Season In Review — Blackbird Theatre

If nothing else, the Blackbird Theatre's season was a true test of its mettle. From producing a strong first half to suddenly announcing a swift change in venue to postponing its spring plays until next season, its journey has been a roller coaster ride that hasn't entirely subsided. However, the Blackbird battled setbacks with a daring original musical, followed by a long-awaited announcement about the organization's future. Yet the turbulent and dramatic real-life events of this season should not overshadow the many artistic accomplishments of this outspoken and experimental theater.

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Five Course Love

We think of love as such a complicated thing, when the recipe is simple: one man, one woman, one waiter. So argues Williamston Theatre's Five Course Love, in a bawdy production that repeatedly defies expectations. Directed by Tom Woldt, the one-act musical sprawls and meanders, but just when it appears to be no more than a series of barely linked vignettes about the marriage of sex and international cuisine, playwright/composer Gregg Coffin ties it all together handsomely.

To be fair, love remains hidden for most of the 90-minute production. Instead, the first scenes are more concerned with aspects of passion and lust: four increasingly rowdy demonstrations that perversion knows no nationality. Performers Laura Croff, Matthew Gwynn, and Aaron T. Moore each play five different characters, changing costumes and hair as sharply as they change their accents. In the absence of a clear plot line, the production relies heavily on its jokes — big comedy founded in euphemisms, sight gags, and over-the-top characterization, giving much of the show a musical-sketch-comedy feel. However, it's the ending that really sparks: it's clever, it justifies everything that precedes it, and I never saw it coming.

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Season In Review — Magenta Giraffe Theatre Co.

The first full season by Magenta Giraffe Theatre Co. capitalized on its youth. As an emerging presence growing its audience, the company made the most of its low overhead and embraced the unorthodox. Under the framework of a titanic mission statement to "eliminate apathy, violence, prejudice, and barriers to education," the organization is young enough that its founders seem to still be burning through pet projects, fueled by unabated passion and absolute freedom to choose what inspires them. For the most part, they managed to balance the exhilaration of expression with the accessibility needed to keep viewers attuned.

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Club Morocco

Encore Musical Theatre Company has outdone itself with the setting for its Michigan premiere of Club Morocco — as I walked in, I truly didn't recognize the place. The proscenium stage has been ripped out to make way for a towering bandstand, designed by Daniel C. Walker, and the modified seating sets low pub tables adjacent to three sides of the dance floor. The attractive cast mills about before the play begins, chatting up the nearest audience members, giving dance step refreshers, and offering table service. Fortified by live music, drinks, and dancing, the line between the show Club Morocco and the Club Morocco experience is virtually nonexistent, just as intended by is co-creators, Jon Huffman and Barbara F. Cullen (who also serves as director and choreographer).

Within this format, the basic elements of musical theater are broken apart and compartmentalized. Yes, the dancers sometimes sing, and vice versa, but the emphasis on cabaret-style entertainment instead of storytelling allows the show to capitalize on its set list and showcase its performers' best. Viewers get the merest taste of plot in a pat little story, which delves no deeper than man, woman, betrayal, firearms. Film noir conventions are strewn about as hard-boiled Frank McCann (Paul Kerr) discusses the loss of his elusive and mysterious "swing" — repeated attempts to pull double entendres from the word fall flat, as does any pretense that these developments matter in the long run. Happily segregated, meted out in tiny vignettes and otherwise forgotten, the story is no match for this production's real draw: classic swing numbers that get many viewers on their feet.

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Patty Hearst: The New Musical

Writer, composer, and director Barton Bund has me convinced: the story of Patty Hearst is best told as a musical. The genre adds passion and energy to a grisly, infamous tale, without a whisper of camp. A song is the perfect vehicle for allowing characters to expound on their fiercely lionized radical convictions — of which there is no shortage in the Symbionese Liberation Army. Musicals are also given a pass for shallow or incomplete plot points, which Bund capitalizes upon by gently sidestepping the most dangerous and controversial aspects of Hearst's initial confinement. Nevertheless, the Blackbird Theatre's production of Patty Hearst: The New Musical is miles away from safe, challenging the viewer to look with fresh eyes at this story of a kidnapped heiress reborn as an urban guerilla.

The titular Patty (Jamie Weeder) is central to the proceedings, but is neither antihero nor protagonist. More often than not, the perspective is utterly neutral: Bund is careful not to take sides, sticking close to his source material of video and audio tapes and a handful of contradictory testimonies. This is not to say that the production is clinical or dry in tone; rather, the actors infuse their characters with urgency and purpose but leave their true motives to interpretation, leaving the bulk of the analysis to the viewer. Patty's first-act evolution — when she speaks or sings, or, even more telling, when she doesn't — is both bold and effective, and also allows the SLA characters ample space to develop as individuals. With no one to actively root for, the prevailing sense is that of careful observation as the events unfold, in a vain attempt to better understand them. (The viewer may benefit from reviewing the facts of the Hearst case, which are faithfully adhered to; knowing the story in advance allows one to focus on the performances.)

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