The Do-Over

Dramatic writers are rewarded for making their characters dabble in subterfuge or rash decision-making, to the tune of pages upon pages of discoveries and repercussions. Infinitely more challenging to write effectively — let alone stage — is a rational dialogue undertaken by parties with transparent motives. In the latest entry in its late-night series, Planet Ant Theatre presents the world premiere of playwright Margaret Edwartowski’s The Do-Over, a sensible look at a pair of old friends faced with an opportunity to rediscover their former closeness and the warring temptation to rekindle something deeper. This production marks the professional directorial debut of BoxFest Detroit 2011 honoree Kelly Komlen-Amadei, who tackles this heady setup by reaching for the affection and tension hibernating inside of bloodless deliberation.

If friendships have life spans, then Facebook is their respirator, artificially reinstating and preserving intimate connectedness among people long separated by time, distance, life events, and philosophies. Here, social media has instigated the real-life reunion of college friends and paramours Bernadette (Karen Kron) and Ben (Jon Ager). She’s the mayor of a small Arizona border town, he’s an architect in New York City, but when a weekend mayoral conference brings her right to his neighborhood, they arrange to meet up — absent spouses and kids — and hang out at her hotel. Collectively, the production design hits just the right notes of hotel-suite anonymity: set designer Seth Amadei’s glut of pillows and legally mandated exit route map speak a familiar language, and Patrick O’Reilly’s ever-generous mini bar becomes a playground for college-hearkening revelry. In concert with scenic transitions scored by Komlen-Amadei, stage manager Alexandre Bleau’s lighting design abruptly hits on that disturbing acclimation to an unfamiliar setting at first light. Indeed, the reunion spans the entire weekend, equal parts sincere and tenuous, as it grows into a treatise on navigating that killer supposition: What if…?

Click to read more ...

Menllenium Saves the World

Hollywood has taught us well: when something works once, make it pay off twice with a sequel. Go Comedy! welcomes the return of its resident fictitious, flirtatious, flagrant boy band in Menllenium Saves the World (written by the cast, director Tommy LeRoy, and assistant director Michelle LeRoy). An indulgent retread with a detective twist, this Thursday/Friday primetime offering is a winking spoof on the pitfalls and artificiality of the sequel format, hitting as many snags in the execution as it does high notes.

Returning viewers are reminded, and new ones caught up, by a opening number reintroducing the main players and their chief personality traits: egotist Kevin (Andrew Seiler), rebel Jayson (Micah Caldwell), sensitive imbecile Marcus (Tommy Simon), resident pervert J.D. (Clint Lohman), and fallible manager/handler Sarge (Ryan Parmenter). Having spent the first installment developing the characters and making discoveries about the relationships, the sequel requires the band to do something; naturally, they are summoned to the Vatican to solve a murder. Borrowing from 70s-era cartoons such as Scooby-Doo and the Harlem Globetrotters series, the fellas are drawn into a topical mystery full of religious overtones, murderous Mayans, and the end of the world. Joined by their new church-official friends Daphne (Christa Coulter) and Father Oftlen (Dan Brittain), they warble and thrust their way to the case’s resolution.

Click to read more ...

Montag and Marbles

From inspired improvisation premise to impeccable scripting to superb team performance, Brian Papandrea and Josh Campos are Montag and Marbles, in every respect. Their brainchild, now occupying the late-night Thursday time slot at Go Comedy!, casts the pair in static roles as the two halves of a ventriloquist act — or, as the show poster succinctly quips, “a dummy and his puppet.” With keen leadership by director Pete Jacokes, this clever creative stricture bears ample fruit in a blazingly funny one-act production that wrings possibility from every angle.

Presented as a retrospective, the show chronicles the few triumphs and many tribulations of a near-forgotten comedy team: Montag the Magnificent (Campos) and Mr. Marbles (Papandrea). The framework takes the form of a satiric Tyme Lyfe infomercial, the kind of hokey low-budget sales pitch for complete DVD collections generally only seen at desperate post-midnight hours through bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyes. Crucially, the device eases pressure on the story while still retaining a clear narrative, a welcome packaging that plays to the strength of vignette. With the back story and characters established, it’s up to the finely polished script to develop and evolve a decades-long partnership, which it does with carefully plotted tie-ins, repetition of key material in the act, and one wacky montage of perfecting mad voice-throwing skills.

Click to read more ...

White Buffalo

One man’s lighter-side news footnote is another’s religious phenomenon. Playwright Don Zolidis tasks one Midwestern family with comprehending, appreciating, and protecting another culture’s miracle in his redolent drama White Buffalo. Under the direction of Guy Sanville, the world-premiere production at Purple Rose Theatre Company uses mystic inquiries and Native American traditions to enhance its contemporary story of wayward characters looking for guidance.

Inspired by a real-life occurrence, the events of the play are launched by a single event: the birth of a pure white buffalo calf on a small Wisconsin farm. Single mother Carol Gelling (Michelle Mountain) and her teenaged daughter, Abby (Stacie Hadgikosti), recognize the remarkable beauty and rarity of the occurrence, but little do they know its portentous significance. The appearance of John Two Rivers (Michael Brian Ogden) briefly prepares them for an ensuing onslaught of publicity and visitors; as John explains, according to Sioux legend, the white buffalo signifies the return of an ancient savior. As the curious and the fervent descend on the farm by the thousands, the Gelling women must contend with the ways, good and bad, in which this miracle is altering their present — and how it can shape their future.

Click to read more ...

Dead and Buried

Director Harry Wetzel takes an intriguing fractured approach to playwright James McLindon’s Dead and Buried. Now in its world premiere at Detroit Repertory Theatre, this story of a team of graveyard caretakers pushes its tones to the brink. Yes, that’s tones, plural: Wetzel gambles on the strength of the show’s disparate scenes, rather than aiming for a single mood unfocused enough to unify them. Sure enough, by making each interaction the best it can be, the unorthodox approach pays off in a show that is as hysterically funny as it is weightily dramatic as it is spookily supernatural.

The story begins with seventeen-year-old Perdue (Lulu Dahl), a solitary newcomer to a New England town who pursues the first available job she finds: gravedigger. As the scowling young upstart, Dahl resonates with world-weary independence and spits daggers of cynicism, bitterly resisting the best efforts of employer Bid (Charlotte Leisinger) and coworker Robbie (Benjamin J. Williams) to befriend and earn trust. Yet these are long hours to pass in the respectful company of the dead, and McLindon gently uses instruction as a byway to interaction in Perdue’s workplace scenes. Indeed, Wetzel’s set design includes a large expanse of cemetery, a wonderful hilly abstraction that gives the illusion of size and slope. The place becomes different things at different times: sometimes a quiet refuge for reflection and comfort, sometimes a piece of land to be cultivated, and sometimes (in concert with overstated lighting and sound design by Thomas Schraeder and Burr Huntington, respectively) a macabre emptiness of shivering fear.

Click to read more ...