It's New Year's Week 2003, just the time to remember the very best (locally produced, no touring companies) theater experiences of 2002:
1. The Bomb-itty of Errors. (American Stage) This wonderful Shakespeare-in-the-Park production was exuberant, absurd and amazingly kinetic. It combined a marvelously inventive hip-hop update of The Comedy of Errors with hilariously silly comedy, over-the-top acting, talented break-dancing and just simple fun. Where else could you find two pairs of twin brothers, an up-to-the-minute Hasidic Jew, a Rastafarian herbal doctor, and an au courant nun, all rapping and dancing while a balcony-strutting DJ-spun discs and the stars shimmered down through the warm St. Petersburg night? If you'd begun to get skeptical about Shakespeare at Demens Landing, this was the production that renewed your faith.
2. Waiting for Godot. (Stageworks) Four strong performances — by Brain Shea as Vladimir, Kenneth Noel Mitchell as Estragon, Jorge Acosta as Pozzo and Richard Coppinger as Lucky — made this Godot an unforgettable experience, one that communicated Samuel Beckett's bleak intentions with penetrating precision. Watching it, you couldn't help but realize that we are the play's real subjects, we post-Renaissance humans who lack an earlier era's vast confidence, who can't help but worry that Godot's silence points to some terrible failing of our own. Kudos to director Anna Brennen for putting Beckett's barely hopeful vision on stage so hauntingly and distinctively.
3. The Crucible. (Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center) Arthur Miller's play isn't just a gripping drama about the 17th century Salem Witchcraft Trials; it's also a sharply drawn critique of McCarthy era madness, and thus an important document in the history of the American Conscience. Thanks to director Peter Flynn and an often superb cast — especially Colleen McDonnell, Bruce Blaine and Caitland McDonald — the play's power and insight were chillingly conveyed to rapt TBPAC audiences. This was potent, revelatory theater.
4. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. (Jobsite Theater) Jean-Claude Van Itallie's adaptation of a Tibetan Buddhist holy text purports to show us the odyssey of a soul from its last minutes on earth to its various encounters — and choices — in the afterlife. In the Jobsite Theater production of the play, this journey was treated with the utmost respect, and with genuine artistry. You didn't have to be a Buddhist to find The Tibetan Book to be lovely, graceful and consoling.
5. Uncle Bends: a home-cooked negro narrative. (American Stage) There were several parts to actor/writer Bob Devin Jones' show: his onstage cooking, his singing, and his impersonation of several representative African-American characters. The cooking had an explicitly stated metaphorical intent: the rice and beans were mixed together just as black and white theatergoers were asked to join one another in the show-closing meal. The singing was about suffering, but Jones the singer was unbowed, finding in God an indomitable ally. And Jones' impersonations were portraits of heroic resolve. This was an anti-racist play without anger, a quietly uplifting show that also happened to be potent political theater.
6. subUrbia. (Jobsite Theater) Although most of the actors in this production were effective, the real story here was Ryan McCarthy's portrayal of Tim Mitchum, racist alcoholic, Air Force dropout and general malcontent. Fuming and raging, storming across the stage or downing another beer, Tim seemed to embody author Eric Bogosian's message — that our landscape is a breeding ground of lives without purpose, and that the natural byproducts of such lives are anger, contempt and violence. This was provocative theater and a stunning performance.
7. Zoo Story. (Dog & Pony Productions) Audiences have been arguing for 40 years over the real meaning of Edward Albee's parable, and thanks to Elizabeth Brincklow's lucid direction, Tampa audiences were invited to join the melee. What does intruder Jerry really want from middle-class park-goer Peter? What does Jerry mean, he's "been to the zoo"? And does the violence at play's end offer redemption to either character? Dan Moyer and Jim Wicker were the actors who made us ask the essential questions all over again.
8. Little Shop of Horrors. (TBPAC) This one was pure fluff, a delightful 3-D cartoon for adults and children. Florist Seymour discovers a plant — a type of flytrap — that attracts money and customers to a failing business. Only problem is, the plant wants blood. And the more it gets, the bigger its appetite. Thanks to the wonderful acting of Jonathan Harrison and Heather Krueger, and the tip-top singing of Krueger, Kissy Simmons, Yolonda Williams and Marliss Amiea, writer/lyricist Howard Ashman's improbable story was a hilarious, tuneful treat.
9. Talking With…. (Stageworks) In the most surreal scenes of "Jane Martin's" play, there's a confusion of realms, a wrong turn treated like a rebirth, a misunderstanding hailed as a revelation. And still these strange figures — a fanatically religious snake handler, a neophyte sado-masochist, a baton twirler who bleeds for Jesus, a woman giving birth to a dragon — want to alert us to something, to the dangerous energies on the fringe of normal experience, energies which we can't quite dispose of as unreal. The play is uneven, but at its best, it's a genuinely chilling experience. And the Stageworks production was icily direct.
10. Side Man. (Gorilla Theatre) Moving back and forth between 1953 and 1985, Warren Leight's play tells us of two declines: the fall of jazzmen like Gene Glimmer (Steven Clark Pachosa) after the advent of Elvis and the Beatles; and the fall of his wife Terry (Jennifer Neumann) into suicidal self-hatred and madness. As told by son Clifford (Jon Van Middlesworth), the story is fascinating and poignant, a demonstration that the theater can handle memoir as well as can any other art form. This was a fine opportunity to meditate on art's practitioners — and on its casualties.
That's it for last year. As for 2003: May all your dramas be comedies.
See you at the theater.
If your belief system can handle it, you might want to check out the first production of the New Year, Jobsite Theater's satirical The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged). It runs Jan. 3-19 at TBPAC. For more info, call 813-229-STAR.
Contact performing arts critic Mark E. Leib at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or call 813-248-8888, ext. 305.
This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2003.