Backwards, in High Heels or Not

Every time there’s a standing ovation in Tucson maybe a third of the people are actually that enthusiastic, the others are trying to get to their cars more quickly. There was a standing ovation to the exit at Backwards In High Heels, the splashy, energetic and vivacious bio-musical of Ginger Rogers put up last night by The Arizona Theatre Company, the State Theatre of Arizona. I cannot tell you how much I like the fact that we have a State Theatre of Arizona, and how Soviet that sounds. Well, we do and it is. It is the duty of any reviewer, I feel, to report that others seemed to enjoy The State Theatre’s production of Backward In High Heels a great deal.  

ATC has done some brilliant work in its time (The Clean House, for example). It may this season, but it’s not Backwards In High Heels. The cast is full of stunningly talented people performing—in many cases --classic songs and dance routines beautifully for a pointless, embarrassing and hackneyed narrative loosely based on Ginger Rogers’ life. I thought of the scene at the end of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (the only musical bio anyone should ever endure), where we race through Fosse’s life, and I miss it, folks, I miss it. Whatever Ginger Rogers’ life was like, her early dancehall circuit, her tetchy relationship and phenomenal success with Fred Astaire, her sensible acting career moves, her relationship to her mother and her many marriages, I found that I can’t possibly care  if it’s told so numbingly and cynically as this purported musical does. There is no suspense in a biography, with regards to whether someone will succeed. The attendant drama in a life such as Ginger Rogers’ may only exist in our uncreative speculation. I went home and Netflixed Top Hat.

Now I don’t expect ATC to do a Michael LaChuisa musical. But they will do one musical a year and it will be safe (even Hair, which was very well done). They’ll have the black show. They’ll have the Jewish show. Sometimes the black or Jewish show will be the musical. I ain’t misbehaving here. I’m not the cynical one. I haven’t seen so much in the way of the Mexican or Latino show, though their offices are 75 miles from the border. What would a brilliant ATC season look like? What would a production of Valdes’ Zoot Suit look like? Where’s Marie Irene Fornes? How about Rudolpho Usigli? Who? Not since La Malinche in 1996-97 have they made any attempt to do a show with Latino roots. The State Theatre of Arizona is representative of the state we’re in. Oh, I’m kidding. I’ll face the music and dance.

Anna Aimee White is a brilliant performer and her take on Ginger Rogers, beautiful singing, flawless dancing, were all very welcome. Matthew LaBanca plays--  and come on, sorry Ginger, but what do we really care about? You AND  –Fred Astaire, and he’s a bit hardy for the slight graceful iconic dancer. Mr. LaBanca sings well, moves well, but he’s not Fred Astaire. Presenting the challenge of emulating brilliant dancers and performers can itself be a kind of folly.  Their duets should have been the awe-inspiring moments of the show, but were not. Ginger danced better alone in this universe. Competent, playful, maybe even outstanding, but not Astaire and Rogers.

There’s nothing wrong with The State Theatre of Arizona being a little silly. Christianne Tisdale was boffo imitating a slew of famous starlets at a lemonade party. Benjie Randall and James Patterson danced and performed well, playing the kind of Broadway version of what we now assume people were like in the Great Depression. Sort of like the poor singing and dancing in Les Miserables, we needn’t dwell on that so much. Finally, Poor Heather Lee had to play Ginger Rogers’ mom, Lelo, and make every effort to douse the fun and bring us back to dramatic reality. This uniquely talented actress delivered lines seemingly taken from the Broadway Archive of Troubled Mother and Daughter Clichés, and she did so gracefully and thoughtfully. Thank you, Ms. Lee, thank you.   

