The Tempest

After playing host to outside companies and productions at its upstairs venue, the Park Bar Theater now introduces its own producing company and marks the grand opening with a classic take on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Project mastermind, entrepreneur, and venue owner Jerry Belanger also directs the inaugural production, the result of large-scale work and investment that showcases the potential of the space, although its finest achievements of mirth and wonder prove transient rather than continuous.

Now extensively remodeled, the theater represents a Detroit-style makeover of a repurposed raw space: rough walls and exposed conduits are starkly contradicted by a unique teardrop-shaped bar, hardwood floors, and comfortable graduated seating. Any doubts about the technical credentials of the theater are dispersed by sound designers Mikey Brown and Joe Kvoriak’s first cinematically glorious thunderclap and lighting designer Michael Rollo’s inundating lightning. The initial scene throws the audience into the tempest with the passengers and crew of a ship, which founders and casts its inhabitants into the brine — an ingenious set detail by designers Belanger and Rollo helps communicate the mayhem and desperation of tumult at sea that is so difficult to transport to the stage. Unbeknownst to the ship’s inhabitants, who wash up on an island apparently devoid of civilization, this storm was far from a random vagary of the weather. Rather, it was intentionally conjured by the banished duke Prospero (Pat Loos), who has raised daughter Miranda (Katie Terpstra) in seclusion on the island for more than a decade, carefully plotting revenge on his usurpers that is now coming to fruition.

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Cancer! The Musical

At first blush, cancer might seem an unlikely topic for an exclamation-point musical — it’s a dreadful, incurable, terminal disease that reduces everyone it touches to untold depths of helplessness and pain. Yet by the same token, its ubiquity and totality makes cancer a broadly relatable subject. Moreover, it’s a part of life, which is inherently funny; thus, by the transitive property, cancer must be funny, too. (And this is saying nothing of the related rigmarole of health care and big pharma, about which we must laugh or else we’d cry.) Viewers with any lingering doubts need look no further than Cancer! The Musical (book by Thomas Donnellon, MD, and Shawn Handlon; music by John Edwartowski), a simply excellent treatment that turns the ultimate downer on its head. At the young Park Bar Theatre, this scrappy, winning revival directed by Handlon has no trouble seizing on the best of what the musical has to offer.

With subject matter ranging from patient care to laboratory research to business interests, the show is admirable for being all the things it needs to be, up to and including a love story and a high-stakes caper. On one end, patient Annie (Dawn Bartley) faces her cancer diagnosis and exploratory surgery with optimism and pluck — the viewer would be forgiven for suspecting that “Annie” is short for “Pollyanna.” However, her courageous turn is made palatable in its thawing effect on her officious oncologist, Dr. Harris (Pat Loos), so immersed in protocol, privacy laws, and malpractice fears that he eschews eye contact with his alphanumerically coded patients. Together, Bartley and Loos form a touching emotional core that keeps Annie’s fight largely in the medical realm, but still feels personal without being derailed by wallowing.

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Detroit Be Dammed: A Beaver's Tale

Last season's infectiously fun original musical Detroit Be Dammed: A Beaver's Tale has moved to the heart of downtown Detroit for another round of good-natured ribbing from among the ranks of its own. Written by Shawn Handlon and Mikey Brown and presented (as before) by Planet Ant Theatre, the current production has changed somewhat, yet feels as complete as the original, with all of its abundant satire and affection intact.

From the beginning, the viewer is thrust into the bosom of the fictitious LeMerde family, a proud and likable batch of Charlie Brown types genetically predisposed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, to wholeheartedly champion a doomed cause, or to be shouted down the relatively few times they make a good point. The show boasts essentially the same songs as before, which both impress musically and are cultivated for maximum comedy. The more wrong the point of view, factually or ideologically, the bigger and more impassioned the number, and the giggle-inducing juxtaposition is turned to full laughter by whip-smart lyrics. The city's few wins and mounting losses are presented almost as inside jokes; when a descendant finally succumbs to mounting crime rates and white flight and moves to the suburbs, the attendant tune is an eviscerating ode to whitewashed Livonia, with Jill Dion's ironically idyllic choreography blossoming on a larger stage. Also retained is the well-executed framework and story line, tracing three hundred years of melting-pot LeMerde lineage (and, by extension, Detroit history) throughout the first act, then drawing out its present-day plot in the second.

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