My Spirits Soar (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy! 

All I knew about this show going in was 1. It was a musical, and 2. Based on Oscar Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost" (which has previously been adapted many times).

So all I expected was fun.  Which it is.  Happily, it proved far more.

My Spirits Soar updates the tale from the Victorian Age to our own, but also re-imagines the structure of the plot to give us a double love story, and frankly a far less melancholy end, while updating teh humor in many ways.

Here is the thing.  I could nitpick this show in so many ways--some plot holes, inconsistent world-building, a tone that sometimes doesn't work, a few elements of characters that are only mildly explored or in some cases just dropped.  Despite any such details, though, the story is full of heart.  I ended up not only moved by the story, but genuinely invested in both love stories--very much so.  Enough to cry.

Essentially Virginia Otis (Abigail Stewart), an American student, wins a place to study art at London's Royal Academy, while working at a notoriously haunted castle called Canterville.  Almost immediately she meets the penniless young Duke of Canterville (Casey Alcoser) as well as the genuine ghost, Sir Simon (Kevin Spirtas).  Said ghost is himself haunted, having only days left to solve a puzzle and thus lift a (not-at-all specfic) curse which keeps him trapped in the castle, a curse his wife Lucinda (Savannah Mortenson) laid upon him as she lay dying.  These four are the two couples, with Virginia and the Duke each trying to bring the two ghosts together--although the two cannot at present even perceive each other.  

Near the end of Act One, the song Sir Simon and Lucinda sing "The Stages of Love" in which neither one can see the other, marked when this show went from entertaining to heart-wrenching.  At least in my eyes.  Nor did it ever stop holding onto my heart, even amid corny jokes and some questions I never really felt got answered.  

Stewart captured very well the plucky young woman afraid of nothing save romance, a heart so full her instant reaction to meeting Sir Simon is see if she can help him.  Alcoser came across as not quite bumbling so much as awkward, lonely within a brittle shell this brash American girl instantly starts to crack  Spirtas has, honestly, was has got to be the most fun part--overly dramatic, chewing every inch of scenery, yet genuinely without any real hope of seeing his beloved again.  Mortenson plays pretty much the last character to appear, and successfully haunts the whole story, revealing a startling amount of nuance and levels throughout.  These four, apart from serving as romantic leads, also give a strong example of what makes the entire performance so delightful--they obviously are having so much fun!

So too the rest of the cast--Catherine McClenahan, Rob Schmann, Sara Bruce, Brian Paul "BP" Mendoza, Oceane Rose Laurent, Sean Michael Williams, and Marc Antonio Pritchett.  Everyone is having a gas, and we the audience join in!  Then, and again here is the biggest reason for a recommendation, our hearts are captured.  We want Sir Simon to find Lucinda, just as we hope so very much for Virginia and the Duke to find a way to get together. 

Spoiler.  They do.

My Spirits Soar plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm plus Sundays at 2pm through November 2, 2025 at the The Group Rep Theatre (Main Stage) at 10900 Burbank Blvd., NoHo, California 91601.

Unsex Me "Hamlet" (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

Kinda/sorta.  I mean, odds are already know the plot, amiright?  

Now, I rarely review readings, in part because it hardly seems fair when the effort in ongoing to create a final draft of the play being read.  Usually.  

But not this time.  Unsex Me Here Theatre is a new troupe, centered in and around folks all too often ignored/under-used in live theatre.  Namely--women, trans, and nonbinary individuals.  This reading of Hamlet went all in, casting exclusively from exactly those individuals.

First, let me say this was a good Hamlet, far better than many professional productions I've seen.  The cast is fairly gi-normous, due to the fun little bit of casting multiple women in the role of the melancholy Dane (fun fact--the 1920 silent film of this play was Danish, and starred a woman in the title role).  Shakespeare's original is also a very long work, often reaching three and a half hours, whereas this cut quite nicely ended up being almost exactly two hours.  