Backwards In High Heels is fun. It’s not $45 fun, but it’s fun. It is my own personal failing that I gag a little at talented people performing cloying nonsense like this. Theatre started out as a church and is ending up like a really expensive night of very talented karaoke.  Don’t believe me? Check out American Idiot. I recommend Backwards in High Heels if you prefer your theatre light and breezy. There is a terrifying trend on the American stage, where we stop and wink at the audience, as if all art forms are camp and all passions are suspect. One moment in tonight’s show, Lelo striking her daughter Ginger, passed by unremarked. We needn’t get the whole life. What if this musical were about Fred and Ginger making the movie Shall We Dance?  I stood at the end of Backwards in High Heels and I applauded for those brilliant performers, wonderful musicians and sweet choreography, but not for Ginger, and no not for ATC.

--T. Ulises-Soto

The Dark Shining City

Beowulf Alley Theatre has, for two years running, been cursed with a little bad luck in their opening productions. That bad luck has a name but you won’t see us report it here. I say bad luck, but to be clear, in both cases the issue resolved itself to the company’s gain. Last year’s production of Albee’s Seascape had much to admire and this year’s production of Conor McPherson’s Shining City does as well. While I’m making a list of things to admire, I’ll begin by tipping my hat for doing this play as a season opener. Shining City is a haunting, elegiac play about love, loss and the travails of miscommunication. McPherson, like Pinter or Mamet, often peoples his plays with beautifully inarticulate characters, whose inability to express themselves becomes a sort of poetry in itself. Shining City is not an easy play to do. I am grateful for theatre companies that take risks and seek challenges. And Beowulf Alley takes risks.

John, a widower, comes to a therapist’s office to seek relief. He has seen his late wife’s ghost. Racked by guilt and remorse, he is literally haunted by the events that lead to her death and his crushing grief. Ian, a former priest with a few regrets himself, attempts to help him but struggles with his own demons as well. The play is deceptively simple but I was impressed by director Susan Arnold’s trust in her actors. There is no pointless roaming of the stage or forced histrionics. Beowulf Alley Theatre is a comfy cozy ninety-nine seat theater. The actors act the length and breadth of the space.



David Greenwood assumed the role of John late in the rehearsal by all accounts. His performance, while still raw, is emotionally honest and moving. Greenwood makes honest choices, no doubt with help from director Arnold, who coaxed outstanding performances out of her Last of the Boys cast. This is a role that is almost impossible to do with little rehearsal. I saw this production opening night (Saturday, 9-11) and intend to see it again on closing night. Greenwood’s performance will grow. Candidly, it was incomplete Saturday night. I suspect it will be outstanding for the rest of the run. Don't miss it.



Jared Stokes as Ian, the priest turned therapist, has a slightly more problematic performance. Stokes' Ian is complex and troubled. He is doing subtle things with excellent use of his body and posture. But McPherson is Irish and the Shining City is Dublin. The four actors in this performance must accomplish the brogue (Beowulf’s also doing McDonagh’s Beauty Queen of Leanane) without sounding like a Lucky Charms ad. Stokes struggles with this. It distracts and detracts from a subtle performance. A very naturalistic play becomes less so under the influence of dodgy accents. Laura Lippman and Lucas Gonzalez both impress in minor parts. While they, too, were hardly authentic in their accented speech, they maintained character integrity. Gonzalez has grown as an actor and needs a real challenge. Laura Lippman brought fantastic energy and passion to her scene. Shining City is a delicate play, the performances are everything.


The set was serviceable and the lighting subtle and well done. There are some special lighting effects toward the end of the play that seem a bit overwrought. Director Arnold makes unfortunate choices with the scene changes, elongating them with pointless striking of minor props, all done by Stokes. The ghost story needs pace and the ending loses any punch and much sense if one doesn’t arrive there in reasonable amount of time.



Shining City is a poignant study in Irish Catholic guilt, the mysteries of fate, life and death, told in a language both inarticulate and soaring. Beowulf Alley Theatre’s production will ripen this weekend and soar. This production has great merit and sometimes it becomes necessary for a critic to review the audience. We should as playgoers seek these plays of craft, performances of subtlety and productions of risk as well as our need for entertainment and light. Shining City is dark, dark and beautiful. And Beowulf Alley lets it sparkle in the gloaming.

