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

Theater Review: Assassins | City Theater Company

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.

Photo by Joe del Tufo/Moonloop Photography.

City Theater Company (CTC) closes its season with a bang by staging the Tony Award-winning Assassins — a show described as “one of the most controversial musicals ever written.”  The script openly examines our nation’s culture of celebrity and the violent means some will use to obtain it.  The story studies America’s four successful and five would-be presidential assassins through music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman.  The show is based on an original concept by Charles Gilbert, Jr.

CTC first presented Assassins in 1998 when current Artistic Director Kerry Kristine McElrone played Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme.  McElrone is excited to revisit the show 25 years later: “When deciding on our 29th season, I knew I wanted us to do a Sondheim piece. Assassins has always been an important show to me [and] the time felt right to restage this one for a new CTC audience.”

The dark and slyly comic show shadows a group of successful and wannabe Presidential assassins throughout U.S. history, framing their experiences in a broader exploration of American ideals.  The show opens in a carnival shooting gallery and moves through various venues including the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository.  Guns are central to the fates of the characters and the overall theme of the show.  In fact, one of the musical numbers is entitled “Gun Song.”

The score reflects the popular music of each era as the characters tell their stories through scenes and songs.  While Sondheim’s music is often quite syncopated, many of these songs were rhythmic and jaunty like “The Ballad of Booth.”  A small live orchestra situated next to the stage deftly accompanied the stage action.  Other noteworthy songs include “The Ballad of Guiteau,” “Unworthy of Your Love,” and the closing number “Everybody’s Got the Right.”  The latter is a rallying cry which can be taken a few disparate ways — forcing the audience to fully consider what they’ve just experienced on stage in front of (and next to) them.

Photo by Joe del Tufo/Moonloop Photography.

Director Joe Trainor has placed his actors where you cannot avoid them — on a stage almost touching the front row of patrons, in the middle aisle, and on strategically-placed risers.  Kudos to Rick Neidig on his set design and “patriotic” backdrop.  The pacing of the show is excellent with entrances, exits, and dialog moving effortlessly.

Trainor is thrilled to be tackling his first Sondheim show: “For a play that first premiered in 1990, Assassins is shockingly accessible in 2023.  It’s an incredibly challenging work, both in its subject matter and in its technical aspects.  The music and its pastiche style are incredible.  [It] entertains us even as it forces us to go uncomfortably deep within our own minds, and our collective histories.”

The musical opened in 1990 to many negative reviews — mostly concerning the subject matter and character focus.  Even Sondheim admitted he expected backlash due to the show’s content: “There are always people who think that certain subjects are not right for musicals...[w]e're not going to apologize for dealing with such a volatile subject.  Nowadays, virtually everything goes.”

McElrone says, “Assassins is about a disparate group of loners who…find themselves in the same room at the same time, reliving their crimes with relish almost for each other’s benefit, like a support group from hell.”

That hellish support group is played brilliantly by Chris Banker, Daryan Borys, Jim Burns, Adam Cooper, Kristin Finger, Dylan Geringer, Joshua Gold, Aidan McDonald, Paul McElwee, Emma Romeo Moyer, Kevin Regan, Kit Regan, and Brian Turner.  While all are excellent, Finger captured the manic Sara Jane Moore to chilling perfection while toting a gun and KFC bucket with equal diffidence.  McDonald was a compelling John Wilkes Booth whose belief that “the country is not what it was” line resonates in the modern politic now.

There are several powerful and unhinged diatribes in this play, but those by Kevin Regan — portraying Nixon-threatening Samuel Byck — were remarkable.  Juxtaposing a deranged wanna-be hijacker and assassin with a Bud-guzzling man in a Santa suit kept the audience rapt.  Could this unrealistic loner really pull off what he says he can?  When Booth gets into Lee Harvey Oswald’s head to convince him to squeeze his trigger and Hinkley refers to Oswald as an inspiration for his shooting of Reagan, you know you’ve entered serious satire.  It is not for the faint of heart, but it is compelling.

All the cast members bring real intensity to their roles and the subject matter.  Even the excellent Brian Turner (The Balladeer) kept his darkly comic narration focused on mental failings and perceived societal ills.  His powerful voice both set the tone and analyzed the action.

Simply put, all the parts of this show work together in beautiful harmony not often found in regional theater.  Kudos to “the underlings” who have risen to the occasion with aplomb!

Assassins will be performed April 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, and 22.  Curtain for all shows is 8:00pm except for the lone Sunday matinee at 2:00pm (April 16).  Run time is approximately 105 minutes without an intermission.  City Theater Company’s home is in the Wings Black Box at The Delaware Contemporary located at 200 South Madison, Wilmington, DE19801.  

Tickets ($30-45) can be purchased at the box office or online.  Special ticket pricing is available for military personnel and students. CTC does not currently require proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Mask-wearing is optional per guest preference. Please be respectful of fellow patrons’ choices.  Call the box office at 302.220.8285 or email citytheatercompany@gmail.com for details about the show.

CTC’s mission is to create a body of work that takes risks and breaks barriers — just as The Delaware Contemporary’s is to take risks and push boundaries.  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.

City Theater Company is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Divisions promotes Delaware arts events on DelawareScene.com.

Advisory: Assassins deals with mature content, including R-rated and racially charged language.  This production uses non-firing, replica, prop guns.  No live ammunition or working weapons are used in this production.  This production features gunshot sounds throughout.  All such sounds are pre-recorded. CTC can provide disposable earplugs for your comfort.

To quote John Wilkes Booth: “There is no quiet desperation here.”