Monday, April 29, 2019

Bootless Hosts Parody of Child Pageantry with "Honey"

By Mike Logothetis
"Logo" grew up in North Wilmington, performing in school and local theater productions. He lives in Newark, but you can find him wherever the arts are good.


Over the weekend (April 26-28, 2019), Trolley Square’s underground theater, Bootless Stageworks, offered its space to stage a very funny new musical called Close Your Legs, Honey. From Friday night through the Sunday matinee, a pre-teen beauty pageant was taking place in the basement of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church.

The show follows girls in a Tennessee pageant as they dance, sing, answer interview questions, pose for the judges, and spend time backstage. In the cut-throat world of child pageants, the young ladies are the heroines as well as the villains in this short musical. But the focus is on little Honey and her commanding “Mama,” who was a beauty queen in her youth.

Show co-creator Hannah Parke plays the titular Honey perfectly. In Honey, we see a child trying to please her demanding mother (Katherine Perry) as well as step forward in her own voice. Honey has an innocent, but independent streak and can’t always understand why the other pageant girls don’t really like her. Jenna Kuerzi (Sweetie), Colleen Murphy (Angel), and Kendyll Young (Baby) act wonderfully as foils to Parke’s Honey. Each girl has her own personality quirks and demons.

Smarmy host (Grant Struble) keeps the action rolling, introducing each segment of the pageant. A lot of the fun comes through visions provided by Mama’s “go-go juice.” Each time she and/or Honey sip a little too much, Tennessee’s own Dolly Parton (Camille E. Young) appears before them. Dolly has some of the best songs in the show and commands the stage, just like in real life.

The physical humor in the show was outstanding. Having adults portray children’s eccentricities in a blocked and choreographed musical is not easy. Movements need to be precise and children are anything but that. The women portraying the pageant girls were off-step as contestants, but right on cue when backstage 
 i.e., not being judged. Kudos to director/co-creator Shamus Hunter McCarty and choreographer Dana Kreitz for their work portraying little kids doing anything to please adults.

The final musical number has the pageant girls rejecting the pageant system and their parents to rebelliously embrace who they are. But who’s the pageant winner? In the end, the audience wins and the cast and crew deserve a big round of applause.

Bootless Stageworks did not produce this traveling show, but offered its space to share the fun with Delawareans lucky enough to have attended. The book, music, and lyrics to Close Your Legs, Honey were written by Parke and McCarty. Orchestrations and arrangements were by Damien Figueras and Matthew Mastronardi provided additional music. Eleanor Safer was the stage manager for this short theatrical run in Wilmington. It’s no surprise the show was a hit at the 2018 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

For more information on the musical, visit www.closeyourlegshoney.com.

Bootless is a collaborative group of self-proclaimed theater geeks that are always looking for the strange, unusual, weird 
 but always entertaining — adventure in live theater, comedy and music. 

Visit www.bootless.org for a list of future events and shows.

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Go Back to the '90s with CTC's Wacky & Wild "Pub Plays"

Legendary O'Friel's Irish Pub
owner Kevin Freel emcees
Pub Plays.
Photos: Jim Coarse/Moonloop Photoggraphy
By Mike Logothetis
"Logo" grew up in North Wilmington, performing in school and local theater productions. He lives in Newark, but you can find him wherever the arts are good.


Party at the pub like it’s 1993 with City Theater Company (CTC)! CTC wraps its 25th season with “Pub Plays” — a love letter/throwback to the company’s early days downtown at O’Friel’s Irish Pub. In fact, former pub owner Kevin Freel acts as a host/historian for the production, speaking at the onset and at other intervals between the five short plays.

The evening showcases a full program of plays in a nod to CTC’s tradition of comedic, experimental, and new works. Both Delaware and national playwrights’ works are presented.

The featured plays (in order) are: Sure Thing by David Ives; Beef Junkies by Jonathan Dorf; Green Eggs and Mamet by Matt Casarino; All About Emily by Drury Pifer and Betty by George Tietze.

Adiah Simpson 
in CTC's Pub Plays.

Tietze is also the director of “Pub Plays.” His
Betty is a new original work, in which he stars as David along with Adiah Simpson (HerBot6000) and the disembodied voice of Mary Catherine Kelly (Betty). The work provides an interesting look at artificial intelligence (or a higher being?) trying to be human, but unable to understand the subtleties of humanity. Simpson’s physical performance is superb. Her neutral face with programmed expressions and movements is mesmerizing. Tietze’s David is a sympathetic character, but also makes the audience wonder if this setting is in a prison or sanitarium or futuristic apartment complex. The staggered ending is a clever theater construct which adds to the story and the underlying question about the nature of the relationship between David and Betty.


