The gospel of the playground
Blackfriars’ cast of talented young
performers is presenting Godspell,a
wildly imaginative treatment of the Gospel according to St. Matthew.
Originally John-Michael Tebelak’s MFA
directing thesis, Godspell is “a
celebration of life.” Its clownlike youngsters play and sing joyously in an
abandoned playground as a modernized Jesus teaches them through parables. After
a seriocomic last supper, Jesus stands tied to a chain-link fence in a
mesmerizing crucifixion pantomime. But the disciples carry him out clapping and
chanting “Long Live God” fervently. It concludes with “Prepare Ye the Way of
the Lord” and joyful singing and dancing.
Tebelak wanted it to “weave God’s
spell over the audience,” and I miss his distinctive directorial touches.
Director John Haldoupis skips Jesus’ ritual daubing of clown makeup on the
players and their intermission sharing of wine/grape juice with the audience. I
hope his solemn conclusion will evolve into the authors’ intended ecstatic
statement.
Originally, Godspell had hymns and one song, “By My Side” by Peggy
Gordon and Jay Hamburger (uncredited). After two weeks off-Broadway, Godspell got songs and lyrics by Stephen
Schwartz: Songs like “Day By Day,” which listeners cant get out of their heads.
(The producers didn’t know Schwartz was Tebelak’s classmate at Carnegie-Mellon
University.) Godspell had more than
25 productions worldwide that year.
Schwartz’s notes indicate that the
set shouldn’t be elaborate or pretty, but Haldoupis’ stunning cityscape
painting is a distracting work of art. And Eli Gelo — physically slight,
spectacled, and small-voiced — is miscast as Jesus. He’s directed to deliver
his teachings straight to the audience, hardly looking at his disciples.
Several players deserve praise.
Gifted singers like Dawn M. Sargent belt out Schwartz’s songs with American Idol-style elongated phrases
and screamed-out high notes. David Anthony Vogel displays a pretty tenor. Jesse
James as Judas/John the Baptist has the charismatic command needed for Jesus.
Andy Pratt plays piano, conducts, sings, and holds things together.
And James Caito carries scenes with
super-energy and high-flying dancing. Fortunately, he wears kneepads, because
choreographer Meggins Kelley has him dropping forcefully to his knees
repeatedly. Even padded, they’re not coming out of this show the way they went
in.
It’s a good community-theater show,
but let me quote Stephen Schwartz from the script. “Jesus applies clown makeup
to their faces… [showing] that they are his disciples. Jesus removes their
makeup… [when] they have assimilated his teachings. At the end, [they are] a
community, ready and able to carry forth the lessons… If this basic dramatic
arc is not achieved, Godspell does
not exist; no matter how amusing and tuneful individual moments may be, the
production has failed.”
— Herbert M. Simpson
You
should go if
you like a musical with a talented cast, knockout solos, and a
stunning, arty set — not for those who want a copy of the original.
One cuckoo out of the nest
No bells, no whistles, no fog
machines: Instead, Ann Randolph’s one-woman show has four really engaging music
numbers, a banjo, a guitar, and one good, honest, human story. Oh, and a
paranoid schizophrenic crackhead. Squeezebox is a sweetheart of a play.
Without any costumes — unless you
count loose limbs, a changeling’s face, and a rubber spine — Randolph opens
the window of her ribcage onto a lonely heart and an early-life crisis. She
wrote the play while working nights at a homeless shelter for women with mental
illness. That job becomes the setting: We meet the lovably foul-mouthed Brandy
(the aforementioned schizophrenic who is forever telling people what’ll “cost
extra”); the sweet wife-of-a-preacher Irene with her angry garage-rock songs;
the insufferably smug, Bible-vomiting volunteer Julie.
And through it all Randolph plays
herself with tender awkwardness and humor, as a woman whose ideals are badly
losing their sheen. Ten years out of school she’s making $8 an hour to sleep on
a piss-stained coat in a homeless shelter and concoct progress notes for the
women’s files. Leading a self-esteem group becomes a joke.
Under Randolph’s skillful, honest
delivery, we really want Ann and all her fellow characters to be happy. We want
her to get past one of Mozart’s mournful adagios and back “to the third
movement.”
I don’t know if the pursed-lipped
Harold, the accordionist whose squeezebox delivers Ann’s epiphany, is a real
person or not. But I hope so; he’s hilarious and achingly dorky. (The
consummation scene at the top of the hiking peak, with the accordion and the
layers of Gortex and nylon and wool, is hysterical.)
I squirmed briefly when Ann’s life
meaning was revealed to the tune of an Aaron Copland song. But that brief
moment dissolves in Brandy’s own slurred, cigarette-swinging version of the
deceptively simple moral: “You can do it, Annie, you can do it.”
Downstairs Cabaret Theatre is proud
to have this play; they’re right to be. It has run in Los Angeles, New York
City, and Toronto, and the husband-wife team of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft
has bought the rights to a movie. No more piss-stained cots, Ann.
— Erica Curtis
You
should go if
you want an uplifting human story that is polished, but never
slick. Or, if you want to believe in the life-changing powers of the accordion.
Squeezebox Thursdays through Sundays
through May 29 | Downstairs Cabaret Theatre, 172 West Main Street | $21 |
325-4370, www.downstairscabaret.com.
This article appears in May 4-10, 2005.
