Tuna Does Vegas

Viva las "Tuna"!, reproduced with permission from EncoreMichigan.com.

Imprudent as it may seem to turn up the small-town Texas heat at the sweltering height of summer, Williamston Theatre is confidently tripling down on the practice. The company's seventh season closer is also the final installment of what it has dubbed the "Tuna Trilogy": Following on the momentum of 2011's "Greater Tuna" and 2012's "Red, White and Tuna," now the show hits the road in "Tuna Does Vegas" (by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard). Director Quintessa Gallinat takes the helm of the franchise in this installment, which heralds the return of stars Aral Gribble and Wayne David Parker. But against a deliberately kitschy comic premise and the goof-off tendencies of summer, the production is nevertheless operating at full firepower, staying notably high-concept to set off the script's affable low humor.

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

boom

Sometimes planets align, sometimes worlds collide. Fate and probability conspire to set countless events into motion, which precisely interact to generate a one-in-a-million phenomenon. I’m referring, of course, to the compelling singularity that is Williamston Theatre’s exceptional boom. With unwavering direction by Tony Caselli and top-shelf talent in all corners, this apocalyptic comedy by playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is a delight of inexplicable proportions.

The play begins just like every other “girl meets boy in underground bomb shelter turned laboratory for no-strings Internet tryst” story. Journalism student Jo (Alissa Nordmoe) charges into the realm of marine biology grad student Jules (Aral Gribble) with a thirst for liquor and a hunger for contact, but there are ulterior motives at play on both sides. The incessantly chronicling Jo’s expectations arise from a class assignment that has her stumped, whereas Jules, the last scion in a long line of profoundly unlucky individuals, appears to finally be ahead of the eight ball — he’s predicted a meteor strike sufficient to wipe out nearly all life on Earth. And it’s happening tonight.

Click to read more ...

The Understudy

When a dream goes unrealized, sometimes knowing that you would have succeeded has to be sufficient. And for a performer, it feels like the bulk of the job. Williamston Theatre offers a backstage pass to the agonizing love affair of an actor, his craft, and the business that hates him in The Understudy, by Theresa Rebeck. In this densely comic production, director Rob Roznowski does more than sneer at a flawed system, instead sounding out the basest joy of invention that resonates with every artist.

For this behind-the-scenes tale, the conventional spectator-performer divide is ingeniously revamped by one orienting backdrop: overlooking an expanse of empty theater seats, we’re suddenly right onstage. Designer Bartley Bauer opens up every square of Williamston’s fluid playing area to nuts-and-bolts adornment; from unrefined backs of set pieces to thick wires running up walls to the complex semaphore of spike-tape marks, he spares no loving detail of theatrical miscellany. Similarly, Alex Gay’s lighting scheme uses the conspicuous noise of shifting color gels to preserve the no-illusions onstage feel. Lest the production being rehearsed slide into afterthought, sound designer Julia Garlotte unleashes great unsubtle music cues, which support the parallel stresses of the rehearsal in progress while also providing some overt commentary about the underlying pretension of the current project. What little is shown is the comically overproduced stuff of nightmares: a star-studded Broadway production of a three-hour Franz Kafka play.

Click to read more ...

The Usual: A Musical Love Story

The boy-meets-girl story is as old as the guy-walks-into-a-bar joke; to keep the listener’s attention, either one had better deliver an unexpected wallop. Enter The Usual: A Musical Love Story, a modern boy-walks-into-a-bar-meets-girl caper with book and lyrics by Alan Gordon and music by Mark Sutton-Smith. In the world-premiere production at Williamston Theatre, director Tony Caselli takes the most shopworn chestnut in the world and plunges into two acts of off-the-wall digression celebrating the latest trends in romance, technology, recreation, and other curios of human behavior.

The scene is a drastically underpopulated watering hole, the perfect place for self-proclaimed nerd king Kip (Joseph Zettelmaier) and frustrated serial Internet dater Valerie (Emily Sutton-Smith) to meet cute. Under the knowing gaze of textbook proprietor-bartender Sam (Leslie Hull), the two hurtle straight into the friend zone, despite showing compatibility that may be visible from space. For this pair, it’s less a matter of whether they will get together than when and how; thus, with self-imposed arbitrary obstacles firmly in place, the plot is free to veer and wind into strange and amazing territory while the realtionship, shall we say, ferments.

Click to read more ...