BOEING BOEING - Full Review

We got a fantastic review from Joanna Greco Rochman at THE REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN, but the website will only allow you access to part of the article without paying for it (ahh, these online times), so I decided to type out the entire article from the paper (an actual newspaper!) so that it could be read in full. Thar she blows!

1ST CLASS COMEDY LIFTS OFF AT SEVEN ANGELS

Need a good laugh? Then head over to Seven Angels Theatre in Waterbury, where "Boeing Boeing," Marc Camoletti's door-slamming, fast paced face takes center stage.

Semina DeLaurentis directs this production, making it abundantly clear that she is a master when it comes to comedy. Whether she's in a show or directing it, DeLaurentis puts comic timing and wild antics on stage.

The action revolves around sophisticated Bernard, a confirmed bachelor who has come up with the perfect plan to keep three gorgeous women as his lovers without having to marry any of them. He simply selected three flight attendants from airlines without overlapping schedules. Bernard is happy to proclaim to his unsophisticated friend Robert that all three women have been essentially pre-screened by major airlines for personality, beauty, and intelligence. All he has to do is keep close track of flight schedules.

Gil Brady, as the debonair, successful businessman Bernard, is quite the lady's man. He bears a resemblance to Pierce Brosnan, and his performance is every bit as polished. R. Bruce Connelly displays his usual comic genius in his shy-to-sly portrayal of Brady's bachelor friend. Connelly makes it impossible not to laugh out loud when he is seduced or trying to seduce one of the flight attendants. Whether he is checking to see if his teeth are in place after wild passionate kissing or crawling on all fours to go undetected by the ever watchful maid, Connelly is a non-stop flight of laughs.

Had it not been for the powerful performances of the three flight attendants, Sarah Knapp as Bertha might just have been able to steal the show. With her oversized eyeglasses, she is able to keep a close eye on the comings and goings of the many in-and-out visitors to her boss' apartment. With the charm and accent of a French maid and perfect comic timing, Knapp delivers a stellar performance.

One by one, each of the three flight attendants enters the apartment, with one as gorgeous as the next. Wearing skin-tight colorful uniforms, they immediately draw attention. Liz Clark Golson portrays Gloria, a sexually liberated American who is appropriately dressed in a red hot, skin-tight outfit. Her voice and actions balance Southern belle sensuality with aggressive cosmopolitanism. Olivia Gilliatt exudes Italian passion as she moves from jealous and suspicious to a Sophia Loren mystique. Amy Jo Jackson, as Gretchen, is another actor who nearly stole the show. She is a commanding figure on stage, with the tough attitude of a Gestapo agent and the overpowering purr of a very large pussy cat. Perfectly cast in a bigger than life role, Jackson is a joy to watch in action.

Rounding off a pretty flawless cast is the pretty flawless creative design team. Erik D. Diaz's set has provided Seven Angels with one of its best ever sets. An ultra-modern Patis apartment with chrome-trimmed furniture and soft ivory-hued leather chairs grabs your attention. Trenton Spears' crisp, clean sound design is so realistically rendered that you'll know exactly when an airplane is taking off. Jimmy Johansmeyer's costumes couldn't be more perfectly suited for each character. And Matt Guminski's lighting design completes the creative team's well-coordinated vision.

Overall, this is an outstanding Seven Angels' Equity production. It is a fun way to wait for spring. It plays through April 16 and will likely have to add performances. This is one show you don't want to miss if you're looking for a good time.

A Love Letter

There's an episode of the fantastic Canadian television show SLINGS & ARROWS (a parody of the Stratford Festival), in which the opening night of KING LEAR is cancelled because the actor playing Lear is out, doped up on morphine (details not worth going into here, but watch the show). The Cordelia and one of the other young actors are commiserating at the bar with two of the older character actors in the troupe. One of them says something to the effect of, "You have to have a few horror shows to go along with the good ones. Then, later on, you'll have stories to tell. You'll have had a life!" I remember being so moved by those words (which were more eloquent in actuality than in my recollection), because they attest to the gypsy spirit of theatre people - you go on, you go on, you go on. You measure your life by what role you were playing at the time. As the Brits would say, there is just one thing that should keep you from going to work on a given night: "Only death. Your own."

I'd just gotten back to New York from a really difficult gig when I watched that episode of S&A, and it called to mind what we'd been repeating all summer when something ELSE, so horrible as to be funny, would happen: "One for the memoirs, darling, one for the memoirs!" Let's just say that working with a cow as a scene partner is DEFINITELY going in the autobiography.