Another good pairing of actors was in the opening Sure Thing starring Rebecca Cook and Anthony Paparo (photo at right). David Ives has written a comedy of opportunity and potential happening between a man and woman during a chance encounter. Bill and Betty may or may not be looking for companionship in a series of micro-conversations (along one arc) with alternate reactions and results. It’s a fun mixture of Groundhog Day and Mad Libs. 

Paparo has a sleezier turn in a second two-actor play with David C. Hastings. Green Eggs and Mamet is Delaware playwright Matt Casarino’s experiment in rewriting Dr. Seuss’ "Green Eggs and Ham” as if David Mamet had penned it. Clever wordplay, literary references, and mystery bounce between the two men who meet at a bar. There is a lot of cursing that rhymes!

Beef Junkies is a twisted and bizarre tale by Jonathan Dorf that seems to take place in an apocalyptic future devoid of meat 
 beef, chicken, pork, fish, and ostrich(!). Kerry Kristine McElrone (Cowgirl) twitches her way into your brain, jonesing for freshly killed beef from the last cow on Earth. Her partner in crime is Tietze (Cowboy), a conniving man intent on getting his due through any means. Shepherd, played by Christopher Banker, is the only sympathetic/kind character and is willing to do anything to protect his charge. Can Betty the Bovine and Sal the Salmon be saved?

The late Drury Pifer’s All About Emily takes a long path to make a straightforward point about the not-so-disparate world of academic minds and mental institutionalization. From the get-go, the audience knows zaniness is afoot with the male characters being played by women and the women by men 
 save for the lone, sane PhD student Cindy, played by Cook. Professors McClack (Allyson Sands), McDingbat (Tricia Sullivan), and Nougat (Kelly) speak nonsensically with conviction based in their learned heads. Sentences like: “I only give A’s…Why subvert the system?” dominate the stage, along with a lot of flies to swat! Emily Dickinson (Banker) is a joy to watch spew bizarre statements (about seducing cabbages) while in feminine poses. But the overarching joke gets stale and runs a tad long even with the actors doing wonderful physical comedy. I can only conclude by saying, “Aloha!”

CTC specializes in intimate, immersive theater, and “Pub Plays” is able to connect with the audience through these five interesting vignettes. City Theater Company has more production space in Studio One than in its previous “Black Box” location, but the action remains in the forefront and close to the audience.

A bar set inside the "pub" offers a wide selection of soft and alcoholic drinks to enjoy during the show. Twin Lakes Brewery Company will provide complimentary beer tastings at the May 3 and 4 performances.

“Pub Plays” continues tonight (April 27, 2019) and will conclude its two-week run from Wednesday through next Saturday (May 1-4, 2019). All performances begin at 8:00pm. The show runs about 2.5 hours, which includes one “Colossal CTC Bonus Super One-Time Scene Change.” 


City Theater Company’s new home — Studio One at the Grand Opera House — is located at 818 North Market Street, Wilmington, DE 19801. General admission is $30, and tickets can be purchased at the box office or online. Special ticket pricing is available for military personnel, students, and youth (ages 15 & under). But be advised for younger audience members: Some content contains coarse language, alcohol consumption, drug references and sexual situations.

Call The Grand Box Office at 302.652.5577 or visit thegrandwilmington.org for details.

Friday, April 26, 2019

Sensational Singing Steals the Stage at the Music School

By Christine Facciolo
What do you get when members of the voice faculty of The Music School of Delaware come together for an evening of song? A night of “Sensational Singing.”

Sopranos Joanne Ward and Marybeth Miller, alto/jazz vocalist Maria Rusu, countertenor Augustine Mercante and bass Colin Armstrong offered a program that spanned every conceivable genre and period: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, jazz, folk and Broadway.

Ward, who chairs the voice faculty, applied her strong, crystalline soprano to a set of contemporary songs that traced the journey of a couple from their courting days (Seymour Barab’s setting of James Stevens’ poem "The Daisies” from his song cycle The Rivals) to commitment (Norman Dello Joio’s setting of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s How Do I Love Thee) to their parting through death (Gwyneth Walker’s setting of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar).

Ward lightened the mood with Sheldon Harnick’s contemporary madrigal The Ballad of the Shape of Things. Richard Gangwisch’s piano winked while Ward’s vocal — wisely 
— played it straight. Marvelous!

Ward and Miller then combined their very different sopranos in a rendering of Lucy Simon’s Clusters of Crocus/Come to My Garden from "The Secret Garden.”

