B-Sides, Rarities & Unreleased Tracks at the CTC

What do you get when you mix one writer, four directors, 15 actors, 17 short plays and a DJ? An evening of B-Sides, Rarities and Unreleased Tracks at the City Theater Company. The title of the collection infers a rock music theme -- and while a couple of the shorts are about popular music in one way or another, it's more metaphorical. The short plays by Alex Dremann, each under ten minutes long (in some cases, well under), are small bites, individual "songs" that don't necessarily connect, but go together like an album.

Dremann's plays, directed by Kathy Buterbaugh, Josh Hitchens, Todd Holtsberry and James Kassees, are comic, while at the same time very dark. We meet a serial killer who bowls people to death, a mental patient about to eat his one friend, and self-aware zombie throwing a cocktail party for his less sentient friends. A recurring theme is interpersonal relationships, especially love relationships between a man and a woman (a couple of the shorts do have gay themes, but these also involve men with women, at least for the moment).

Most members of the cast played multiple roles in different plays, but some pairs, such as Brian McAleese and Amanda Bernhardt and Tim Donovan and Mary Catherine Kelley, appeared together repeatedly. There are a couple of solo pieces -- Greg O'Neil in "Cantaloupe," Kat J. Simon in "Elvis at Stuckey's" and Becky Balaguer in "Chum," but most are shorts for two people. My favorites? Probably "On the Floor," "Cantaloupe" and "Zombie Asthete."


B-Sides, Rarities & Unreleased Tracks will have its second and last two-day run this weekend at the Black Box at Opera Delaware Studios -- don't miss it!

Rabbit Hole at the Chapel Street Players

(Photo of Kate Brennan and Jason Fawcett by David Sokolowski)

What incredible risks Anthony Bosco took for the new Chapel Street Players production of Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire! First of all, the cast were almost all new to CSP. Secondly, he was taking on a play which the playwright himself had just adapted for a movie with Nicole Kidman. And thirdly, he is the father of two small children taking on a play about how a couple deals with the death of their child.

But on opening night on February 25, his willingness to take risks paid off. Kate Brennan as Becca and Jessica Rowland-Eppler as her sister Izzie had the audience so involved one lady couldn’t resist mumbling in response to their rants. And when it became clear that the clothing that Becca was folding so carefully had belonged to her four-year-old son who had died months earlier– it was hard to decide whether to laugh or cry.

Howie, Becca’s husband, played by Jason Fawcett, seems to be cool, collected and ready to kiss his wife back to normal. But even he has a limit to his patience. It is easy to empathize with him until Izzie raises suspicions about just how he might be coping.

Performances by Marlene Hummel, who plays Becca’s unrestrained mother, and Neil Redfield, who plays the hapless youth Jason, are catalytic. They force Howie and Becca to break their controlled postures and vent their grief.

The play presents each character against contrasting personalities. Becca’s neurotic quelling of her grief is highlighted by her exchanges with her carefree and shockingly direct sister Izzie -- Howie’s calm control is upset gradually by his warm but outspoken mother-in-law and all four of them react intensely to Jason’s apologetic entry into their lives.

In spite of all the grief and ranting, the play ends with a note of hope. The actors were so good that it is hard to resist the urge to call and see how they are doing. Performances are 8:00 p.m. on February 25, 26, March 4, 5, 11, 12. Matinee 2:00 p.m. March 6 and 12.

See www.chapelstreetplayers.org

Tendrils ascend with Mélomanie

Peter Flint gave center stage to each of the instruments of Mélomanie in his piece, Ascending Tendrils, which premiered on February 19. The piece begins with a call for spring on modern flute (Kimberly Reighley) – haunting and inviting at the same time. The gamba (Donna Fournier) responds calling to mind a bullfrog and when the cello (Douglas McNames) joins in and the violin (Linda Kistler) makes a grasshopper’s entrance with the harpsichord (Tracy Richardson) buzzing like a swarm of insects – the pandemonium of spring and growth continues until…pause…unstructured measures tell the audience not to predict how growth works. The listener waits for the next cue - the flute tweets hesitantly, then more insistently-- the fledgling trying to fly. The piece builds up to a dancing, running pace and ends with a jaunty halt. Flint has inventiveness and can change style completely. The last work he premiered in Delaware (in November 2009) was Double-speaking for guitar and flute, had a gypsy, Vallanato style. And, now that he has covered birds with his Avian Orchestra, he has moved on to insects. Shall we call his new music group the Etymological Orchestra from now on?

Ascending Tendrils was preceded by Kimberly Reighley’s performance of the Bach Suite in A Minor for Solo Flute (BWV 1013). Reighley is so deft at the baroque flute (and what a treat to have that in our area) that she commands the flute through arpeggiated passages with no hesitation – running the gamut of tone color in the baroque flute – with soft but sonorous low notes and whisper-gentle higher notes in fast succession – resounding in the fairly live church acoustics.

The two Telemann quartets were played almost contemplatively – with the gentlest of tempi and extremely graceful ornamentation. The musicians have changed places, putting flute and violin on the audience’s right and cello and gamba on the left. The balance is good both ways.

Mélomanie treated us to an unusually romantic item in the Duo for violin and cello by Bohuslav Martinù. Linda Kistler and Douglas McNames pulled no punches on either tempo or expressiveness and the acoustics made the lush romantic prelude reverberate richly while the rhapsodic rondo seemed like a raucous round of dueling fiddles.

See www.melomanie.org

See www.peterflintmusic.com