Theatre Notes

Heavy is the Head

originally published February 8, 2006

Those readers with exceptionally long memories or entirely too much time on their hands to sift through back issues of this fine magazine will note that I’m wielding a fiddle I’ve bowed before. Yet the fact remains unchanged: once the stubborn, brown fog of January malaise lifts and the store shelves start baiting the susceptible with crimson-bedecked confections, the mind inevitably begins to drift to thoughts amorous. Certainly, one could stand stolid in disaffectionate defiance, but to what end? When so winningly urged to indulge, who among us has the heart hard enough to refuse? With the possible exception of an entire mixed chocolate heart and a magnum bottle of some smoky red, there is no finer way to genuflect before the saintly visage of Valentine than with the classic dinner and a show - the age-old sentimental silver bullet still secreted amongst the keenest tools of the Cassanovic arsenal. Thankfully for the romantically inept and/ or lazy, the stages around town have long been bustling in preparation for taking the onus of incertitude from the more entertaining half of that equation. All that remains then is to remember to call for early reservations.

So Many People: Displaying typically impeccable timing while simultaneously rendering foolproof the aforementioned classic tryst, Athens Creative Theatre has chosen Tony-packing playwright Jason Roberts Brown’s song-cycle musical The Last Five Years as the rhapsodically bittersweet main course of their spring dinner theatre performance. Ingeniously weaving together the all-too-familiar tale of the rise and fall of a relationship, the initial performances of this musical were so engaging that no less discerning a source than the Old Gray Lady herself took the show as evidence that Brown had placed himself in the vanguard of a new vision of American musical theatre. By turns risible, rapturous and plaintive, The Last Five Years bristles with indelible melodies as it trips back and forth down a crumbling memory lane. ACT’s production of this remarkable show runs at Memorial Park Quinn Hall every Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 10–Apr. 1. Tickets for the whole experience are $21.95, with passes for just the show at $15, $12 for seniors, and $10 for students/ children. Call the ACT box office at 613-3628 to set your date.

Withering Heighs: Though befuddled critics initially gave Emily Brontë’s only novel a decidedly inhospitable reception, the matryoshka doll plotline, fearlessly poetic prose, and richly evocative grayscale landscape that made the book such a literary oddity at the time of its publishing have since earned Wuthering Heights a reputation as one of the finest works in the English canon. The book bears testament to the fantastical Gothic realms the motherless Brontë siblings dreamed up during their childhood on the Pennine moors and, more specifically, to the ecstatic imagination of the middle Brontë herself. PEN Award-winning playwright and current UGA PhD candidate Cheryldee Huddleston’s Children of an Idol Moon examines the cloistered, haunted world of Emily Brontë, the complex relationships she had with her siblings, and the multi-layered parallels between the creator and what she created. Ms. Huddleston, who has worked closely with the actors and director, will celebrate the Southeastern premiere of the show at the Seney-Stovall Chapel, Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. The show continues Feb. 17–18 and 22–25 at 8 p.m., with a Sunday matinee Feb. 26 at 2:30 p.m. Call the UGA box office at 542-2838 for $12 tickets, or $10 if you happen to be a student or a senior.

What She Said: It may be the most liberating word in the English language. Go ahead and try it: vagina. The lilting trio of syllables rolling from the tongue still provokes the feeling that one is gleefully trampling one of the most stubborn and irrational of our remaining puritanical hedgerows. For the last five years, a group of local women have courageously taken to the stage in a show popular and powerful enough that it put that mellifluous word into unabashed parlance at the most unlikely of places. Continuing a tradition that has become one of the staples of the yearly theatre scene, The Vagina Monologues will show at the UGA Chapel, Friday, Feb. 10 through Sunday, Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. Tickets cost a paltry $15 and are currently on sale at Frontier, Urban Sanctuary and the Project Safe Thrift Store. Best of all, as the proceeds benefit Project Safe, this production couples a healthy, liberal recital of that hallowed word with philanthropy - undoubtedly two of the finest things in life.

We Owe God A Death: While it remains less popular than many of the Bard’s more fanciful creations, William Shakespeare’s two-part epic history of the physically and politically besieged reign of Henry IV, first king of the red rose Lancaster dynasty, is one of the finest history plays in the language. Whittling the enormous original text into a taut single evening of theatre, director Steven Carroll and adapter Jessica Maerz have carved away the fat of the script, with its numerous plot twists and machinations, and pushed the tortured father-son relationship always at the heart of the production fully into the spotlight. In addition to chronicling the troubled rule of a fascinating sovereign, King Henry the Fourth also introduced one of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters: Falstaff, whose bawdy, liquor-breathed apophthegms represent some of the Bard’s most arresting insights into the human condition. The opportunity to see the full arc of the story through both halves of this weighty and magisterial play in a single evening is indeed a rare treat. However, as the show is part of the Town and Gown Players’ Second Stage slate, there will only be three opportunities to see it: Athens Community Theatre on Friday, Feb. 10 and Saturday, Feb. 11 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, Feb. 12 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $5 at the door. Perhaps bloody, carousing history doesn’t seem like the most apropos date night fare, but consider it an unparalleled opportunity to test the taste and mettle of any perspective someone.

High School Hijinx: Clarke Central's Central Players present Anything Goes, a “high energy musical with high stepping choreography, tapdancing and swinging songs.” Clarke Central High School Mell Auditorium, Feb. 9–11 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are only $5 for students, and $7 for adults at the door. Call 357-5200 for more info.

Brandon Waddell Theatre news is finer than a bouquet of roses. Show your affection via outthere@flagpole.com, and put “Theatre Notes” in the subject line.

Brandon Waddell

Theatre news is finer than a bouquet of roses. Show your affection via outthere@flagpole.com, and put “Theatre Notes” in the subject line.