Theater Review

Gloucester Stage Serves Up More Than Good Food in ‘Stew’

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By Shelley A. Sackett 

Stew is any dish that is prepared by “stewing” — that is, submerging the ingredients with just enough liquid to cook them through on a low flame in a covered pot for a longtime. It is also a synonym for brooding. One who is in an extreme state of worry and agitation is said to be “stewing.” 

Playwright Zora Howard has captured the richness of the dish and the simmering state of its emotional namesake in her 90-minute intermission-less play, “Stew,” now in production at Gloucester Stage. A 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Drama finalist, it is the story of three generations of Black women who gather at the family home in Mount Vernon, N.Y. 

The show opens in the Turner’s comfortable kitchen with Mama (the magnificent Cheryl D. Singleton in a role that fits her like a glove) alone in her slippers and robe, singing, dancing, and grooving to the gospel song,”“Rejoice.” She sashays over to the pot bubbling on the stove, stirring it with the finesse and timing of a backup singer. This is a woman in her element. Unobserved, undisturbed, she is in her happy place. 

That spell is quickly shattered by a dog barking and the boisterous arrival of the rest of theclan. Mama’s two daughters, Lillian (Breezy Leigh) and Nelly (Janelle Grace), burst into the room, and the atmosphere shifts from private sanctuary to multi-generational chaos. Lillian, in her 30s, is visiting with her 12-year-old daughter, Lil Mama (Sadiyah Dyce Janai Stephens), and younger son Junior, who is already up and outside playing. Lillian’s sister, 17-year-old high schooler Nelly, lives with Mama, although not for long if she has her way and her temporary boyfriend turns out to be her forever man. 

The titular plot revolves around Mama cooking for 50 for an event after church. The stew that has been brewing on the stove has burned, and Mama dumps it into the trash. Similarly, the relationships among these four Turner women get an overhaul during the course of the day as their banter and bickering reveal their secrets, fears, resentments, and hopes, the ingredients they bring to the familial stew that has been quietly simmering on the Turner family back burner for many years. 

Mama has just been to the doctor, and although she won’t admit it, is starting to slow down. “Are you dyin’?” Lillian asks with both accusation and terror in her voice. “It’s certainly the direction I’m heading,” Mama quips. For her part, Lillian has returned home to do more than just check in on Mama’s well-being. Her marriage is stuck in an awkward gear, and, although it will take her another hour to voice it, she is home because she needs her mother’s support and advice. 

Nelly has her first real boyfriend and confides to Lil Mama that she’s sure she has found the real thing. She can’t wait to get on with her life with him. Lil Mama is a free-spirited pre-teen, equal parts silly and earnest, anxious to be taken seriously but still needing to be coddled. She is preparing to audition for the role of Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare’s Richard III.  

Just as Mama takes charge of her brood in directing them to create her stew, so she commands the troops in helping Lil Mama practice her lines. Mama was, after all, the founder and director emeritus of the Mt. Vernon High Dramatic League as well as the first soloist at the Greater Centennial A.M.E. Zion Church, a fact her children know so well they lip sync the oft-repeated line. 

Howard has a keen ear for writing compelling and laugh-out-loud dialogue that blends the authentic, intimate, and emotional. She manages to keep the rapid-fire pace of the women’s feisty verbal thrusts and parries while subtly defining each character’s individual traits and issues. More than once, she injects thought-provoking subtext into a moment that was teetering dangerously close to TV sit-com banality. 

In her Director’s Notes, Rosalind Bevan hits the nail on the head in describing “Stew’s” message. “All families are woven from a multi-generational fabric spun with joy, pain, celebration, misunderstanding, regrets, and triumphs. If we’re lucky, we can feel and see that the thread holding all of these things together is love. If we’re honest with ourselves, in those moments when that love is less felt or harder to see, we know it’s still there.” 

Bevan’s direction shines a spotlight on the splendid set (Jenna McFarland Lord) while allowing her ensemble cast enough breathing room to create strong individual presences. Leigh’s Lillian is believable and complicated, her pain and uncertainty barely perceptible beneath her bubbly veneer. As the teenage rebel looking for a cause, Grace manages to bring a childish innocence to Nelly’s most churlish tantrum. And who could resist Stephens’s gap-toothed Lil Mama, even when she is screeching at the top of her lungs? 

But it is Singleton as Mama who grounds the show and the family, seasoning her loved ones with the same care and compassion she brings to her cooking. “You’ve got to season your food, talk to your food. Keep it going. You gotta laugh and eat together. It’s the nourishment of life,” she tells her daughters and granddaughter.  

Although uneven and sporting a questionable ending, “Stew” paints a timeless and universal picture of family life, with all its messiness and serendipity. Like the flavors of the secret ingredients in Mama’s special stew, Howard has written a play that will continue to roll around in your thoughts long after the curtain has fallen.

‘STEW’ – Written by Zora Howard. Directed by Rosalind Bevan. Scenic Design by JennaMcFarland Lord. Costume Design by KJ Gilmer. Lighting Design by Kat C. Zhou. SoundDesign by Aubrey Dube. Presented by Gloucester Stage, 267 E Main St, Gloucester, MAthrough July 23. 

For tickets and information, go to: https://gloucesterstage.com/

It’s All in the Family in Huntington’s Spectacular ‘The Lehman Trilogy’

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Joshua David Robinson, Firdous Bamji, and Steven Skybell in ‘The Lehman Trilogy’ at the Huntington. Photos by T. Charles Erickson

By Shelley A. Sackett

A lone and mournful clarinetist (Joe LaRocca) wanders across the stage of the Huntington’s theatrically astonishing “The Lehman Trilogy,” inviting comparisons in tone and content to the spirited drama “Fiddler on the Roof.” Steeped in ritual and Judaism, both stories trace what happens to a family when political oppression forces it to leave home, leading most of its members to emigrate to America.

