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Today is birthday. I am now 32 years old, and very tipsy from the many rum & cokes I had while sharing an aftershow dinner with my new family, the members of Stage88.
This past Valentine's Day, I opened my first Stage88 community theatre production on and I will be spending the later hours of my birthday on stage for our last show for this week.
Our show just got it's first review:
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Review: Conflicted script buoyed by performances
By CHRIS SILK (Contact)
8:07 p.m., Friday, February 15, 2008
It was a war of words and I’m still not sure who won. On Thursday night at Bonita Springs Community Hall, the actors in Stage 88’s production of “Moonlight and Magnolias” delivered the play’s voluminous dialogue in great wordy bursts, sending out huge gulps of verbiage as if firing pages of the script from cannons across a Civil War battlefield.
How fitting then that the subject of “Moonlight and Magnolias,” written by American Ron Hutchinson, is a farcical behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the script for “Gone With the Wind.”
The setting is 1939 and producer David O. Selznick (Jim Corsica) doesn’t have a director or a screenplay. He shanghais script doctor Ben Hecht (Gil Carrandi Jr.) and yanks director Victor Fleming (Steve Pozgay) off “The Wizard of Oz.” Selznick locks them in his office, sustained only by bananas and peanuts and demands a finished script in five days.
Hecht, the supposed word wunderkind, hasn’t read Margaret Mitchell’s book. So Selznick and Fleming resort to acting out “Gone With the Wind” for him — all 53 chapters of it. Along the way, there is a lot of slapstick comedy, epic verbal battles and an oddly poetic line about yak poop.
Corsica, Carrandi and Pozgay bring their demanding roles to life with enthusiasm. The sheer number of words required of each of them over the course of the two-hour play — especially Corsica’s Selznick — is impressive. Lucy Harris also slams doors and delivers knife-like looks with aplomb as put-upon secretary Miss Poppenghul, always finding a new way to deliver the same old line: “Yes, Mr. Selznick.”
I wish that the thin plot had offered more of an arena for the actors to showcase their range. Where Mitchell’s book used its incredible collection of characters and images to leave an indelible mark on the literary landscape, “Moonlight” falls far short in its effort to use comedy to springboard to a more important message about power, passion and identity.
The play gets locked into a “Three Men and a Typewriter” boiler-room mentality that it seems unable to escape from. Although there are plenty of laughs throughout, once the trio of men are assembled, the obvious limits of the scenario surface in a script that attempts to marry slapstick with social commentary. And very often it simply doesn’t work.
For instance, Hecht constantly badgers Selznick about ignoring his Jewish identity, which, I gather, is a way to address the fact that “Gone With the Wind” ignored the issue of slavery. A worthy topic, but one that is ultimately lost in the antics of the six-foot-plus Pozgay holding a pillow to his stomach and repeatedly screaming “I’M PUSHING” while acting out Melanie Hamilton Wilkes’ delivery during the sacking of Atlanta. If you’ve never seen a six-foot-plus man pretend to be pregnant (and wanted to), this is the place to be. Trust me here.
The play also tries to make an argument about social dynamics by using the Hollywood troika of writer, director and producer in an extended argument over having Scarlett slap her maid Prissy. Which, in the conflicted nature of the play, just turns into a three-man, multiple-angle slap-a-thon. The slapstick is done about as well as it could be but undermines their foray into a serious discussion about race. It’s a peculiar juxtaposition of bathos and logos that happens all too often in “Moonlight.”
Its an interesting concept, especially for longtime devotees of the book and the movie who will recognize familiar touchstones littering the script. There’s a lot that’s good, particularly the three lead actors, who manage to mix slapstick comedy and acres of verbiage. But no actors could be expected to completely rescue this work; the fact that Thursday’s audience seemed to genuinely enjoy the performance is a credit to Corsica, Carrandi and Pozgay.
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I so very fucking happy right now, I'm actually crying. Happy crying. Life is fan-fucking-tastic.