Last night, we had a FANTASTIC show. The audience was really with us, and was having a ball (in a comedy - farce, especially - the audience gives you SUCH a boost, and when they're enjoying it, you don't have to work quite so hard). We went back to the cast house, and were all having dinner and our post-show wind-down, still buzzed by how much fun we'd had on stage. I asked Sarah, the actress playing Bertha, to please tell us ANNIE 2 stories. Now, there are certain shows that you hear about, even years later, that have become infamous - CARRIE being the most well-known example. ANNIE 2 (subtitled HANNIGAN'S REVENGE) is one such show. It was amazing to sit around the kitchen table, eyes wide, and listen to her recollect horror story after horror story - how amazing the script was at the first reading to how it was destroyed, lewd things that were said to her, Dorothy Loudon's understudy having to go on without a single rehearsal and her lines written on poster board in the pit, crying children, weeping mothers, one actor who you'd know was about to go up on his lines because he'd sort of twitch by blinking three times - really and truly unbelievable stuff.

I love that I've worked enough to now have some stories of my own to tell - some of them wonderful and fun, some of them hilarious, some of them absolutely AWFUL (Summer of the Cow) - and can't wait to accumulate more. It brings SLINGS & ARROWS to mind...you've had a life! A life in the theatre. Is there any richer kind?

The Plastic Bag May Not Inflate

BOEING BOEING opens tonight! We've had a few nights of previews (meaning, figure out how to deal with the shrieking laughter emanating from the audience), and thus far, it's been a lot of fun. I thought it'd be interesting to take a moment and catalog the similarities and differences I've noticed in doing this show for a second time in less than a year:



THE SAME:
Farce is incredibly, painstakingly, ridiculously technical. Amazingly fun once you get it down, and hopefully nothing the audience notices, but there is virtually NO wiggle room to "try something new." All of that is in the relationships.

DIFFERENT:
The audience here is more reluctant to laugh at certain things than they were in Olean. Not most things, but a couple of jokes here and there. Comedy is endlessly fascinating.

THE SAME:
This remains, along with doing Shakespeare outside, one of the most vocally challenging shows I've ever done. I might put ROCKY HORROR up there, too. In BOEING, I am basically full-belting all of my lines. The entire show.

DIFFERENT:
The stage at Seven Angels is MUCH bigger than at Twin Tiers - I would venture to say it's twice as large. If that is an exaggeration, it certainly isn't by much. This means we can REALLY run after each other (it feels like I am always chasing or being chased by someone else), and also that we're all losing weight just from doing the show so much. Not much, but wow.

THE SAME:
Kissing men who get progressively sweatier as the show goes on.

DIFFERENT:
Having doors you can slam the crap out of on your entrances and exits. The set was amazing on my last production, but the doors didn't slam in that satisfying way. FARCE!

THE SAME:
Huge false eyelashes, red nails (ugh), and red lips. Also, we all have to use the kind of lipstick that is INCREDIBLY difficult to remove, since everybody kisses everybody in a highly frantic and ridiculous fashion.

DIFFERENT:
I love how different the relationship between Bertha and Robert has become in this production from the one I did this summer(from what I can see on stage and hear from the monitors in the dressing room). They're not even that different, but it's noticeable to me. Both are fully supported by the text, and both hilarious...It's one of those things I love about acting - that the chemistry between different people can yield such different results, and still to absolutely hilarious effect.

THE SAME:
Getting anywhere from at least a titter to full-on entrance laughter. Never has it worked quite so strongly to my advantage to be so obscenely tall.


Hooray for an opening night!

Join the Actors, they said! See the world, they said!

Well, perhaps it's not "The World" in the grand sense, but I'm definitely making a tour of New England this winter. I arrived in Waterbury, CT last night, and started BOEING rehearsals today! The theatre is lovely, and the cast is hilarious and really cool. I adore this play!!! I have a lovely room with a couch and a bedside table with a shelf that my computer and all of my books fit neatly on, so once I get home from rehearsals, it's entirely possible to make tea, get into bed, and then never move again. As this is not Boston (meaning, a pedestrian city with enticing coffee shops), I plan to hibernate!

I'm very excited that my friend Hannah will possibly be coming to NYC in late April/early May so that we can get some serious writing done on the project I've vaguely mentioned in previous posts. I've been enjoying working on it solo, but can't wait to get us going in the same room. We hope to get it completely fleshed out in the Spring, and then shoot in the Fall.

I'm also really pleased to announce that I'm the Client of the Month for Artist Upgrade! How fun! Scroll down the page a smidge and click to see what they've written about me! I love them - they are fantastic to work with, both from a design and maintenance standpoint.

I meant to do this in a post while I was still in Boston, but clearly, I didn't. I wanted to pimp some of my wonderful NINE castmates! I've listed below anyone that had a website listed in the program:
McCaela Donovan - Carla
Jennifer Ellis - Claudia
Cheryl McMahon - Guido's Mother
Brittney Morello - Ensemble
Kami Rushell Smith - Our Lady of the Spa