For the dairyman Tevye ben Shneur Zalman, tradition and God are immutable and one; he will walk the straight and narrow walk wherever he wanders. For the Lehman brothers — and especially for their American progeny — tradition and God are moving targets, luxuries that morph with the exigencies of assimilation.

Yet the unobtrusive but ever-present LaRocca and his plaintive clarinet, saxophone, and flute melodies (original music by Mark Bennett) are constant reminders of the Lehmans’ past and the threads that, though frayed and denied, they share with Tevye and his ancestors.

“The Lehman Trilogy,” winner of the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play, assumes the 2008 demise of Lehman Brothers, the colossal bank whose collapse helped trigger the global Great Recession, is well known. Instead of rehashing that final piece of the story in detail, it wisely spends the bulk of its three and a half hours (two intermissions) chronicling the lesser-known details of the enterprise’s birth and extraordinary upward trajectory. 

The action opens on 9/11/1844 with the New York arrival of 21-year-old Henry (Steven Skybell, the standout in a cast of standouts) from Rimpar, Bavaria. He immediately sets sail for Mobile, Alabama, with little but his experience in trade and finance and his skill with cloth. Buoyed to be in the American South, where Jews are allowed to own land and where the caste system is built on race rather than religion, Henry quickly makes enough money as a peddler to fund his move inland to Montgomery, where he settles down and opens a dry goods store. Younger brothers Emanuel (Joshua David Robinson) and Mayer (Firdous Bamji) soon follow to this promised land of milk and honey and cotton where “a man can live to work, not work to live.”

Absent the violence, restrictions, and family restraints of Rimpar, the brothers create their own American version of the Lehman myth, tradition, and legacy. Their unbridled ambition, ingenuity, and taste for fortune lead them to adapt to the times and fill any gap they spot. 

The first Lehman Brothers sign is hung on a dry goods storefront that starts out selling fabrics and cotton and ends up as a powerful monopoly that buys raw cotton from antebellum plantations and resells it to factories in the North. The brothers ingeniously invent the profession of being a middleman, making their first fortune off the back of an economy dependent on slavery.

They also dip their toes into the business that will fuel their rise and fall. By offering credit to planters short of funds, they become cotton brokers, the first stage in their eventually becoming an investment bank.

Only after the cotton economy’s collapse in the wake of the Civil War do we hear a word of admonition or conscience about their connection to slavery (word is the lines were only added in response to criticism), and those are spoken by only one character, a local doctor.

“Everything that was built here was built on a crime,” he tells the brooding Mayer. “The roots run so deep you cannot see them, but the ground beneath our feet is poisoned. It had to end this way.”

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Lehman Brothers transforms and reinvents itself, helping the South as it reconstructs. Over the decades, it will survive two world wars, the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression, mutating from a brokerage house to an investment bank and finally to architects of subprime mortgages. The brothers relocate to New York and create the Cotton Exchange, Coffee Exchange, and Stock Exchange, all admirable strokes of business genius which pad their own pockets handsomely.

Structured in three parts, the play follows the Lehman family through 164 years of successive generations. We ride shotgun on the journey that proves even more tragic for the fabric and integrity of the heritage the three brothers so revered. Along the way, ethics, decency, and loyalty are qualities that vanish from the Lehman family tree, especially in the wake of the 1960s creation of a trading division run by non-family members. From boardroom savagery to talk of how to get people to buy things they don’t want with money they don’t have, the apples fall far, far from the ancestral tree.

And therein lie the bones of the play and the attraction of its world. At heart, this is a very human story about real, complicated people living real, messy lives. The story’s true tragedy and greater lesson is to be found in the degradation and demise of their familial — rather than financial — legacy.

When we first meet Henry, Emanuel, and Mayer in the 1840s, they are untarnished, wide-eyed boychiks, still tethered to their religious and family values. We bond with them. We root for them. Most all of, we care about them.

Henry is funny and sympathetic, his guilelessness rendering him accessible and charming. Mayer and Emanuel elicit similar reactions. When their children and grandchildren become characters from “Succession,” we cut them a little slack because we knew their parents and grandparents. Although we’re glad they’re not around to witness the havoc they wrought, we miss them.

Fleshing out this compelling story is the real reason “The Lehman Trilogy” is in that rare not-to-be-missed category: the breathtaking three actors (the entire cast!) who switch genders and ages to portray a score of characters. Starting out as the engaging Henry, Skybell is a delight as a tightrope walker, a crusty, old rabbi, a flirty divorcée, and others. Bamji is no less extraordinary as the youngest (and patronized) brother Mayer. His acting chops are on full display as the ruthless Bobbie, a blushing bride, a pouty toddler, and more. As the steady, stalwart middle brother Emanuel, Robinson clearly enjoys the looser reins when playing the later Lehman clan members and their gang of motley plunderers.

Equally praiseworthy are Perloff’s razor-sharp direction (the wrecking ball pendulum as 2008 draws nigh is brilliant), Brown’s efficient yet thrilling set, and Oi-Suk Yew’s use of projected images.

Much has been penned complaining about the play’s underemphasis on the role slavery played in the Lehmans’ initial success and the short shrift given to the firm’s 2008 nosedive crash and burn finale. My take is that these were not intended as deliberate snubs. Rather, they were omitted because they were peripheral to playwright Massini’s core purpose: to allow us a peek through the keyhole at the tale of three German Jewish brothers from Bavaria and the way they took America by storm.

The resulting epic — intimate and engaging — is a nonjudgmental study of the personalities, relationships, and events that shaped this one family’s shifting definition of the American dream.

Don’t be put off by the play’s length. The story is so engrossing, the production (and acting!) so remarkable that more than one patron was overheard commenting that they wished it had been even longer!