Miller returned a bit later applying her ethereal soprano to John Corigliano’s Three Irish Folksong Settings: I. The Sally Gardens, II. The Foggy Dew and III. She Moved Through the Fair. Corigliano’s “otherworldly” approach evoked a journey through an alien landscape. The songs pitted Miller’s voice against the rhapsodic line of Melinda Bowman’s flute, placing these well-known folk tunes in a new environment.

Miller showed off her versatility joining with alto Maria Rusu in an energetic rendering of Wrong Note Rag from Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town.

Countertenor Augustine Mercante offered two bittersweet selections with Schubert’s In Abendrot and Alec Wilder’s Blackberry Winter, countertenor David Daniels’ signature song. Although it is a song of joy, In Abendrot is a leave-taking song, moving us to tears as it reminds us of the fleeting beauty of a sunset — and of our own mortality.

Mercante does not just sing (albeit exquisitely) a lyric so much as he lives and loves it. That depth became evident in his emotional and mature exploration of Wilder’s Blackberry Winter with its pained realization of “I’ll never get over losing you/But I’ve learned that life goes on.”

Mercante opened his set with A Chloris by Reynaldo Hahn, who as ex-lover of Marcel Proust, has much to share about separations, sentiments and remembrance.

Bass Colin Armstrong treated the students of singing in the audience with a concert rendition of Amarilli, mia bella, the most well-known of Giullio Caccini’s solo madrigals and a staple of just about every vocal teacher. It was a nice change to hear it so beautifully delivered in performance.

Armstrong also offered a rendition of the nostalgic I’ll Be Seeing You. He decided to include the rarely heard chorus, which opens with the line “Cathedral bells were tolling/And our hears sang on/Was it the spell of Paris/Or the April dawn?” An eerie reminder of what had just happened in the City of Lights two days earlier.

Armstrong’s set also included J.S. Bach’s So du willst from Aus der tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131 which he performed with Maria Rusu.

Then it was Rusu’s time to shine and shine she did in a set of jazz classics, including On Green Dolphin Street and Tony Bennett’s signature The Good Life by Sasha Distel. Her scatting skills were amply displayed in Sandu, by trumpet great and Wilmington native Clifford Brown.

The evening concluded with an a capella performance of the soaring Make Our Garden Grow, from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.

For more magic of music, see www.musicschoolofdelaware.org

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

"HONK" If You Like DTC's New Family Production -- We Do!

By Guest Bloggers Erin, Ellie & Maggie Lacey
Erin is a mom of 4 kids and works as a Business Processor for Point to Point Wealth Management in Wilmington. When not at work or home, she can usually be found costuming her kids' shows at the Delaware Children's Theater. Ellie is an 8th Grade Vocal Major and Maggie is a 7th Grade Piano major at Cab Calloway School of the Arts.


Have you ever felt like an ugly duckling, like you are different and you don’t fit in? That pretty much describes me from age 9 to age 16. Gangly, with a bad perm and glasses, I devoured stories like The Ugly Duckling to help keep the hope alive that some day I would fit in. 


The HONK cast rehearses "Wild Goose Chase" at Delaware Theatre Company. 
Photo by Ann Marley.
Because of this, I was very excited to get to meet two of the stars of Delaware Theatre Company’s Honk: The Ugly Duckling Musical to hear about what makes this show so special. I was extra excited to have my daughter Ellie with me to ask all the questions.

Kim Carson from Hellertown, Pennsylvania, plays Ida, a mom trying to keep her ducks in a row. Camiel Warren-Taylor from West Chester, 
Pennsylvania, is “Downy”, Ugly’s sassy sister.  Kim is a veteran of DTC and is the winner of the 2018 Barrymore Award for Outstanding Performance in a Musical as Helen in Fun Home at the Arden Theatre Company. 

She said that being a mom to 2-year-old Johnny has made her understand her role as Ida, Ugly’s mother, in a different way. “Bud [our director] asked me if I would be as emotional when Ida thinks Ugly is dead, and I think that those emotions are just so much closer to the surface now” she said. Camiel likes how Ugly handles the teasing and taunting from the others. She said that she has been teased for her name, but she as she says, “There is a reason for my difference and it makes me special.” Camiel is a spitfire with big dreams, and I can’t wait to see her make her DTC debut.

My daughter Ellie, at age 14, is in 8th Grade, and from what I can tell, middle school hasn’t gotten easier since I was an ugly duckling. She loves this show because of its message of inclusion and forgiveness. “More than ever, we need to accept people for who they are and celebrate diversity,” she says. “It’s important for parents to know that their kids will be all right, even if they are different.”

