Canadian Captures Human Comedy

Canadian playwright Norm Foster continues to please his small and big town audiences south of the border. Maggie's Getting Married just finished its run at Billings Studio Theatre.

So look for the Foster name in coming seasons, extraordinary stories about ordinary people: sure to be entertaining, probably very funny with some parts a little maudlin, and usually some flare for the universal in the particulars of whatever situation he is exploring.

We have a lot of good players here in Billings: Amy Peterson, Angela Fulkerson, Elizabeth Alexander, Shawn Bettise, Zak Kreiter and Jayme C Green all did well individually and especially together, and should be counted among those good players. Their S.O. was well-deserved.

Casey Visser turned in a good job in his first chance at direction. The guys who built the set should be commended. This set really looked like the kitchen of a successful dentist, and the doors were solid, something not easy to do. Way to go guys.

I'm pretty sure we've seen at least one other play by Foster here recently, maybe The Foursome, and perhaps some others but they have slipped my mind.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention poutine. See the picture to the right. Thanks to NPR on Sunday morning I found out that this French-Canadian dish of cheese fries and gravy is fairly recent but now widespread across Canada. If I remember correctly it is used in a different, suggestive if not seductive, way in the play, several times. The context and body language left no doubt as to its meaning, sort of a single entendre. Check out the Wikipedia entry. It looks and sounds delicious.

The OutPost Likes Lumberjacks In Love

A good review of the show now on at Billings Studio Theatre is found in the latest edition of The Billings Outpost. The article is by Sharie Pyke.

I'm glad we are mostly in accord—see my blog entry of a few days ago—although Pyke's suggestion of "hints of homosexuality" seems a little off the mark. Our friends of the homosexual persuasion might have a different opinion. Perhaps those hints are so deeply hidden that only the cognoscenti can sniff them out. That cheesehead humor can sometimes be baffling.

Lumberjacks in Love at BST

It's about time the folks at BST did this funny and farcical upper Midwestern old chestnut. It takes place in northern Wisconsin and has been a regular feature since 1994 at American Folklore Theatre in Wisconsin's Door County. Don't be surprised if you are reminded of another show at BST sometime in the past couple of years: Guys On Ice.

Four lumberjacks without female companionship except for a girl who disguises herself as a boy and a mail-order bride played by the funniest lady in Billings, Sondra Baker, make up the cast. Of course the musical needs 4 guys who can sing and dance and are not afraid of making fools of themselves: Tom Wagner, Jim Martin, Vint Lavinder, and Kelly Martin fill that order admirably. I was a little surprised at how good they do sing together and singly, especially their occasional moves into barbershop harmony. Like Joe Dimaggio in centerfield elegantly chasing down a fly ball, these guys make it look easy and they are very funny. Sondra and Rachel Sitzman—the girl disguised as a boy—don't have any trouble keeping up with these guys either. That's a good thing when there are no weak players.

The audience was very appreciative with a standing ovation at the end. It will be running through the 18th at least. Come and have some fun.

Anne Frank at Billings Studio Theatre

Even if you've seen the play before, or watched the PBS version or seen the movie, this production is worth seeing. It will continue through the next couple of weekends. A little more here.

The Last Five Years at BST

Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is a two-person Sondheim-like operetta starring Lysa Fox and Kelly Martin, two of our best here in Billings. Two creative people try to make a marriage work: Jamie is the novelist in the early stages and Cathy is the aspiring actress who doesn't quite make the big time, a recipe for a difficult marriage. Music is a variety of styles often really good though not always successful in the recitative and amplified mode. I would have thought that amplification was not necessary for these two at the fairly intimate BST but perhaps it was thought to be too awkward if Lysa's voice over-powered Kelly's.

Brown borrows a little from Alan Ayckbourn in that he tells the story backwards for Cathy, starting with the seemingly inevitable breakup of the marriage, and forwards for Jamie, starting with their joyful first meeting, joining together only for the wedding scene, a nice duet. The playing with time theme is made a little too clear for the rest of us by Jamie's gift of a watch to Cathy at Christmas time but the song that goes with it, a Tailor by the name of Schmuel, a reminder of Fiddler on the Roof, was very good, especially the way Martin does it.

Lysa plays and sings well the usual story of the woman wronged. While I was watching these two excellent players and because of the fiddling with time which didn't work that well for me I couldn't help but think of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and that famous quote: "Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards. . .and in high heels!"

Piano, cello, violin and guitar make a good combo for this music and especially for the space of the BST. Worth seeing and hearing.

Importing Canadian Funny Stuff: The Long Weekend

Norm Foster is a prolific Canadian playwright, according to Wikipedia. The playbill said that BST had done one of his plays a few years ago but I couldn't remember which one. I gather they are all fairly similar. Light and funny, usually about ordinary people and their problems, capable of being done well by amateur companies, seems a reasonable summary.