‘The Lehman Trilogy’ – Written by Stephano Massini and Adapted by Ben Power. Directed by Carey Perloff. Scenic Design by Sara Brown; Projection Design by Jeanette Oi Suk-Yew; Costume Design by Dede Ayite; Lighting Design by Robert Wierzel; Original Music by Mark Bennett; Co-Sound Design by Mark Bennett and Charles Does. Presented by the Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave., through July 23.

For tickets and information, go to: https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/whats-on/lehman-trilogy/

In DTF’s ‘Misery,’ Writing Like Your Life Depends on It Takes On New Meaning

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Kelly McAndrew and Dan Butler in ‘Misery’ at Dorset Theatre

By Shelley A. Sackett

Fans of Stephen King’s 1987 novel or Rob Reiner’s 1990 award-winning film, Misery, should not expect more of the same from Dorset Theatre Festival’s season opener, Misery. Playwright William Goldman has transformed the nail-biter of a scary suspense thriller into a lukewarm reminder of its prodigal self.

The excellent cast, director, and production team make the most of the script and gift the audience with an enjoyable evening of theater, but it was hard not to wonder what the same team might have cooked up had they had better-quality raw ingredients.

The plot remains pretty much the same. Annie Wilkes (a convincing and scene-chewing Kelly McAndrew) lives alone in her gothic family home in the remote backcountry of Silver Creek, Colorado. In one of her guest bedrooms lies the shattered body of best-selling romance novelist Paul Sheldon (Dan Butler), whose car went off the road in a snowstorm a few days ago. It seems Annie, his “number one fan,” just happened to be driving behind him when his car plunged into a ravine. Somehow, she managed to wrest his mangled body from the wreckage and bring it home to convalesce.

Paul awakens from the crash to Annie’s chirping chatter as she fills him in on the last few days. His two legs are badly fractured. She has set them to the best of her ability (Isn’t he lucky she’s a nurse!) and plied him with just enough drugs to ebb his pain while increasing his dependence on her.

Annie is more than an obsessed fan of Paul’s Misery series, about an orphaned 19th-century waif named Misery. She is also a lonely, middle-aged homicidal psychopath who talks to God, is divorced, wanders through her house surrounded by photos of dead relatives, and is an expert at lying and stalking.

As she slowly exposes the levels of her derangement and fixation on the Misery character, it becomes clear she intends to do more than just heal Paul. She intends to imprison him. Until death do them part.

Or at least until he writes another novel, which may just spare his life. Or, toys with Annie in this cat-and-mouse game in which she is recast as a lioness and he as a crippled cricket; then again, it may not.

In any case, write he must, as Paul’s life indeed does depend on it. Unbeknownst to Annie, his most recent installment in the Misery series kills off her beloved heroine. Coincidentally, the book’s release overlapped with Paul’s stay at Annie’s.

As his Number One Fan, Annie, of course, has her local bookstore save her all the new Paul Sheldon books. One day, she bursts into his room, triumphantly brandishing her copy.

Annie is excited beyond her wildest dreams. To be reading her idol’s latest Misery book while he is living in her house brings a creepy Little Bo Peep lilt to her gait. Paul knows (as do we) that Little Miss Sunshine will morph into Chucky the moment she reaches the end of the book. Exactly when that will happen is uncertain, but when it does, Annie’s rage will be of force majeure quality.

For his part, Paul is at first grateful, then wary, and finally determined to escape this real-life misery. His pithy, New York sophisticated banter turns less glib as he realizes the peril he is in and plots his escape, no easy feat for a man with two broken legs and an antique wheelchair for a getaway vehicle.

Goldman has provided Annie’s character with the best lines and the grisliest of backstories, and McAndrew milks it for all it’s worth. When Paul pretends to court her, luring her to a romantic dinner as part of his escape plan, Annie sheds her overalls and boots and shows up in a dress befitting Laura Ingalls from “Little House on the Prairie.”. It would be a touching scene if it weren’t for the sheen of Bette Davis’s Baby Jane character with which Annie powdered her nose.

Butler, a talented actor with star-studded credits, does the best he can with the cardboard Paul. Riw Rakkulchon’s revolving set creates a folksy, cozy country home that would be at the top of anyone’s Airbnb list. Thanks to dramatic lighting and sound design, the scenes come to creepy life. Kudos, too, for a system that allows the actors’ words to be easily heard and, more importantly, understood, something increasingly and annoyingly rare in too many Boston theaters.

It’s hard not to miss the intensity and tension generated by the Misery novel and film, but for those in the mood for a Misery-lite summer version that recasts the horror tale as a more whimsical melodrama, Dorset Theatre Festival has just the ticket.

‘Misery’ –Written by William Goldman based on the novel by Stephen King. Directed by Jason Gay. Scenic Design by Riw Rakkulchon; Costume Design by Fabian Fidel Aguilar; Lighting Design by Joey Moro; Sound Design by Daniel Baker/Broken Chord. Presented by Dorset Theatre Festival, Dorset, Vermont, through July 8.

For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://dorsettheatrefestival.org

A.R.T.’s Spectacular ‘Evita’ Raises the Bar on the Term, “Production Values”

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Shereen Pimentel (Eva) in Evita at American Repertory Theater. Photo Credits: Emilio Madrid.

by Shelley A. Sackett

A cross between an iron maiden and a fairy princess gown, the replica of Eva Peron’s famous Dior strapless gown hangs suspended over a neon-framed stage. Like a mummified 3-dimensional diorama, the white bejeweled dress takes on a life of its own, its bodice both unsettling and beckoning, warning the audience: look but do not touch.

This riveting image, with its promise of an evening of highly stylized art and mixed messages, is the perfect introduction to the spectacularly staged ‘Evita’ now at the A.R.T.’s Loeb theater. Its production values — from exquisite costumes, choreography, scenic design, and lighting to orchestration and cast talent — can’t be overpraised. The most striking evening of theater to hit Boston stages in a while is, luckily and uncharacteristically, in town for a good, long run (through July 30), so there is plenty of time to snag a ticket and enjoy.

