Girl at Fringe

Posted on by Thor

Beth Marshall is directing, Girl, written by Megan Mostyn-Brown, a hard-hitting drama at this year’s Fringe. When the audience entered the Gold Venue there were three black boxes on the stage and a blue suitcase. Girl consisted of three intimate stories which create a compelling account of the female adolescent experience and what it means to be “home.”

The play opened with a young girl, Hannah (Chloe Shaw), seated on the center box. Hate and ugly were scrawled on her legs. Her sister had recently died and she was trying to come to terms with this harsh reality. Days of the week flashed on the screen above her head and we watched as she spiraled downward. She had become numb and the only reality was the feeling she got when began cutting herself. Her sister might not have lived the most exemplary life, but she began to emulate her, going so far as to buy a red-haired wig to look like her.

The second scene introduced a tom boy, Lucy (Alexa Carroll), with a Polaroid camera around her neck. She didn’t try and blend in with the upper crust snobbish girls in school, preferring to keep to herself and document the moments of her life with the camera. A group of students began talking about sex and asked, “Where is the strangest place you have done it?” Well, she hadn’t actually had sex yet, but when confronted with the question she said, “In a tree,” and was shocked that they believed her. a classmate, Isaac (Matthew Gray), later called her out in private saying she was better than that. He walked her home and they began talking as if they had been friends for years. The girl’s mom, (Sierra Vennes), sat house right and began talking about the mistakes she had made in life and how she hoped she could protect her daughter from making the same mistakes.  Ultimately, that goal is impossible.

Lydia (Rachel Comeau) performed the final scene alone. Her performance was stellar. Without going into details, I will say her story had heartbreak and pain, with hope in the end. She brought the entire audience on her emotional journey and we were faced with the harsh reality of what she had to face. She cried and laughed and tried to stay strong through it all. She is the one actress I didn’t sketch, but I just had to stop and watch her performance without the interruption of glancing down at the page. She held new life dear and close to her chest, discovering what it meant to be at home.

This was heart-wrenching theater at its best. A tour-de-force of emotions.

Girl is in the Gold Venue inside the Orlando Museum of Art, 2416 Mills Ave N, Orlando, FL 32803.

Tickets are $6 along with the $10 Fringe button.

The remaining show dates are:

7:00 PM

6:30 PM

7:00 PM

The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

Posted on by Thor

The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh is definitely not for the faint of heart. This is the 15th and final production by Beth Marshal Presents at the Winter Garden Theater (160 W Plant St, Winter Garden, FL 34787.) The play is a very dark comedy about extreme Irish nationalists who are willing to spill blood for the smallest cause. The playwright said of this play, “I was trying to write a play that would get me killed.” The program lists a blood specialist and a blood director, so I knew going in that things might get messy.

Padraic (Zack Lane) was a street smart and violent Lieutenant of the Irish Republican Army. His one love in life is his black cat named Wee Thomas. The cat was in the care of Davey (Joseph Fabian) and Donny (Don Fowler), two innocent well meaning fools who open act one as they inspect the mangled body of a dead black cat. Davey brought the cat back to their place on his bicycle and they both realize they are in very big trouble because of Padraic’s violent temper. In the next scene Padraic is torturing a suspected drug dealer so his ill temper is confirmed. It was quite uncomfortable watching an actor hang upside down while he is threatened with having a nipple cut off.

Davey and Donny try and gloss over the issue of the dead cat by finding another cat and using boot black to try and make the cat black. On his return, Padraic is met by Mairead (Rachel Comeau) who attracts him by being as violent and crazy as he is. When they argue he aims a gun at her and she aims her air gun right at his privates at close range. The stand off garners respect.

Davey and Donny are blindfolded and bound ready for execution by Padraic as they kneel on the living room floor. Violence is interrupted by more bloody violence. Three “splinter group” IRA foot soldiers are blinded and then shot in the head at point blank range. This was incredibly uncomfortable to watch especially after the recent high school shooting in Parkland Florida. I found myself lurching with each blast of the theatrical guns. It was surprising that many in the audience would laugh as someones brains were blown out. The death of the cat resulted in four other senseless murders. The loss of a pet is a harsh reminder of our mortality. In the last act Davey and Donny discover that Wee Tommy, was actually alive. They both point their guns at the cat ready to kill it after all the violence they had just witnessed. They can’t pull the triggers and they give Wee Thomas a nice big bowl of cat food.

