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.

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.

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.