When the scrim lifts and the real show begins, the visuals only get better. A backdrop of silhouetted men and women in gorgeous haute couture hats and heels suddenly breaks into song and dance, like a painting come to life. Cinematic and magical, the effect is thrilling.

Told in vignettes, the storyline is anchored by Eva Duarte Perón and her rise from poverty in rural Argentina to reigning first lady and beloved titular patron saint. Eva’s journey is complicated and full of contradictions. While shamelessly sleeping her way to the top and ruthlessly trampling anyone who gets in her way, she also champions the poor, the disenfranchised, and the everyday working class. Voracious in her personal ambition and an original “mean girl,” she also cares deeply for her beloved country and its people.

Critical observer and cynic Che (the standout Omar Lopez-Cepero) narrates this legend, filling in the fairytale with unflattering morsels of on-the-ground reporting. In his opposing version, Eva’s deceitfulness and egomaniacal greed overshadow her legacy of charisma and beneficence.

Shereen Pimental soars as the larger-than-life Eva, transfixing the audience with her vocal range and regal presence. She commands attention every moment she is on stage, whether as a naïve 15-year-old in search of an acting breakthrough or the haughty, bejeweled dictator of fashion bullying all who don’t kowtow to her. We may feel ambivalent about her, but we can’t take our eyes off her either.

Under Sammi Cannold’s savvy direction, Emily Maltby and Valeria Solomonoff’s sassy, authentic tango choreography, and the exceptional performances by Pimentel and Lopez-Cepero, it’s almost possible to overlook the major drawback of the evening — namely, the play itself, which is more disjointed abstraction than linear storytelling. Spawned from a 1976 concept album by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Time Rice, the musical is short on character development and plot and long on untuneful, long-winded operatic numbers (many overamplified and difficult to decipher). Other than “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” the songs blend, leaving behind no choral snippets that loop in one’s memory banks after the show’s end. Yet “Evita” is not meant to be about traditional dramaturgy. Like its namesake, it is about splash and sparkle and smoke and mirrors, and from the moment the audience lays eyes on the suspended disembodied gown until the orchestra sounds its final note, A.R.T.’s production is an unapologetic feast for all the senses. Highly recommended for anyone looking for an evening of pure epic entertainment.

Lyrics by Tim Rice. Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Directed by Sammi Cannold. Choreography by Emily Maltby, Valeria Solomonoff; Music Direction by Mona Seyed-Bolorforosh; Scenic Design by Jason Sherwood; Costume Design by Bradley King; Lighting Design by Bradley King. Presented by the American Repertory Theater in Association with Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge through July 30.

For information and tickets, go to: https://americanrepertorytheater.org/

We All Walk The Trail of Tears in ‘And So We Walked’

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DeLanna Studi in “And So We Walked.” Photos by Patrick Weishampel/Blankeye

By Shelley A. Sackett

When the pre-written announcement acknowledging Indigenous and Enslaved Peoples is read prior to every local theatrical production, it often feels disconnected from the show that follows. Not so with Cherokee actress, artist, and activist DeLanna Studi’s stunning one-woman autobiographical presentation, ‘And So We Walked.”

For 150-minutes (one intermission), we shadow Studi’s and her ancestors’ lives as members of the Cherokee nation. She and her full-blooded 70-year-old Cherokee father (her mother is white) spend six weeks retracing the Trail of Tears, that noxious route trudged by over 100,000 Native Americans in the 1800s after they had been forcibly removed from their homes by the U.S. government. It is the same path her great-great grandparents took during the relocation of 17,000 Cherokee people.

The audience learns how tens of thousands of Native Americans died in retention centers, and many more by way of the trail. The survivors never received the $5 million sale price of their land, nor promised reparations.

“Every great story has truth in it and that truth is dangerous,” Studi explains. “The Cherokee story is written in blood.”

She peppers the evening with anecdotes, history and geography lessons, and terrific metamorphoses into a dozen characters, embodying their subtle physical and dialectic idiosyncrasies. She is a riveting presence on stage; maintaining audience interest for over two hours is no small feat, one the opening night audience acknowledged with its standing ovation.

The simple, elegant set and judicious choice and use of props captures the trail’s atmosphere, straddling between contemporary and pre-removal Cherokee life. Large pieces of white horizontal fabric reflect a variety of projected images, conjuring interior and exterior spaces. Studi is a magician at using the set to invoke a school house, Cherokee Council House, SUV and campfire gathering.

She covers a lot of ground, delving into factual topics such as the forced “reeducation” of Native children in white boarding schools from the 1860s until the 1980s. She also tackles the personal, emotional and cultural issues surrounding what it means to be a Native American in contemporary America. She feels isolated and tribeless, a bridge between two worlds, neither of which she can ever fully claim as home.

Studi replays the scene when, as a young school girl, her teacher announced that “Indians are extinct.” Because she was only half Cherokee, the elders made her sit alone at tribal ceremonies. Later in life, when auditioning for acting roles, she was told she was too white for Native parts and too Native for white roles.

Her father tries to reassure her that blood quantity is irrelevant; she should be proud of her heritage, standing tall and strong as a Cherokee woman.

“Being Cherokee isn’t about blood,” he tells her. “It’s knowing who you are. And keeping it alive.”

On her own, personal trail of tears, Studi discovers who she really is and what her rights and responsibilities are as one of the very few whose ancestors survived the Trail of Tears. Searching for her place and identity, she uncovers her essence and where she fits in.

Studi is especially effective when she addresses the audience directly, letting them in on a joke or expressing a particular emotion on her manipulable face. Although her story is replete with loss, victimization and trauma, she has seasoned it generously with humor and wit.

After their journey, her father asks, “Didja get what you came for?” If ‘And So We Walked’ is representative of what Studi gained, I’d say we all came out winners.