The play clearly points to the futility and pointlessness of violence and killing. Yet its comedic tone is confusing. Change the Irish accents to southern drawls and the play could be set in our backyard. Perhaps only in America can we laugh at staged violence a week after 17 children are murdered in a south Florida school. The pointless violence in Ireland has been going on for decades and it is a harsh mirror to look in as we see how violent America is. Our love of guns is a joke to other nations of the world. The play resulted in a long discussion on the drive home followed by a radio broadcast about the gun legislation that died a senseless death. Among the bills that died were ones that would have banned assault weapons sales and expanded background checks.

The play runs through February 25, 2018.

The Whale pulls at every heart string.

Posted on by Thor

The Whale, written by Samuel D. Hunter, and Produced by Beth Marshall Presents will make its Central Florida Regional Premiere on March 18th. I arrived at a dress rehearsal about an hour before the run through of the show. Director, Rob Winn Anderson, wanted to revise several scenes that had kinks to be worked out. Ellie,Rachel Comeau read a book review she had written about Moby Dick. The play is book ended by her heart felt review, and it’s significance only becomes clear as her relation ship with her father Charlie, Michael Wanzie comes to light. The stage set by Tom Mangeri, felt like a diorama on stilts. At key moments in the play, blue and green lights would flicker on beneath the stage making it seem like the set were floating above dock moorings.

Charlie is effectively eating himself to death. His marriage to Mary, Beth Marshall, fell apart when he fell in love with another man. Estranged from his daughter, he wants to get to know her at the end of his life. He bribes her to spend time with him, by offering to help her with her school work, and offering her what turns out to be a sizable inheritance since he never leaves his apartment. Ellie is strong willed, smart, vicious, and sharp tongued but bored by school and her classmates.  She created a blog in which she complains about everyone she knows. 

Liz, Jamie Middleton, is Charlie’s health aid. She also seems scarred by life, and her morose barbed dialogue offers some of the shows biggest-laughs. Elder Thomas, Anthony Pyatt Jr. a Mormon missionary enters Charlie’s apartment to give Charlie gods word. When Liz finds Thomas preaching to Charlie she rips into his beliefs. When Ellie an Thomas meet, she manages to erode his holy facade and she has him smoking weed and confessing that he isn’t exactly who he claims to be. 


Ellie’s harsh embittered view of the world is fueled be be parents divorce. Charlie teaches an online writing course, and his lessons to his students reflect what he wishes he could pass on to his daughter. He implores his students to stop editing and rewriting every sentence. Instead, he begs them to just write from the heart. This brings us back to the moment when he asks Ellie to read her book review. The paper had been given an F because it was a review of the wrong book. Ellie was furious at her father and hadn’t bothered to read the review. She cursed her father’s request to read, not because she hated him, but because she loved him and was furious at how he had let his health go. She had written the book review years before and it highlighted how the book seemed to reflect what was happening in her own life. Although she was angered by life, this paper proved that she had a heart and cared a bout everyone around her. Anyone who could write such a heartfelt review would also have the talent to share many more stories that would touch others. My eyes welled up as she read her paper. Ellie’s eyes welled up as well. For the first time, Charlie rose from his chair and he struggled to cross the room to reach out the his daughter. She was amazing, beautiful and his life’s greatest accomplishment. 


The show combines humor with absolutely heart wrenching sadness. It celebrates what it truly means to be alive, and the strong bond of family even when it is dysfunctional. Although dark and bitter, the show also exudes hope, despite all odds. This
play was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding
New Off-Broadway Play. It won a Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play and
won a Drama Desk Special Award for Significant Contribution to Theatre.


The Whale 

March 18 to April 3, 2016

Thursday 8pm, Friday 8pm, Saturday 2pm (April 2) & 8pm, Sunday 2pm
Industry Night: Monday, March 28

Winter Garden Theatre 160 W Plant St, Winter Garden, Florida

Tickets: $21 – $28

The Whale surfaces at the Winter Garden Theater.

Posted on by Thor

On June 22, 2015, I went to the Winter Garden Theater (160 W Plant St, Winter Garden, FL) to sketch auditions for “The Whale.” March 18th will be the Central Florida Regional Premiere of this play written by Samuel D. Hunter and staged by Beth Marshal Presents. I love sketching auditions, I get to witness so many talented actors that all bring their own creative take to the characters. This isn’t a story about a great white whale, but instead an intimate look at a father daughter relationship. 

On the outskirts of
Mormon Country, Idaho, a six-hundred-pound recluse hides away in his
apartment eating himself to death. Desperate to reconnect with his
long-estranged daughter, he reaches out to her, only to find a viciously
sharp-tongued and wildly unhappy teen. In this gripping and big-hearted
drama, The Whale tells the story of a man’s last chance at redemption,
and of finding beauty in the most unexpected places. This play was
nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New
Off-Broadway Play. It won a Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play and won a
Drama Desk Special Award for Significant Contribution to Theatre.