What it particularly--and given the avowed mission of UMH in no way startling--wanted to convey was how much of the story focuses on how masculinity is defined, or more accurately how its definition is evolving.  Hamlet's initial impulse upon learning of his father's murder is to seek revenge/justice.  But he is more cunning than to simply go and commit regicide.  He decides to pretend to be mad--not difficult considering just how many issues with which he's dealing--and in the process increasingly is declared "woman-ish" i.e. weak, unstable, unreliable, incoherent, to be pitied.  Yet here also in this play we have two fascinating characters written as female, each pushed to the sidelines and ultimately slain (along, recall, with most of the rest of the cast).  

Gotta say methinks director Emily Asher Kellis is on to something here.  Enough to make me long to see her given the resources for a full production.  Here is the cast in total, with a few notes:

Hamlet #1- Krisha Deaver
Hamlet #2- Taylor Jackson Ross
Hamlet #3- Shannon Lee Clair
Hamlet #4- Alexandra Helquist
Hamlet #5- Victoria Hoffman
Hamlet #6- Peggy Flood
Hamlet #7- Bridget Garwood
Hamlet #8- Libby Letlow
Hamlet #9- Kat Johnston
Hamlet #10- Amanda Noriko Newman (For the record I refuse to even try to declare which of these is my "favorite" Hamlet, because all were uniquely themselves)
King- Debba Rofheart (Have seen her play Kings in Shakespeare before, and adore how each has been so individual, so complex, but never pretending).
Queen- Elizabeth Dennehy (Kudos for doing so well with what is often an almost invisible role, at least in many productions--yet I saw her putting the pieces together of events around her, and it broke her heart)
Polonius- Michelle Grey
Horatio- Juls Hoover (Gorgeous how this, often little more than a spear carrier, became a vivid and very specific human being with a strong connection to all her Hamlets).
Ophelia- Kaite Brandt (One of my favorite Ophelias ever--I mean it.  Were she given full rehearsal time I would expect to be awestruck.)
Laertes- Lindsay Zana (Actually my favorite Laertes of all time, one of the two most difficult roles in the play, yet done with such nuance and commitment I believed in this version more than any other I've ever seen).
Ghost/Player1/Captain- Xiomara Bernard
Rosencrantz/Messenger/Osric- Jen Rowe
Guildenstern/Doctor/Sailor- Zoo Holstrom
Stage Directions- Veronica Carey Matthews

Forgive me for not giving a breakdown of everyone, not even the actors I know and have praised in the past.  What I want to do most of all is to praise the whole idea of this new theatre company, especially given current events.  I also understand their mission down to my bones.  Every audition I've ever attended, women outnumbered men, yet the vast majority of plays it is the exact opposite--often with few if any women at all.  When I decided a certain character in a play which I myself wrote should be either transgender or non-binary, I got a startling amount of pushback.  In a time when powers seek to de-humanize women, trans, and nonbinary human beings, lifting them up and highlighting their talents, choices, and skills seems profoundly useful, wise, and kind. 

'Tis a consummation devotely to be wished.

Join me in wishing for more!  I understand they have plans for Othello...another deeply topical play under the circumstances.

Fallen Saints: Tales of Blaze City (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!

For those of you who don't know, Force of Nature Productions creates a series of immersive experiences each year under the general title Fallen Saints, followed by a specific title, which this year is Tales of Blaze City.  

Past iterations have included visits of Salem during the Witch Trials, or an Irish pub on the night a female vampire comes to visit.  This year, we enter into a world of a super hero comic book, on a quest to find what is wrong with this world and somehow heal its moral and psychic wounds. 

Twenty people at a time are led into the weird monochromatic reality that is Blaze City, with three different 'guides' showing the way.  On my excursion, our guide was a costumed vigilante known as Black Jay--and kudos the the designers of this world not least for her costume.

Audience members do more than watch and listen, but to some extent interact with the characters and situations--which increasing disturb.  Well, we are nearing Halloween after all...