For tickets and information, go to: https://artsemerson.org/

‘And So We Walked’ — Created and Performed by DeLanna Studi. Directed by Corey Madden; Scenic Design by John Coyne; Costume Design by Andja Budincich; Lighting and Projection Design by Norman Coates; Sound Design and Original Music by Bruno Louchouarn. Co-represented by Octopus Theatricals and Indigenous Performance Productions. Presented by Arts Emerson at the Emerson Paramount Center, 559 Washington St., Boston through April 30, 2023.

‘Clyde’s’ serves up redemption, one sandwich at a time

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Harold Surratt and April Nixon in the Tony Award nominated “Clyde’s.” / KEVIN BERNE

By Shelley A. Sackett/JEWISH JOURNAL

Tikkun Olam, as explained in the Mishnah, is a Jewish concept defined by acts of kindness performed to perfect or repair the world. There are innumerable ways for us to do tikkun olam in our daily lives, each one with the potential to change everything for everyone.

Although it’s unlikely playwright Lynn Nottage had this concept in mind as she wrote the Tony Award-nominated comedy “Clyde’s,” now in production at the Huntington through April 23, its message runs throughout her play.

The setting (and what a set it is!) is Clyde’s, a truck stop café near Reading, PA. More than a way station for the road-weary, it is also a shelter for its four employees, all felons. For the three recent arrivals who need to show a weekly paycheck to maintain parole, it is also their only shot at getting back on track after derailment. Montrellos (Monty), Clyde’s elder statesman, role model and Zen master, supervises this crew.

Under the annihilative command of Clyde, the owner, achieving that goal is an uphill battle.

The play opens with Clyde and Monty (dressed in bright dashiki and kufi) in mid-conversation. He begs her to taste his latest creation, a sublime twist on the grilled cheese sandwich. She blows cigarette smoke in response. Wearing a glow-in-the-dark orange waist-length wig and exterior black corset, she looks like a cross between a deranged Tina Turner imposter and an S&M dominatrix. The effect is terrifying.

Instead of tasting the sandwich, she uses it to crush out her cigarette, just as she relentlessly snuffs out any hint of hope or happiness she senses smoldering.

The staff live in fear of her temper and she taunts them sadistically with threats to make up a parole violation and report them to the police. Behind the kitchen’s swinging door, without her lurking, they are free to connect and actually enjoy their work. Cautiously, they relearn how to trust, revealing what landed them in the slammer. Letitia, a quick-witted, sassy single mom, broke into a pharmacy to steal unaffordable seizure medicine for her daughter. Rafael, a playful recovering addict, tried to rob a bank with a BB gun while high. Jason, Clyde’s only white employee, is covered in white supremacy tattoos and fresh out of prison for assault.

In his role as mentor, Monty is kind, sage and committed to helping his charges survive their difficult transition. Although he doesn’t reveal why he served time until the play’s end, he has clearly walked the same walk.

His trick is the quest to create the perfect sandwich, that “most democratic of all foods.” Sandwiches can be more than the quotidian ingredients they slap between two pieces of bread for the café’s clientele, Monty counsels. They can reflect their creators’ dreams and truths. They even have the magic power to unlock the gate to their salvation. He is living proof.
The others bite, joining him on his pilgrimage. They bond over shared imaginary recipes, light-heartedly chanting ingredients like tantric mantras. After hours, each secretly works out combos that might earn Monty’s approval and, by extension, launch them toward a sense of self-worth.

Clyde doesn’t see sandwiches (or anything else) through the same rose-tinted lenses as Monty. Although she, too, was imprisoned, empathy and tikkun olam hardly drive her to hire only ex-cons. Rather, she uses them as cheap labor to populate her own sort of jail where she reigns as warden to these “loser” ex-prisoners who float in painful limbo between “real” prison and the ersatz one she has created.

Against great odds, and with Monty’s critical help, her employees ultimately free themselves from her grip by banding together and refusing to follow an order they just cannot abide. Although what triggers their rebellion is on its surface comedic, Nottage deftly handles this turning point moment, plumbing it for deeper beauty, poignancy and strength.

Nottage also has a gift for comedy, and under Taylor Reynold’s tight direction, her zingers are laugh-out-loud funny. The terrific actors playing the kitchen crew are an airtight ensemble that breathe life into their parts.

Unfortunately, the same is not true of the unnuanced Clyde. To be fair, Nottage has created a cardboard caricature, giving the actress little to work with. The distraction of her dozen or so wig and outfit changes only emphasizes the playwright’s missed opportunity in not fully fleshing her out.

Which is too bad, because Clyde exemplifies what can happen when, in pursuit of financial gain and raw power, we lose sight of what really feeds and sustains us. Luckily, her crew has Monty, with his belief in the restorative power of the sandwich, to lead by example and show them a better way.

For more information and to buy tickets, visit www.huntingtontheatre.org.

A love story in the age of (anti)social media

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Jeffrey Song and Eunji Lim in SpeakEasy’s ‘Wild Goose Dreams.” / Photo Credit: NILE SCOTT STUDIOS

By Shelley A. Sackett

According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and a tower with its top in the heavens. God disrupted the work by so confusing the workers’ language that they could no longer understand one another. The city was never completed, and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.

Playwright and native South Korean Hansol Jung’s impressive play “Wild Goose Dreams” examines the modern-day Tower of Babel known as the internet, a global nation where algorithms create a universal language that renders its human users more disconnected than connected.

Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company, it runs through April 8 at Calderwood Pavillion in Boston.

Set in contemporary Seoul, the plot follows the romance between a married South Korean man, Guk Minsung (Jeffrey Song), and Yoo Nanhee (a terrific Eunji Lim), a North Korean defector. They both travel with more than carry-on baggage.

