Showing posts with label CTC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CTC. Show all posts

Saturday, December 14, 2024

City Theater Company "Awakens" A New Season

By Mike Logothetis
Theater reviewer Mike Logothetis 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.

CTC's ensemble cast of Spring Awakening.
Photo by Joe del Tufo/Moonloop Photography.
City Theater Company (CTC)
returns this month with a staging of the award-winning musical Spring Awakening. In fact, Delaware’s own John Gallagher, Jr. earned the 2007 Best Featured Actor Tony for his portrayal of Moritz Stiefel during the original run. With music by Steven Sater and Duncan Skeik, the haunting songs and touching narrative will keep audiences captivated. CTC's Opening Night was a triumph, and the players received a warranted standing ovation.

This show celebrates rebellion and provides the perfect opportunity to showcase performers of all types. Featuring a pop rock score, Spring Awakening is an ideal platform for gifted vocalists to shine. And this production has talent in spades.

Director and CTC Artistic Director Kerry Kristine McElrone gushes: “The sheer talent of every person involved with this show, from our designers to our cast to our musicians, is staggering.”

The opening song, when Wendla Bergmann – an excellent Olivia Bloch – sings “Mama Who Bore Me,” sets the tone for the show. Bloch walks with purpose and a powerful voice to Sheik’s rhythmic melody. Musical gurus Joe Trainor and Lia M. Cox have the band and sound coordination perfectly complementing the vocals. This blissful marriage continues throughout the show.

However, if this entertainment were a movie, it would be rated R for dealing with adult/sensitive themes like sex, child abuse, and suicide plus the characters use a lot of profanity.

The story is based on an 1891 play by German playwright Frank Wedekind, a piece which was suppressed from being performed until 1906 for its frank condemnation of sexual and social taboos disguised as righteous correctness. The plot is deceptively simple: A small group of teenagers in a Victorian-era German town wrestle with their literal “awakening” on all things related to love and sex under, or perhaps in spite of, the eyes of their watchful and neglectful parents and teachers.

Spring Awakening runs now through December 21
at The Delaware Contemporary.
“Adults” (Kristin Finger and Rob Hull) in the show are nameless avatars who portray multiple characters. Both are intimidating and eerily sinister, but insist they are doing what’s best to teach/parent/guide the village children properly.

The “Girls” and “Boys” are dressed in virginal white school uniforms/attire, masking their mature feelings and life experiences. When the teens sing “My Junk” and “Touch Me” back-to-back in Act I, the audience feels their pent-up energies ready to burst forth.

Rick Neidig’s simple set/stage is brilliant for this show. The audience sits on three sides of an elongated “U” with the band on the short, open end. This immersive theater brings the players and their emotions right up to the faces of the viewers. There’s dynamism you can’t avoid. Pain, love, joy, malice, sex, heartache, fear, humor, and death pour forth unfiltered. It’s a powerful experience.

John Murphy’s portrayal of Melchior Gabor is outstanding. He’s strong, yet tender. He’s smart, but naïve. And he controlled his singing to meet the moment time and time again. Kudos to Luke Sullivan for his Moritz. The angst on his face while going through his troubling timeline was affecting. His emotional and tender duet with the talented Emma Romeo Moyer (Ilse) was a musical highlight.

This is an ensemble piece whose supporting cast has to be great. It is. The “Girls” (Bloch, Autumn Jewel Hogan, Elsa Kegelman, Moyer, and Emily Rooney) were bubbly and curious and flirty. The “Boys” (Adam Cooper, Jordan Eck, Avery Mehki Hannon, Murphy, Sullivan, and August Walker) were brash and adventurous and supportive. When the teens rally behind Melchior singing the rousing “You’re Fucked,” everyone on stage was bouncing around with infectious energy.

The first-rate band included: Sebastian Cain (viola), Ryan Dailey (bass), Sarah DelPercio (violin), Rachel Hoke (piano), Joey Lopes (guitar), Kanako Neale (percussion), and Emme Whisner (cello).

Founded in 1993, City Theater Company performs contemporary comedies, new works, and classic musicals to critical acclaim inside The Delaware Contemporary. Both institutions are invested in promoting the work of local and emerging artists, advancing opportunity and growth by and for the community, and welcoming all those looking to experience art.

Spring Awakening will run through December 21. Curtain is at 8:00pm for all remaining shows save for the December 15 Sunday matinee (1:00pm). The run time is approximately two and a half hours with a 15-minute intermission. City Theater Company’s home is at The Delaware Contemporary, located at 200 South Madison, Wilmington, Delaware 19801. 

 Tickets ($33.00-$48.75) can be purchased at the box office or online at www.city-theater.org. Special ticket pricing is available for military personnel and students. Call the box office at 302.220.8285 or email info@city-theater.org for details. 

“And now our bodies are the guilty ones.” – Wendla Bergmann

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.