Reviewing The Wizard of Oz at Theatre Cedar Rapids

 

The Wizard of Oz at the Theatre Cedar Rapids is spiced up by some sizzling performances while being taken down a few pegs by glitzy overly busy lighting effects and a second act that goes on about fifteen minutes too long. The younger viewers around us started getting pretty antsy as the endless and not well integrated Jitterbug and reprise went on and on. The choreography overall was not quite as rousing as the high voltage hoofing in last year’s Cabaret, but still was pleasant enough to keep us involved.

All of the performances were competent while the standouts were well worth the ticket price. My favorite was the sprawling gangly Scarecrow of Jenup Wan and second by a hair goes to the creaky movement and strong voice of James Odegaard’s Lion.  Kudos also to Jessica Link as the nasty Miss Gulch and the Wicked Witch.  Rhylee Larson’s Dorothy had the mature voice of a pro, but I felt she did not quite manage to portray the youthful vulnerability of the Kansas Dorothy as well as she might have or maybe Judy Garland’s performance in the movie was still a haunting presence for me.

 The costumes were spot-on with fanciful touches in hats and hair. I loved it when the apple trees started throwing their fruit.

 Now I come back to the lighting and special effects. Flying actors are always special and this was done with expertise and safety though perhaps it could have been done a few less times to keep it special. This goes for the lighting as well. The jazzy projections were simply not enough to keep me from feeling that the “Jitterbug dance and reprise in the 2^nd act was too long. It was not all clear to me what the dancers were doing for so long or why. In any case I do wonder if the moving projections and wild color changes were overused in the show. The score is more mellow and romantic than frenetic and boom-boom. This “hit em hard” ambiance was also evident in the miking of both actors and orchestra at what I felt was an ear-splitting level. This may be part of the reason I had some doubts about Rylee Larson’s Dorothy. Over-amplification gave her voice a grating harshness at times that was at odds with the tenderness of her character.

My doubts may also be the result of my many years as a play director. I detected a sense of even though the show has plenty of “wow” all by itself, let’s juice it up some more by overusing the special effects until they begin to pale from repetition. Not knowing when to stop is a disease that afflicts actors, directors, and designers as well as gamblers and drinkers.

 In spite of my quibbles, this was a fine afternoon at the theatre and I continue to admire the Theatre Cedar Rapids’ work. They have a fine mix of reliable adult talent both in front of and behind the curtain and they are giving younger performers a chance to work in what is clearly a talented ensemble.

 

   

 

Review McCall Smith Alexander The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even

 

Alexander McCall Smith is like a warm comforter in a chilly room. The last books I’ve tackled, in particular Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, have been stuffed with so much negativity, violence and despair that I was starting to cry “enough already.”  I know the world is a nasty place, but I also need a lighter lift once in a while and McCall Smith is the author who can deliver that. This is not another edition of one of his wonderful series like the Mma Ramotswe No 1 Ladies Detective Agency books. This is a group of droll short stories that illustrate the catch-all title of espionage and revenge. The heroes are pretty kind and the villains more often puffed up with themselves than sinister. As always the vignettes teem with philosophy, history, humor and spot-on character development.   

 

Section one features five stories about espionage. “Nuns and Spies”, for instance, deals with a male German spy in WWII who parachutes into England and ends up disguising himself as a Catholic Nun. It is based on a real but unproved rumor and McCall Smith re-makes the story into a delightfully absurd adventure.  In “Filioque” a young theology student in Rome is recruited by a Cardinal into the dark and secretive Vatican Secret Service—again with some unusual results. 

 

The second half of the book has four stories about various types of comeuppance. My favorite was “The Principles of Soap” a story of an actor/waiter in Australia who manages to strike it reasonably rich with a continuing role in a TV soap opera. Along the way he survives an attempt by a former nemesis and classmate from his old acting school to derail his career and replace him with her lover. The story is filled with fun, coincidences, and plenty of ironic humor about actor training and the theatre business. I liked that one for obvious reasons. 

 

If you feel the need to escape for a time from the horrors of today’s news, I suggest you try a dance in the sunshine with this Alexander McCall Smith collection. It will surely lift your heart and tickle your funnybone. I give this collection a solid 4 out of 5 stars.  