Buy Tickets to Shining City

---Jem Street

Go Ahead, Play With a Cobra

Girish Karnad's fabulist play Naga Mandala (Play with a Cobra) is a wonderful and curious mixed bag of mythology, folktale, social statement, humorous irony and post-Modernism. Or in simpler terms, Karnad steals a few old stories and calls ironic attention to the process of playwrighting, theater and storytelling. The central old story in question is the not-exactly-primed-for-a-happy-ending tale of a young bride seduced away from her abusive husband by a cobra. It is a fairy tale, and like Karnad’s brilliant use of characters from The Mahabharata in his play Yayati, he comments delicately on modern Indian marriage. And he is very funny.

This play is not difficult to watch or understand. Rogue’s Samuel Beckett productions seem more foreign than Naga Mandala. The set is breathtakingly colorful with a large, raked mandala (superbly painted by Amy Novelli) as the house of the couple. The costumes are beautiful. And there are puppets. The cobra of the title comes to vivid life in the work of puppeteer Matt Cotten. Masks designed by Aaron Cromie are comic in the minor characters and supple enough in the leads to be dramatically useful. It’s something of a shock when they take them off. Cindy Meier has directed this play beautifully. The staging is appropriately presentational and by turns natural. It is competent and confident work, deserving of praise.



I want Rogue’s production of Naga Mandala to be successful because it’s a fine piece of world drama. Visually interesting (there’s a giant snake, for God’s sake), poetically charged and often hilarious. If you can, see this play. It’s worth the money and the time.



I found Brian Taraz and Jill Baker utterly charming and fully realized as son and mother. Minor characters trodding into the main action, their performances were wonderful. Taraz is an interesting actor, imminently watchable and physically astute to his characterization. Jill Baker does the comic heavy-lifting and though she wears a mask, she seems almost like a puppet herself. She performs with both voice and body, transforming a comic mask to a character of richness and pathos. As the three flames (and judges) Avis Judd, Kristina Sloan and Jenny Wise are a pleasant spark to the production, gratefully bringing energy to scenes and masque-like interludes.



Ah yes, now the question of the leads. Patty Gallagher plays Rani, the hapless wife. Ms. Gallagher has wonderful physical control, both of her body and voice. Having seen Ms. Gallagher work before I am fairly sure I know what she is capable of and yet there seems in her performance a hollowness not seen before. Her performance lacks passion. I’ll concede that may be intentional. The original source materials for Naga Mandala were literally stories for children. We do not necessarily see the passion of Rapunzel either or the undying love of Cinderella, only the slow crawl to happily ever after. But Karnad is too clever for that and writes against folktale reductions in both this play and others. It is somewhat amazing that the character could be sleeping with a Cobra-Man and somehow that would lack any vestige of sensuality. Yes, the sari is unwrapped and it is very theatrical, but too cool.



Joe McGrath plays Appanna, the abusive husband. He also plays the Cobra having transformed himself to look like the husband. More patient and loving, the Cobra as Man lacks any semblance of his former self. He is, well, a slightly more lackluster version of the cruel Appanna. In McGrath’s characterization of Cobra and Man there was no sensuality, no passion and no physical change from one character to the next. Joe is one of the finer actors in Tucson and also the Artistic Director of Rogue. But I wonder how long the company can support miscasting him. The actor who might play three parts wherein one of them is a snake ought to have more physicality, more vocal control. It was disappointing that the only hints of the Cobra-Man’s former snakey self were light jokes. This character and this production deserve a physically astute actor with strong comedic skills. If Mr. McGrath’s poetic flights and choric speech had been more accomplished the casting would have made a little more sense. Joe’s a great actor but he was miscast.



That being said Naga Mandala is still thoroughly enjoyable. There are rich performances. It is wonderfully staged, beautifully realized and professionally accomplished. It was, however, like its subject matter, just a little too cold-blooded.

Buy Tickets to Naga Mandala

--T. Gonzalez