Favorites of 2024: Macey Levin
My favorite plays come from the smaller theatres within our scope of activity:
Ancram Center for the Arts offered Constellations directed by Jeffrey Mousseau featuring Andrus Nicholls and Drew Ledbetter. The play moves back andf forth in time. The artistry of Mousseau, Nichols and Ledbetter gave depth to the characters’ conflicts and desires. The staging was crisp and the performances absorbing.
Many of Bridge Street Theatre‘s productions were very effective starting with The Glass Menagerie. The last weekend of the original run was cancelled due to Covid, but the play was revived later in the season and was beautifully staged by Steve Patterson, lit by. John Sowle and, especially, performed by Brett Mack, Leigh Strimbeck, Sarah Jayne Rothkopf and Russell Sperberg . Ms Strimbeck won a Berkie award for best actress in a play. If one liked Menagerie they would have loved this production. The characters’ hopes, frustrations and love permeated the story of the Wingfields.
Bridge Street also presented Griswold. In 1954 Estelle Griswold became the executive director of the Planned Parenthood of Connecticut that only talked about contraception but couldn’t supply devices. Griswold was hired primarily as a fundraiser. Her story, and her fight to give women the right to own their bodies is the basis of this compelling drama by Angela J. Davis. Margo Whitcomb delivered a dynamic performance. Onstage for the entire hour and forty minutes of the play she was a commanding personality mining laughs and touching sensitivities. In addition to Whitcomb’s thrilling performance, two other actors… Leyla Modirzadeh and Andre G. Brown portrayed twenty-three various characters.
ChipandGus, also at Bridge Street, is the story of Chip, a struggling professional musician and composer who teaches music at a university as an adjunct professor, and Gus who has a Ph.D and is the chairman of the philosophy department at the same college. This odd couple are the only characters in the hysterical and touching play ChipandGus (that is how the title is written) by John Ahlin and Christopher Patrick Mullen. Ahlin and Mullen are the cast. As they play ping-pong, almost incessantly, they reminisce, argue, banter, and talk about life. The audience lef the theatre doing a lot of reflection.
Again at Bridge Street was a dynamic and moving production of Uncle Vanya. Directed by John Sowle, the production soars. Though there are a number of philosophical exchanges, the pace never lags. The relationships of the various characters were real and honest and his staging was replete with creative stage pictures. As opposed to most somber interpretations of Vanya, this version and the work of the director found the comedy in the plot. This, however, did not minimize the despair of the characters. The play takes place in 1900 but the behavior of these people suggests contemporary attitudes which Sowle cultivated. This was a very tight production.
Connecticut’s underrated Sharon Playhouse “Zazzed” up the 2024 summer season with a musical that made the audience laugh, cheer and tear up. The Prom is a hilarious romp about arrogance, inclusion and love. It also happens to be about a teenage lesbian romance and launches some very pointed jabs at very human foibles with its witty and satiric dialogue. This was a remarkably entertaining show with controversial underpinnings that were performed beautifully and with marvelous theatricality. Each scene moved smoothly; the stage pictures were clean and definitive. Character relationships were clear and each line had value. While plumbing the emotional tone of the more serious scenes and maintaining the broad overacting in the many comic scenes, there were no slow moments. Led by Broadway’s Kate Baldwin, the production was a winner.