The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

 

The Overnight Guest, a 2022 novel by Iowa author Heather Gudenkauf, mines a genre that I personally am getting sick of. Sure, the world has sadistic killers who specialize in binding and torturing women and children, but far too many writers today seem to find this particular horror and the detailed description of its painful and bloody results to be a mainstay.

 When you combine this with another modern writing convention of popping back and forth constantly between times and characters, you have a novel full of already overused conventions.  The plot tells the story of a bloody family massacre that reverberates over many years. It depends on the improbable meeting of two of the victims and continuous descriptions of fear, dread, and violence. Of course, it is “a dark and stormy night in a secluded farmhouse and the power (wait for it) just has to go out etc. and etc. The imprisoned must also pick this night after years of sick torture to try an escape. To be sure there is the requisite final twist at the end, but I remain convinced that you should pick this book up only if you have nothing better to do. I am going back to Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes.

A review of My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison

 

This novel is a sleeper. The Irish author, Cora Harrison, is a former primary school teacher who has written a large number of books for children. Back in 2007, she  changed her spots and produced an adult historical mystery novel set on the wild gray coast of western Ireland in the year 1509. Her heroine is an intriguing and assertive judge named Mara who has been appointed by the King of the area to rule on all activity (from marriage to murder) in accordance with the ancient Celtic traditions. Harrison has given Mara a love of plant and animal life, a sensitivity to  the physical world around her, a young daughter from a marriage that has ended in a divorce, a semi-romance with the King who appointed her, and finally the position as head mistress of a school that teaches young boys how to enter the legal profession.   

 

Each chapter of this “mystery of Medieval Ireland” begins with a listing of a type of law in the ancient canons such as personal worth, marriage, inheritance, thievery, or assault. The development then explores Mara (the judge’s) actions as she deals with the implications and intricacies of that set of laws. This creates a slow start as the reader has to absorb a certain amount of ancient Irish history, but the pace speeds up when one of Mara’s top students is murdered during the celebration of an important community May Day ritual.

 

A murder investigation quickly gets under way and Mara finds herself under pressure to find the culprit. Ultimately, what appears to be her orderly intellectual search to find the killer by determining the opportunity and motivation for the death, puts her into grave personal danger. This, along with a series of twists at the end, kept me wanting to see more of this woman. A quick internet search has revealed several more books by Harrison featuring Mara in what is called “the Burren Mysteries Series.” I look forward to sampling at least a few of them in the future.

 

This isn’t on the list of great books of the early 21^st century, but I give it a 4 out of 5 because the leading character is appealing, the mystery is absorbing and full of twists, and it explores a fascinating corner of the ancient world and the often strange laws that govern its inhabitants.    

 

Jdy 10/26/2023

Clue Review at Theatre Cedar Rapids

 

Clue  (the stage play)

Performed by Theatre Cedar Rapid Friday, Oct. 13, 2023

 Clue, the play, is a farce whodunnit, based on the movie and the venerable board game itself. All the well-known players such as Professor Plum and Miss Scarlet are present along with their associated murder weapons. The plot is strained but who cares when a group of very familiar suspects are gathered together on a dark and stormy night in an old mansion and engaged in seeing who did what to whom and how.

 

Right up front, let me say that I loved this production. I detected a single minded, disciplined commitment by the director and cast to play seriously inside the play without the kind of wink and nod to the audience that I felt was present in CRT’s recent production of the The Play That Went Wrong. The director here, Mic Evans, kept the over the top script from going to the heads of the cast and kept them tightly controlled even when they were literally dancing from room to room during the scenic bridges.

 

Second, the show profited greatly from an ingeniously designed set and superb lighting, music, and sound effects. The rumble of thunder shook the building and right on time lightning flashes accompanied it. Sharp intensified spotlight stabs accompanied the actor’s “takes” at dramatic moments. Kudos even to the stage crew as they smoothly enabled the actors to weave through the moving walls and doors.  A special mention goes to Seth Engen as Mr. Green, who managed a magnificently controlled back bend as a chandelier descended slowly onto him from above. This homage to Phantom of the Opera was worth the price of the ticket all by itself.

 

I also couldn’t but help to think about how almost none of technical artistry on view in the production would have even been possible in the 1950’s when I started my career in the theatre. Today’s computer aided systems were still in the future.  Lighting boards generally only had individually controlled dimmer handles or dials. We created sound and music effects by dropping a needle on a record—it was actually a 78 not a 33 1/3.  Spotlights had one color based on a gelatin slide put in front of the lens. Light movement could happen only as fast as human operators could physically adjust the placement of the instrument or the individual dimmers. Now you can change a single spotlight’s color and change its direction and focus by remote control. 