The Long Weekend is playing at Billings Studio Theatre with four of our best actors, Bobbi Hawk, Vincent Ray, Vint Lavender and Lisa Halpin They play individually well and especially well with each other. The first act makes fun of a variety of young and not so young urban professional stereotypes and the second act does the same, with a few predictable changes, and it ends by making fun of the audience as well. It reminded me of an academic playwright given the assignment of doing an extended version of a Seinfeld episode, which was suggested by Jaci Webb in a recent Gazette review. There are a lot of good laughs and many smiles.

It is playing Thursday through Sunday this week and Thursday through Saturday night next week. Go see it.

Rocky Mountain College Scores Twice This Past Weekend

Last Saturday night we saw "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" sponsored by Rocky Mountain College, at Billings Studio Theatre, directed by one of our Wizards in Residence, Professor Gerry Roe. It was good, often funny, nearly always entertaining. For one thing, Roe did not try to make 20 year old students look like 50 something characters.

Music was occasionally odd as the instrumentalists sometimes appeared to be playing in a key different than the singers and sometimes against each other. Not unpleasant really. But it was a surprise to hear an excellent on-key voice on Sunday evening from the guy who was an ex-con supposedly doing his community service on Saturday with sometimes strange high-pitched sounds.

A little unusual was the selection of four not-quite-random people from the audience to join the 6 adolescents. Apparently this is the way the show has been done in the past. See the Wikipedia entry here. 

They did a little improv which usually worked OK. A major clanger was using Denny Rehberg's boating accident as the obligatory swipe at local politicians when Senator Baucus and his paramour would have been much more appropriate. Perhaps there is an unwritten rule about these things.

On Sunday evening we heard the larger Concert Choir and the smaller Chamber Singers, again from Rocky Mountain College, in a concert at St Patrick's Co-Cathedral. This was magnificent, something we almost always expect from another of our Wizards in Residence, Professor Steven Hart. There were some good solo voices at the top and bottom though occasionally some of the sopranos had difficulty blending in when that was necessary.

I like Professor Hart's little talks about each piece. These were a nice mixture of Sacred and Profane as the program suggested. The sounds at St Patrick's are very nice. The audience, fairly large, just a few less than the earlier Palm Sunday masses, were very appreciative. So much so they gave a standing ovation for both the penultimate piece, Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, and again at the end of the program.

These folks usually do something before Christmas and then concerts like this one around Easter, though they may have to call them Holiday and Spring concerts in order to maintain good PC standing and get some ink in the local paper.

Keep an eye on the Gazette for their performances next year.

Another Modest Proposal: The Producers

This was the display table on the way in to the theatre. It sort of gave away the main story line though our son Peter, who had never seen this show before, was still surprised. He is young enough that the thought of making fun of Nazis would never occur to him. Maybe our educational system has a few holes in it.

I should read the Gazette more thoroughly. Then I would have realized where the idea for the above picture came from. See below. What would we do without Google? WWWDWG?

I thought this was an old movie by Mel Brooks from the late 60s. Very funny, though I don't know how it got through the thought police. Maybe they weren't so strong in the 60s as they are today. I was pleasantly surprised when one of our local little theatres, Billings Studio Theatre (BST), started off their season a few days ago with a version of The Producers. Actually, my wife had to talk me into going, so well done Carol. The show was fantastic as it featured some of the best players we have, some good singers and some good dancers. Not sure how they did the music; some of it seemed live and the playbill mentioned the orchestra, but some of it sounded like a larger recorded orchestra. I will try to find out more on this matter.

Naturally, I turned to Google and Wikipedia and found out the original was a 1968 movie with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in the main parts. The music was terrific—"Springtime for Hitler" and "Prisoners of Love." A really great movie with all kinds of humor, poking fun at little old ladies, homosexuals, dancers, Broadway happenings and shows, and of course, everyone's favorite bad people on the left side of the aisle, the National Socialists. I guess we are all progressives nowadays. I was surprised how funny it really is, even when you've seen it before.

Well, then they did a play on Broadway starting in 2001, with Max and Leo played by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and then another movie with the same guys as the leads in 2005. They also added Uma Thurman and Will Farrell. Much of the original was kept intact though there were some changes, particularly the Hitler part, decidedly queer in the original.

I'm not sure who made the changes necessary for the smaller stage that most little theatres have but it certainly worked well for BST. I suspect the magic of Sondra Baker and Jeff Boschee had something to do with the success of the production. Kelly Martin is a perfect Leo Bloom. He is, of course, aided by Pat Schindele, Dan Jurovich,Vint Lavinder, all pros who keep things moving along very well indeed.

This looks like a good season at BST. Check out their site high-lighted above. I see "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "The Rabbit Hole," and "Guys On Ice" which are just the ones I know about. The others, eight in all, might be even better.