parallels are myriad, most notably the Catskills resort setting, guests fraternizing with employees and becoming part of the floor show, and a hunky headliner whose attractiveness nearly demands its own byline. The story is peripheral: a jilted fiancée and her friend turn her honeymoon that wasn't into a girl's weekend at Esther's Paradise, and a bit of cunning lands them roles as backup singers for the house entertainment, upon which the resort's future hopes seem to rest. Given a cast of three men and three women, the viewer can gather sufficient evidence within ten minutes to solve that particular math problem. A limp, tacked-on conflict leads to a resolution that defies adjectives in its immense lack of importance. But no matter — happily, this Meadow Brook Theatre production, directed by Travis W. Walter, gamely shoves the story to the wayside in favor of stronger focal points like singing, dancing, comedy, and light 1960s camp.

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