Did I enjoy myself?  Yes!  The relatively small space involved wove a startling spell of hope and despair, in an extremely noir atmosphere.  I had a lot of fun that night am tempted to go again to see if I can experience it via a different guide.

Written by Tyler Biachi and directed by Sebastian Munoz, the cast (who run a gamut from super villains to ghost children, innocent victims and struggling mental patients) consists of Chris Brosnan, Dina Cataldi, Ron Gabaldon, Marlo Johnson, Klaire Johnson, Teresa Jusino, Michael Guthrie Minty, Tricia Guthrie Minty, Michelle Miyamoto-Galván, Xander Kesinger, Ash Muñoz, Melissa Muñoz, William Lopez Muñoz, Carly Nahin, Matthew Scheel, Roger Thomsen, Heather Vazquez, Sebastian Vazquez, and Anne Westcott-Navarrette.

Tales of Blaze City plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, 9pm, and 10pm until September 27, 2025 at Sawyer’s Playhouse 11031 Camarillo St North Hollywood, CA 91602

@fonprods

Masala Dabba (review)

Spoilers ahoy! 

 Here's a fun fact.  Trying to guess the meaning of this play's title, Masala Dabba, I was guessing it referred to an Indian recipe of some kind which becomes the focus of some inter-generational tension, probably played out in and around and about a restaurant.

I was almost totally wrong.

The title is much better than that, referring instead to a traditional Indian spice box. So rather than refer to a specific food, it calls back to the ingredients which make up those dishes you yourself choose to make or consume.

A far better metaphor.  Wendy Graf's play does indeed focus on a family--Nishi Byrd (Ansuya Nathan), her husband Charlie (Timylle Adams), their daughter Tina (Jon Joseph Gentry), and Nishi's mother Aditi Dashi (Nandina Minocha) who has come all the way from a small village in India to visit her daughter's family for the very first time in Berkeley.  You can probably guess already some secret strain vibrates between Nishi and Aditi.  It doesn't help when the latter makes some comments which could easily come across--and are interpreted as--racist about her African American son-in-law.

One might expect such a set-up to flow in a certain direction, a plot outline governing the shape and tenor of each scene.  I want to emphasize this play breaks those rules, a fact I found very refreshing.  The ebb and flow remains mostly subtle, albeit unmistakable.  Each scene ends on what clearly is supposed to feel like a tender cliffhanger, a hint of secrets to learn, pains to be understood.  And they are that.

Here comes my only real complaint.  The production falls into a series of traps, which altogether do not (I want to make that very clear--do NOT) unravel what the writer and actors are doing.  But there are hiccups.  Many scenes are quite brief, and between them are (rather short) set shifts that distracted.  The set included an elaborate window piece in the back, which gave a sense of what this home felt like but did nothing else.  More, since the stage had this glorious cyclorama directly behind the set, I longed for the colors there to change in reference to what was happening on stage.  Better yet--projections onto that surface (if that is feasible which I don't know).  

This is a fairly subtle complaint.  Yet the impact, while subtle, was felt and gave me some trouble entering into the tale.

Fortunately, I liked the characters and found the hints of mystery compelling, with a slow series of revelations which tugged at my heart.  Central to all this is Tina meeting her grandmother for the very first time, who finds startling bliss in getting to know her grandchild.  Tina, eager to learn about her mother's heritage, discovers something new and exciting, and the thrill of that feels very real, very moving.  Just as the resentments between mother and daughter never feel formulaic, but indeed very logical.  This play does not relate the coming of a storm, but a shifting of a tide.  And there is much beauty in that.  Beauty and sadness.  Anger and forgiveness.  Confession and, yes, cooking.

Central is the Masala Dabba brought from India which ends up an important talking point, not least because the stories associated with each spice.  Very intimate, very thought- and emotion-provoking.  

Masala Dabba plays Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays at 2pm until September 14, 2025 at the International City Theatre, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach, CA 90802.