Minsung is a “goose father,” the label given to a man who stays and works in South Korea while his family lives in an English-speaking country. Because South Korea values fluency in English (and because its education system is fiercely competitive), they are assured a better life when they return. Like their migrating namesakes, these fathers sacrifice for the sake of their offspring, sending money but rarely getting to see them. Minsung’s only means of contact with his wife and daughter are his cellphone and Facebook, and he longs for an-person visit.

Like Minsung, Nanhee is lonely, disoriented and (literally) haunted by the family she lives without. Four years ago, she suddenly and without notice left North Korea and her father (an amusing John D. Haggerty). She too was in search of a better life than she could ever have in that impoverished, repressive place. Her flight was full of peril and trauma; guilt and fear still preoccupy her thoughts and dreams. She sends her father money that she doesn’t know if he receives. He appears to her daily, a ghost-like companion invisible to anyone else.

Paralyzed by second-guessing the choices they made, they are isolated and numb. Theirs will be a textbook love story for the modern, dysfunctional age.

Both turn to the internet and online dating for comfort and connection, and depicting that world is where “Wild Goose Dreams” breaks bold new theatrical ground.

Jung’s intrusive and omnipresent cyberspace is portrayed by director Seonjae Kim as a lively, noisy Greek chorus of wild characters who chant and mime the equivalents of cellphone ringing, emojis and various internet functions (reboot is a stitch!). The costumes, sound effects and choreography are dizzying.

On its surface, this parallel universe is eye candy, entertaining and fun. Yet, just like the “real” internet, it smothers and disrupts, ultimately blurring the thinning line between virtual and actual realms, between fantasy and reality.

Amidst this relentless and chaotic cacophony of popups, “what’s on your mind?” and other distractions, Nanhee (screen name Miner’s Daughter) and Minsung (Gooseman) meet. Though they technically speak the same language, they bring different cultural contexts which Jung uses for both empathic and comic purpose. “Is that a joke?” each asks frequently, followed by “Is it a North/South Korean joke?”

Like post-Tower of Babel Babylonians, these two live in a diaspora where babble is the mother tongue.
While staggering in its imagination, creativity and craftsmanship, Jung’s play is not just humor, gimmickry and ingenuity. Below the surface, the gifted playwright skillfully tackles the broader issues of the genuine and overwhelming challenges we face living in a world of generational, cultural and technological disconnects.

Jung cleverly uses a fairy tale to link the various themes and plotlines. The play opens on a simple set with a storyteller (Nanhee’s father) telling his daughter a bedtime tale about an angel who loses the ability to fly and falls in love with a human. Later, the angel must choose between staying on earth with her lover or regaining her power of flight. These forked paths of freedom or family, taking flight or remaining grounded, will show up for the rest of the play. The personal toll they exact from Nanhee and Minsung shape their relationship and its unforeseen conclusion.

Although the play briefly stalls at an hour (at one hour and forty minutes, it could benefit from an intermission or shortening or both), “Wild Goose Dreams” is nonetheless one of the most exciting, out-of-the-box, charming and well-produced pieces of theater to hit Boston this season. Check it out and enjoy the guaranteed post-theater conversation.

For tickets and information, go to https://speakeasystage.com/.

Speakeasy’s ‘Wild Goose Dreams’ Is A Surreal Romp Between Two Realities

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Ciaran D’Hondt, Fady Demian, Elaine Hom, Ryan Mardesich, Amanda Centeno, and John D. Haggerty in Speakeasy’s ‘Wild Goose Dreams’ Photos by Nile Scott Studios

‘Wild Goose Dreams’ – Written by Hansol Jung. Directed by Seonjae Kim; Scenic Design by Crystal Tiala; Costume Design by Machel Ross; Lighting Design by Kathleen Zhou; Sound Design by George Cooke. Presented by SpeakEasy Stage at The Calderwood Pavillion, Boston through April 8.

By Shelley A. Sackett

On its surface, ‘Wild Goose Dreams,’ lays out parallel tales of migration, sacrifice, and dreams. To fully appreciate Hansol Jung’s brilliant script and Seonjae Kim’s spot-on direction, a little background is helpful. Geese migrate with the seasons, traveling great distances and enduring physical hardships to secure food and shelter for their families. Their survival hinges on uprooting themselves and flying to an unknown place that they hope will provide what they need.

Starting in the 1990s, Korean culture mirrored this concept of sacrifice and travel when fathers who could afford to began sending their families to English-speaking countries so their children could achieve their dreams of a better life when they returned to Korea. Known as “Wild Goose Fathers,” they stayed in Korea to earn money. They, like migrating geese, would see their families only seasonally. “Penguin Fathers,” like those flightless birds, were the Wild Goose Fathers who weren’t sure if or when they would ever see their families due to the exorbitant expense of travel. During this same time period, another kind of migration was taking place in Korea. Many people in North Korea began defecting to the South in search of better lives. These flights were full of peril and trauma.

Lim, Song

‘Wild Goose Dreams’ opens on a simple set with a storyteller (a splendid John D. Hoggerty) setting the play’s overarching narrative through a tale replete with metaphor and symbolism (although the audience won’t realize that until the play progresses). His bedtime tale is about an angel who loses the ability to fly and falls in love with a human. Later, the angel must choose between staying on earth with her lover or regaining her power of flight. These contradictory options of freedom and family, and the personal toll they exact, will overshadow the rest of the show.

Jung’s two main characters are the storyteller’s daughter, Yoo Nanhee (a perfectly cast Eunji Lim), and Guk Minsung (the equally terrific Jeffrey Song). Nanhee is a North Korean defector; Minsung is a Goose Father. Both are lonely, disoriented, and haunted by the family they live without. Nanhee’s father makes daily ghost-like appearances; Minsung’s wife and daughter show up sporadically via cellphone and Facebook.

Ciaran D’Hondt, Jeffrey Song, Ryan Mardesich, and Amanda Centeno

Both turn to the internet and online dating for comfort and contact, and depicting that world is where ‘Wild Goose Dreams’ breaks through a theatrical glass ceiling.

