End Days

Boiled down to two words, End Days (by Deborah Zoe Laufer) is beset by oddity and wonder. A collaboration of Williamston Theatre and the Michigan State University Department of Theatre, as well as a co-production with West Bloomfield’s Jewish Ensemble Theatre, this goofy parable of a far-flung collection of misfits approaching the end of the world is wonderfully odd. Yet at the same time, director Tony Caselli ensures that the production’s true appeal is in the thorough character work and engrossing relationships that make it oddly wonderful.

The world of the Steins is an unusual one, where the presence of a high-school Elvis (Eric Eilersen) is no more unexpected than that of the household Jesus (Andrew Head). Despondent dad Arthur (John Manfredi) has been sleepwalking through life in the two years since 9/11, whereas alarmist mom Sylvia (Emily Sutton-Smith) is distracted with newfound evangelical zeal, fixated on saving souls from the impending Rapture. This leaves sixteen-year-old daughter Rachel (Lydia Hiller) confused, massively undersupervised, and acting out in a furious search for meaning. Her rebellion takes physical form in costumer Lane Frangomeli’s outstanding statement wear; behaviorally, beyond mere teenaged sourness, her forbidden pursuits of (gasp!) science and casual drug use combine into a fanciful, iconic spirit guide of sorts: hallucinatory Stephen Hawking (Head again, in acutely bifurcated roles). This addition, too, is accepted with little resistance; that anything is possible is a given in the world of this play, even — or, rather, especially — that it could end at any moment.

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Laughter on the 23rd Floor

Comedy prowess yields collaborative payoff in 'Laughter', reproduced with permission from EncoreMichigan.com.

Playwright Neil Simon wrote the semiautobiographical "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" about his work in the golden age of television when he found himself working among the ranks of some of the most formidable forces in comedy. Now at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, director Lynnae Lehfeldt and a crack cast of nine has crafted his reverent recollection into a show about the miracle of a peerless creative team.

Simon based the play on his time spent as a junior writer on Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows"; accordingly, the entire comedy is confined to the writer's room of a fictitious NBC variety program. The workplace is peopled with an extraordinary assembly of characters, including wizened Kenny (Ron Williams), philandering Milt (David Meese), upward climber Brian (Andrew Huff), token lady-writer Carol (Allie McCaw), and wheezing hypochondriac Ira (Rob Pantano), under the barking profanity of thickly accented head writer Val (Wayne David Parker). This fertile array of personalities is bookended by star Max Prince (Joseph Albright), whose manifold roles as talent, producer, and primary buffer between staff and corporate brass has left him hyperactively paranoid, and saucer-eyed secretary Helen (Julia Gray), whose literal-minded subservience grounds the galloping creative types. Completing the roman a clef feel are confessional asides by Lucas (Matthew Turner Shelton), representing Simon himself as a daunted newbie desperate to prove worthy among these comedy kings.

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M. Butterfly

Playwright David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly takes dual inspiration from a real-life love affair of mistaken identity and from Puccini’s classic Madama Butterfly to piece together a haunting and tragic romance, the truth of which can never be extricated from the weakness of wistful recollection. As directed by Arthur Beer, the Jewish Ensemble Theatre production is romantic indeed, a heady epic that overindulges a bit in its own stately mystique and polished grace.

The introductory scene establishes that protagonist Rene Gallimard (Glen Allen Pruett) is in a French prison, a laughingstock, and of dubious mental faculties. He fell in love with a devoted, feminine beauty that was not as she seemed, and the revelation and attendant shame has cast doubt on his judgment and sanity. Yet he wants nothing more than to retreat back into that fiction, and is eager to show the viewer why. His tale luxuriates in fond reminiscence of time-tested love with opera singer Song Liling (Tae Hoon Yoo), a Chinese national he met while serving as a diplomat in that country in the 1960s. Sarah Tanner’s scenic design is the China of Rene’s mind, a convertible triptych whose moving parts make abrupt scenic transitions as easygoing as an underhand lob (with seamless assistance by AeJay Mitchell and Chin Yang, whose understated presence is in keeping with the traditional Japanese stagehand role of Kurogo). Lights by Jon Weaver play with the negative space of considerable darkness, upon which isolated illuminations and primary-colored backgrounds provide dazzling contrast and variation. Rapid-shifting focal points are always kept clear, highlighted by a visually striking range of costumes and properties (by Mary Copenhagen and Chelsea Burke, respectively) that neatly bisect West and East. Matt Lira layers a phenomenal sound scheme under and throughout the action, cinematically underscoring scenes with ambient fullness and the operatic grandeur of swelling instrumentals. China is Rene’s exotic paradise, in which his influence as a white European man is considerable, power that plays forcefully into his wooing and eventual possession of Song. Yet the woman he believes to be an awed native willing to become his own personal Butterfly — just like his favorite tragic opera — is in fact a man, a fact of which Rene remains assiduously ignorant across the years and continents of their partnership.

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Race

A hot-button criminal case is the impetus for the events of Race, by David Mamet. For the legal firm approached by the accused, what happens is the stuff of buzz words as well as ugliness of the highest post–politically correct order. Yet in the Jewish Ensemble Theatre production directed by Christopher Bremer, however strenuous the conceptual workout, attention to the people in this world returns the largest reward.

Scenic designer Jennifer Maiseloff creates an imposing corporate high-rise setting in shades of gray, backed by a pen-and-ink skyline alive with visible strokes and shading. The depth and detail created with only two shades prove a fitting choice for a play that examines dichotomies: black and white, rich and poor, guilty and innocent, just and profitable. Michael Beyer’s lighting scheme casts a pallor on the artificiality of the surroundings, and Hank Bennett’s superior-jazz sound design elicits a smug happy-hour feel. This is undoubtedly the kind of office where a rich-beyond-measure white man would seek legal counsel in response to a rape accusation made by a black woman.

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God of Carnage

If playwright Yasmina Reza writes what she knows, her deliciously brutal God of Carnage (translated from the French by Christopher Hampton) may make viewers relieved not to know her. True, one would be hard-pressed to get embroiled in a battle of infantilism from which there seems to be no escape. But as evidenced by this co-production of Jewish Ensemble Theatre and Performance Network Theatre, with a sublime ensemble wonderfully directed by David J. Magidson, such childishness can be as gratifying to recreate as it is deviously funny to observe.

The instigating event of the play takes place offstage and is perpetrated by characters that never appear. An incident of playground violence between preteen boys prompts the victim’s parents (Sarab Kamoo and Joseph Albright) to invite the attacker’s parents (Suzi Regan and Phil Powers) for an informal conference that will put the matter firmly behind them. Instead, initial apologies and pointedly civil discourse give way to utter amazement that people can simultaneously rise above something and shove it down another’s throat — this is but the first sign that things are not going to go smoothly. What follows is barely polite savagery at best, which continues to devolve (yes, rum is involved) through the play’s single act as the parents lash out at each others’ characters, actions, and attitudes.

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