This past Valentine's Day, I opened my first Stage88 community theatre production on and I will be spending the later hours of my birthday on stage for our last show for this week.
Our show just got it's first review:
----------------------------------------
Review: Conflicted script buoyed by performances
By CHRIS SILK (Contact)
8:07 p.m., Friday, February 15, 2008
It was a war of words and I’m still not sure who won. On Thursday night at Bonita Springs Community Hall, the actors in Stage 88’s production of “Moonlight and Magnolias” delivered the play’s voluminous dialogue in great wordy bursts, sending out huge gulps of verbiage as if firing pages of the script from cannons across a Civil War battlefield.
How fitting then that the subject of “Moonlight and Magnolias,” written by American Ron Hutchinson, is a farcical behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the script for “Gone With the Wind.”
The setting is 1939 and producer David O. Selznick (Jim Corsica) doesn’t have a director or a screenplay. He shanghais script doctor Ben Hecht (Gil Carrandi Jr.) and yanks director Victor Fleming (Steve Pozgay) off “The Wizard of Oz.” Selznick locks them in his office, sustained only by bananas and peanuts and demands a finished script in five days.
Hecht, the supposed word wunderkind, hasn’t read Margaret Mitchell’s book. So Selznick and Fleming resort to acting out “Gone With the Wind” for him — all 53 chapters of it. Along the way, there is a lot of slapstick comedy, epic verbal battles and an oddly poetic line about yak poop.
Corsica, Carrandi and Pozgay bring their demanding roles to life with enthusiasm. The sheer number of words required of each of them over the course of the two-hour play — especially Corsica’s Selznick — is impressive. Lucy Harris also slams doors and delivers knife-like looks with aplomb as put-upon secretary Miss Poppenghul, always finding a new way to deliver the same old line: “Yes, Mr. Selznick.”
I wish that the thin plot had offered more of an arena for the actors to showcase their range. Where Mitchell’s book used its incredible collection of characters and images to leave an indelible mark on the literary landscape, “Moonlight” falls far short in its effort to use comedy to springboard to a more important message about power, passion and identity.
The play gets locked into a “Three Men and a Typewriter” boiler-room mentality that it seems unable to escape from. Although there are plenty of laughs throughout, once the trio of men are assembled, the obvious limits of the scenario surface in a script that attempts to marry slapstick with social commentary. And very often it simply doesn’t work.
For instance, Hecht constantly badgers Selznick about ignoring his Jewish identity, which, I gather, is a way to address the fact that “Gone With the Wind” ignored the issue of slavery. A worthy topic, but one that is ultimately lost in the antics of the six-foot-plus Pozgay holding a pillow to his stomach and repeatedly screaming “I’M PUSHING” while acting out Melanie Hamilton Wilkes’ delivery during the sacking of Atlanta. If you’ve never seen a six-foot-plus man pretend to be pregnant (and wanted to), this is the place to be. Trust me here.
The play also tries to make an argument about social dynamics by using the Hollywood troika of writer, director and producer in an extended argument over having Scarlett slap her maid Prissy. Which, in the conflicted nature of the play, just turns into a three-man, multiple-angle slap-a-thon. The slapstick is done about as well as it could be but undermines their foray into a serious discussion about race. It’s a peculiar juxtaposition of bathos and logos that happens all too often in “Moonlight.”
Its an interesting concept, especially for longtime devotees of the book and the movie who will recognize familiar touchstones littering the script. There’s a lot that’s good, particularly the three lead actors, who manage to mix slapstick comedy and acres of verbiage. But no actors could be expected to completely rescue this work; the fact that Thursday’s audience seemed to genuinely enjoy the performance is a credit to Corsica, Carrandi and Pozgay.
----------------------------------
I so very fucking happy right now, I'm actually crying. Happy crying. Life is fan-fucking-tastic.
excited
nostalgic