Jung’s cyberspace is interpreted by Kim as a lively, noisy Greek Chorus of wild characters that chant and mime the equivalents of cellphone ringing, emojis and various internet functions (reboot is a stitch!). The costumes (Machel Ross), sound effects (George Cooke), and choreography are dazzling.

Amidst this chaotic cacophony of popups, “what’s on your minds” and other distractions, Nanhee (screen name ‘Miner’s Daughter’) and Minsung (‘Gooseman’) meet. Though they technically speak the same language, they bring different cultural contexts which Jung uses for both empathic and comic purpose. “Is that a joke?” each asks frequently, followed by “Is it a North/South Korean joke?”

Despite these communication disconnects, the two share an innocence and ease brought to life by Lim and Song’s effortless portrayals. They are both “lonely and paralyzed,” both preoccupied with those far away and bewildered by the terrain they now inhabit. Yet, both are open to redefining their lives to reflect their growing live (vs virtual) intimacy.

Song, Lim

“Do we have impact on each other?” Minsung asks. “Couldn’t we call that love? Couldn’t that be enough for now?”

Jung’s play is not just humor, gimmickry, and imagination. Below the surface, the gifted playwright skillfully tackles the broader issue of the real and overwhelming challenges we face living in a world of generational, cultural, and technological disconnects. Her ‘Wild Goose Dreams’ is an entertaining, fun, well-produced piece of theater that is guaranteed to spark post-performance conversation.

For information and tickets, go to https://speakeasystage.com/

Wild Goose Dreams’ – Written by Hansol Jung. Directed by Seonjae Kim; Scenic Design by Crystal Tiala; Costume Design by Machel Ross; Lighting Design by Kathleen Zhou; Sound Design by George Cooke. Presented by SpeakEasy Stage at The Calderwood Pavillion, Boston through April 8.

‘The Great Leap’ Tackles Bigger Issues Than Basketball 

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Tyler Simahk, Barlow Adamson, and Gary Thomas Ng in The Great Leap at Lyric Stage

By Shelley A. Sackett

Award-winning playwright Lauren Yee has skin in the game with her play, ‘The Great Leap,’ now making its Boston premiere at Lyric Stage Company. Her father, a rare 6’1” Asian-American basketball player, was part of the 1981 team the US sent to China for a “friendship game” between Beijing University and the University of San Francisco. The Americans were demolished during the exhibition games.

Yee suspects the team, composed of non-NBA, non-college players, was hand-picked by the Chinese so the Americans would lose. Her father, who recounted his experiences to her as she wrote her play, was very helpful. “On stage, you’ll see a version of my father; it’s not pretending to be him,” Yee says in the program notes.

She sets her drama in 1989, a year that saw rising demonstrations for political and economic reform in Tiananmen Square. Using humor, spicy vernacular and some actual on-stage dribbling sequences, she weaves together an absorbing story while making some astute points about the intersection and consequences of politics, cultural identity and human foibles.

The plot is pretty straightforward.

It is 1989. Manford (an outstanding Tyler Simahk), “the most feared basketball player in Chinatown,” is a pushy and single-minded 17-year-old. The play opens with him confronting the San Francisco University basketball coach, Saul (a first-rate Barlow Adamson), demanding that Saul put him on the team he is taking to China to play in an exhibition match against Beijing University on June 3 and 4.

Saul has heard of Manford, ”the only guy who got thrown out of a game for fighting with his own teammate.” Manford knows a thing or two about Saul, too, and wastes no time striking at Saul’s Achilles’ heel. With an 8-20 losing record, his career is circling the drain. A loss to a Chinese team would finish him. Only Manford can rescue him from this fate.

“I am the most relentless person you ever met,” Manford taunts.

Turns out Coach Saul was at the helm of the team that traveled to Beijing in 1971 to advise a politically appointed amateur, Wen Chang (an outwardly cardboard but inwardly emotive Gary Thomas Ng) about the American game of basketball. This was at the height of the ferocious Cultural Revolution. Wen’s assignment was more about his Communist “rehabilitation” than a perfect job match.

Jihan Haddad, Adamson

Eighteen years later, Saul is headed back for a rematch against Wen. Manford’s mission is to convince Saul that the Americans will lose unless Manford is on the team. He’s better than any point guard Saul has on his SFU roster and he knows what Saul will be facing when he returns to Beijing. “Eighteen years ago, you went as their guest. You’re going back as their enemy,” he warns.

Manford has another reason he needs to return, and that hidden secret drives the ending’s delicious plot twist and would be an unconscionable spoiler to reveal. He has just lost his mother, who fled Beijing before he was born and whom he claims he didn’t really know (she spoke only Chinese). His father was never in the picture. He now lives with the family of his “cousin” Connie (a terrific Jihan Haddad), a 25-year-old graduate student and Manford’s cheerleader and True North.

The rest of the almost two-hour (one intermission) production flips back and forth between 1971 and 1989, filling in the gaps in the storyline and fleshing out its four characters. The flashbacks to 1971 (wonderfully costumed by Seth Bodie) contrast the brash, arrogant Saul and Wen, the hollowed-out victim of a regime he hates but resignedly obeys. Eighteen years later, their positions and perspectives have shifted. Wen is on top of his game and is chomping at the bit to give Saul a taste of the medicine he dished out in 1971.

Yee tackles many big-ticket issues in her play (the human cost of the Cultural Revolution, taking a stand vs standing still, living an authentic life, and cultural identity) and by its end, we understand her four characters and what makes them tick. Although overlong and in need of some editing, “The Great Leap” is greatly satisfying and its ending alone is worth the price of admission.