 

A new problem we didn’t have to face “in the old days” was the pressure that our current technical fireworks puts on actors to rise above glitz. It is a pleasure to report that this cast did just that. Throughout the evening they showed both physical stamina and performance skill. Standouts for me were John Miersen, as the butler, Greg Smith as Colonel Mustard, and  Lauren Galliart as the tarty Miss Scarlet in a flaming red dress that was certainly the knock-out costume of the evening. Belle Caney had multiple roles but made a real mark as the acerbic cook and later as a floppy dead body.

  

I close with my delight at seeing a show that could attract and please an audience composed of all age levels from children to adults. In sum, this play “went right”  and the enjoyment was evident during the curtain call and as the audience left the theatre. Get a ticket. It runs until October 29th.  

 

Jdy

Review of THE WINTER SOLDIER by Daniel Mason

 

Daniel Mason lives in California and is an MD and psychiatrist. I read The Winter Soldier on my Kindle. It tells the heartbreaking story of Lucius—a young man from a well-off military family who decides on medicine as a career against the wishes of his family. Just before he completes his medical degree in Vienna, WWI intervenes and the Austro-Hungarian empire is thrown into chaos. The young man, wishing to contribute to the war effort, enlists in the army and is sent as a medic to a casualty station located in a barely Carpathian village church.

From here on we get the story of the war, not from the trenches as in All Quiet on the Western Front, but from the hospitals where the physically maimed and psychologically scarred are dumped to be treated. Lucius is faced with barbaric sanitation, sparse medical equipment, limited drugs, and precious little food. He is relegated primarily to cutting off destroyed limbs while also attempting to cure lice, typhus, and the scourge of what was called “shell shock” in WWI and is now known as PTSS (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome).

Dr. Mason spares the reader none of the stench, the blood, the suffering, and the violence that goes on behind the front lines. His diligently researched book is not for the delicate or faint of heart, but the reward is that, In spite of the conditions, Lucius manages to find romance in the person of a nun named Marguerite, who is the head nurse at the facility.

The young medic is separated from his hospital when the battle lines change, which leaves the last third of the novel to tell the story of his tragic search for his lost love. Some reviewers have even compared the book to Boris Pasternack’s Dr. Zhivago.

Mason uses his own medical knowledge with acute precision, while combining it with the history of medicine and the societal and human conflicts embodied in World War One. The title really tells it all. It reflects the chill of a landscape and a war that is rife with blizzards. The weather is as much an enemy as the opposing army and over it all hangs the pall of the horror of war. That human beings can still locate emotional warmth in this horrendous milieu is a heartwarming tribute to resiliency.

Definitely a 4.8 out of 5 for me, but a reminder that it does contain violent description. 

 

Review of Fatal Legacy by Lindsey Davis

 

Are you one of the many who enjoy traditional “who dunnits” set in exotic or historical places?  If you are, British authoress Lindsey Davis may be just your cup of tea. She has written a slew of comical, historical mysteries set in ancient Rome. There have been over twenty in the Marcus Didius Falco series and 2023’s Fatal Legacy is the 11^th in the Flavia Alba series. Flavia, if you are not already familiar with her, is Marcus Didius Falco’s intelligent, high spirited and courageous daughter. She takes on similar cases to her father as an “Informer,” which is a sort of ancient investigator similar to today’s private eye. She also, like her dad, has a wicked sense of humor that exploits the legal, political, eating, drinking, and sexual habits of all levels of ancient Roman society. Is this just inventive trash talking? Not at all.  According to a classicist friend of mine. “Her history and geography is spot on.”

 In Fatal Legacy Flavia takes what seems like a simple case of getting the goods on a guy who skipped out on a restaurant tab.  This minor infraction turns quickly into a sinister and convoluted multi- generational family feud over citizenship and inheritance rights. The plot has more twists than a licorice stick and you will be laughing all the way through to the violent climax.   

 I haven’t read all of the Falco family books, but the ones I have read I have enjoyed immensely. They are light hearted, satirical, and deftly plotted.

I give this one a 4 out of 5.