Cast
Charlie – Michael Wanzie
Ellie – Rachel Comeau
Liz – Jamie Middleton
Elder Thomas – Anthony Pyatt Jr.
Mary – Beth Marshall

Production Team
Rob Winn Anderson – Director
Anastasia Kurtiak – Stage Manager
David Merchant – Assistant Stage Manager
Tom Mangeri – Set Design
Amy Hadley – Light Design
J.G. Lantiqua – Sound Design
Marcy Singhaus – Costume Design

Dates:  March 18 to April 3, 2016
Thursday 8pm, Friday 8pm, Saturday 2pm (April 2) & 8pm, Sunday 2pm
Industry Night: Monday, March 28 

Tickets: $21 – $28
Special pricing for opening night, Thursday performances, seniors and students.

This show contains adult language and scenes. Recommended for mature audiences.

Dog Sees God is at the Parliament House.

Posted on by Thor

The Peanuts comic strip meets Reality in “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead” at the Footlight Theatre

Orlando, Fl. The show is, an “unauthorized parody” written by Bert V. Royal and directed by David Lee, opening at the Footlight Theatre, (410 North Orange Blossom Trail Orlando, Florida). It imagines the characters from Charles M. Schulz’s beloved Peanuts’ characters 10 years later as angst fueled teenagers. But this is no comic strip!

Their names have been altered a bit but all of the characters and back story are easy to identify.

“CB”, aka Charlie Brown, (Christopher Walen) as lost his beloved dog and is struggling with existential questions of life and death and sexual identity. Piano-playing “Schroeder” is now the bullied and ostracized “Beethoven.” (Chris Metz) Matt, the “Pigpen” character, (Campbell Gilliland) is now a homophobic germophobe, “Sally” (Madeleine Elise) has gone goth and “Linus” is a Buddhist stoner (Zachary Lane). Lucy, (Rachel Comeau) once the nickel psychologist, is a feisty pyromaniac who’s been sent off to an institution.

The gang grapples with teenage realities of drug use, suicide, eating disorders, bullying, rebellion, and sexual identity, wrapped in skewered, funny, and poignant twists.

To find the rehearsal at the Parliament house, David Lee told me to walk past the back bar. I spotted an actress taking the same route and I followed her to the stage door. This was going to be a tech rehearsal with a complete run through of the show. It wasn’t a dress rehearsal, but Margaret and David showed me a publicity shot which hinted at the final costumes.  I did make a few clothing changes in the sketch. A scene where Sally performed a one woman show was funny and powerful at the same time. She was a caterpillar who dreamed not of becoming, not a butterfly, but a platypus. Her high energy was infectious. Her brother “CB” was the one high school student who didn’t fit in with any clicks yet didn’t mind being different. He questioned the meaning of life after loosing his beloved Snoopy whose red dog house sat center stage during the pre-show. The inside of the dog house glowed red as did the Plexiglas cubes which functioned as tables, chairs and platforms as needed.

I always thought that Peppermint Patty, Aka Trish (Julianne Snyder) might be a lesbian. Her valley girl mannerisms and sexy boisterousness performance left open the possibility that she and Marcy (Veronika Kelly) might hook up. They were open to sharing a guy in a threesome and it would just make sense to leave the guy out of the equation eventually. Every scene stays true to the original characters while addressing the insane and difficult world of the high school social structure. It is was like “The Breakfast Club” with Charles Schultz’s pubescent characters. When Sally gives her brother a letter from a pen pal “CS” the cast turned towards a screen with a photo of Charles Schultz. The letter reminded CB to stay true to himself despite all odds. I found myself getting choked up at this imagined gesture from a cartoonist whose time here on earth had passed. The show presented characters that I fell in love with all over again. There was loss, sorrow as well as rebellious joy. It packed an emotional punch. Good grief, so don’t miss it.

WHAT:
“Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead” is directed by David Lee, assistant directed by Gabriella Juliet Beals and produced by Kangagirl Productions-Margaret Nolan. Graphics and photography by Jocelynn White, sound design by Rachel Comeau, set design by David Lee, and costume assistance by Kyla Swanberg.

WHEN:
Saturdays- August 1, 8, 15 and 22 @7:30PM | Industry Night- Monday, August 24 @7:30PM

WHERE:
The Footlight Theatre, Parliament House 410 N. Orange Blossom Trail | Orlando, FL 32805

TICKETS:
$10 Advance | $15 at the door | Admission to the Parliament House.