For tickets and information, go to:www.lyricstage.com

The Great Leap – Written by Lauren Yee. Directed by Michael Hisamoto. Scenic Design by Baron E. Pugh. Costume Design by Seth Bodie. Lighting Design by Michael Clark Wonson. Sound Design by Elizabeth Cahill. Presented by Lyric Stage Company of Boston through March 19, 2023.

‘Boulevard of Bold Dreams’ Shines a Light on Hattie McDaniel and Her 1940 Oscar

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Samantha Jane Williams, Michelle Fenelon, and Stewart Evan Smith in ‘Boulevard of Bold Dreams’ at GBSC. Photos by Nile Scott Studios

By Shelley A. Sackett

Playwright LaDarrion Williams has cherry-picked a dramatic moment in history to explore in his well-crafted ‘Boulevard of Bold Dreams.’ The date is February 29, 1940, the night of the Academy Awards. The setting is Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel bar, outside the grand ballroom where the awards will be presented.

Before the ceremony even starts, this year’s Oscars have made history. Hattie McDaniel is the first Black actor to be nominated for an award. She is up for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Scarlett O’Hara’s ‘mammy’ in the Civil War era blockbuster, “Gone With the Wind.”

Working in the sumptuous Art Deco lounge (kudos to set designer Rachel Rose Burke) are Black employees Arthur Brooks (Stewart Evan Smith), a bartender, and Dottie Hudson (Michelle Fenelon), a chambermaid. The two banter as comfortably as rivalrous siblings. In the course of their intimate conversation, the audience picks up that they have been friends since they were two years old. Together, they left rural Alabama for Hollywood to follow their dreams. Dottie, a talented singer, is waiting for her big break. Arthur dreams of becoming a film screenwriter and director. He even has a title for his first project: ‘The Boulevard of Bold Dreams.”

Williams, Smith

Their big dreams, however, run smack into the reality of 1940s California, where most working-class Blacks are relegated to subservient positions and racism is less violent but no less virulent than the version they lived with in Alabama. While waiting for their dreams to come true, they work day jobs they hate.

The silver lining is they work in the same hotel and get to hang out. A lot. They talk about everything under the sun. This evening, Hattie McDaniel is topic number one. The white hotel owner just directed Arthur to set up a table for her in the back corner of the theater, out of sight of the white guests. Allowing her in the hotel at all is a major concession in this whites-only establishment; sitting with her castmates would be out of the question.

The two debate the double-edged sword of the evening and whether McDaniel should attend or not. McDaniel’s nomination for the movie industry’s highest honor is a milestone breakthrough and achievement for Blacks everywhere. “She came out here with nothing but $50 and a dream. She’s a credit to our race,” Arthur says.

Fenelon, Smith

Dotty, on the other hand, thinks McDaniel should strike back at the white establishment that has used and abused her, and refuse to attend. Dotty chafes at the Mammy role that practically venerates slavery and has McDaniel “shucking and jiving for those white folk.” On top of that, and most unforgivable, is the fact that McDaniel was not even allowed to attend the movie’s premiere with her fellow castmates because it debuted at a whites-only theater in Atlanta.

Their hypothetical debate turns real when Hattie McDaniel (Samantha Jane Williams) herself wanders into the bar, seeking a moment alone while she wrestles with the very issue Dotty and Arthur have been discussing. For her, the matter is far more pressing. She has decided she won’t attend the awards ceremony under her agent’s conditions (the studio has even written her acceptance speech, not trusting her to speak on her own ). “What’s the point if I’m not treated like a human being? All I want is to sit with my cast,” she says sadly.

Arthur and Dotty have only minutes if they are to convince her otherwise.

McDaniel describes the negative reaction that has worn her down. Even the NAACP, criticizing the part as “a disgrace to colored folks,” urged her to refuse the role. “My own worst enemy ain’t the white folks. It’s my own people,” she explains.

Over drinks and stories of hardships and dreams, the three reveal their experiences with a racist system designed to keep them down. Arthur tries to convince McDaniel of the importance of the day for Blacks everywhere. Dottie ferociously attacks McDaniel for her part in perpetuating the myth of Blacks with her roles playing happy maids and slaves. She accuses her of being the worst kind of sell-out.

“I’d rather play a maid in the movies than be one in real life,” McDaniel finally fires back. She takes on these maid roles with “pride and responsibility,” she explains, as an homage to Black women and their sacrifices. She wants to show the human value of caregivers like her own mother, a former slave, who made a living mothering the children of a white family who acted like she didn’t exist. “I took those roles for me. I’d play a thousand maids to show people my mother’s worth,” she says. “I made you see them. You know them now.”

Fenelon, Smith, Williams

Eventually, McDaniel’s ambivalence about attending the ceremony wanes. She attends and (no spoilers here) wins, beating out cast mate Olivia de Havilland. The show’s closing scene projects her actual acceptance speech onto a vintage black and white TV along with speeches of ten Black actors who won Oscars since, a clever touch. Especially poignant is hearing Mo’Nique, best-supporting actress winner 70 years later for “Precious,” declare, “I’d like to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all that she had to so that I would not have to.”

Williams’ script does an excellent job of bringing us into the hearts and minds of his fictionalized characters while also conjuring up McDaniel’s conflicted viewpoint. At 100 minutes (no intermission), the play both flows and informs. Yet, given the personal pain and humiliation that accompanied her trailblazing triumph, we can’t help wondering how the real Hattie McDaniel, armed with 20-20 hindsight, might truthfully answer Dotty’s question: Was it worth it?

‘Boulevard of Bold Dreams’ — Written by LaDarrion Williams; Directed by Taavon Gamble; Scenic Design by Rachel Rose Burke; Lighting Design by Corey Whittemore; Costume Design by Klara Escalera; Sound Design by James Cannon; Property Design by Emily Allinson. Presented by the Greater Boston Stage Company at 395 Main St., Stoneham, MA through March 19.

For tickets and information, go to https://www.greaterbostonstage.org/