Honk: The Ugly Duckling Musical is the kind of show that is so entertaining that you don’t really notice you are getting a lesson along with it. The music is interesting enough to keep adults' attention and kids will love the adorable characters. 


Honk: The Ugly Duckling Musical opens April 17 and runs through May 12, 2019. Delaware Theatre Company is offering a “relaxed performance” on April 30 for ducklings and their families who would like a sensory-friendly performance. 

Tickets start at $25 ($20 for student tickets with valid ID) and can be purchased at www.delawaretheatre.org or by calling 302.594.1100.

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Remembering Victims of Gun Violence Through Moving Spirituals Performance

By Christine Facciolo

Countertenor Augstine (Gus) Mercante offered some perspectives on his long — and sometimes complicated — relationship with the African American spiritual in the program notes of his March 31 concert, There's a Man Going 'Round: Remembering Victims of Gun Violence, as part of The Arts at Trinity series at Trinity Episcopal Church in Wilmington.


He first fell in love with the repertoire when at age 16 he auditioned for All-State Chorus. Burleigh’s Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child was the audition piece. Years later, he submitted the work to fill the English Art Song requirement for a voice competition and was shocked when one of the judges told him that white singers shouldn’t sing spirituals in a concert setting.

Countertenor Gus Mercante accompanied by pianist
Hiroko Yamazaki. Photo courtesy of Gus Mercante.
Fast forward to the summer of 2006. Mercante was studying at the Mozarteum when he got an invitation from internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry to sing for her in her apartment. After they sang for each other, he asked her if she though white people should be sing spirituals. She looked right at him and said: “Anyone with a soul can sing a spiritual.”

Mercante certainly has soul, plus a robust high male voice of unique strength and deliberate, rhapsodic lyricism and expression. Mercante does not just sing a song, he brings it to life. (Note: If you haven’t seen him perform a comic English opera with Brandywine Baroque, definitely put it on your to-do list.)

The program, dedicated to the victims of gun violence, opened on an appropriately somber and sorrowful note with two selections from Bach Cantatas: Wir mussen durch viel Trubsal and Kreuz und Krone sind verbunden.

Mercante raised the specter of death with a dynamic rendering of the Schubert Lied Der Tod und das Madchen, with dramatic vocal characterizations of Death and the Maiden.

Less dramatic, but equally powerful, were Faure’s setting of the Verlaine poem "Clair de lune,” Nocturne Op. 43, No. 2 — kudos to Mercante for including this much-neglected song — and Schubert’s Im Abendrot, all of which juxtaposed the melancholy of the characters with the beauty and grandeur of the moon and the sunset.

The first half of the concert wrapped up with two contemporary selections: the resigned simplicity of William Bolcom’s Waitin’ (from Cabaret Songs) and H. Leslie Adams’ Prayer (from Nightsongs) which Mercante delivered with maximum emotional impact through dynamic contrast and textual clarity.

The second half of the program, which was devoted to spirituals, opened with Mercante processing into the sanctuary singing the traditional Guide My Feet. The set included Burleigh’s Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, which sparked Mercante’s interest in the Negro spiritual. This set contained some very moving performances, notably a powerful rendering of the apocryphal There’s a Man Going ‘Round and Crucifixion, which nearly brought some audience members — including this one — to tears.

And if you closed your eyes, you might have sworn it was the late Marian Anderson singing Burleigh’s My Lord, What a Morning.

The concert concluded on a triumphant note with the glorious Ride On, King Jesus.

Mercante was ably supported by Hiroko Yamazaki at the piano, while Sherry Goodill and Marion Yager Hamermesh of the Hanover Dance Collective brought visual interest and kinetic energy to select songs.

Monday, April 1, 2019

Apply to the Boysie Lowery Living Jazz Residency

Post content from a press release from Light Up the Queen Foundation...

A friendly reminder that Light Up the Queen will be accepting applications for the Boysie Lowery Living Jazz Residency through Sunday, April 7, 2019 until 11:59pm (EST). 

If someone you know is a jazz composer/performer between the ages of 17-25, this is for them. The Boysie Lowery Living Jazz Residency is designed to give participants an intense learning experience that will help them find their sound, mature as a musician, and make lasting connections with like-minded peers.

The residency program will include numerous performance opportunities, with a final concert to be formed on June 23 — the last day of the program — at 3:00pm at The Queen Theater in downtown Wilmington.

This year's residency will be from June 9-23, 2019 and is fully subsidized, meaning housing and meals are included. Want to learn more about the program and apply?

Visit https://lightupthequeen.org/boysie-lowery-living-jazz-residency/.