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chuckle, guffaw and even a tear or two thatwas to be had. Production values—CecileCasey Covert/Stephen Rizzo/Brian Peterson/Julie Winn (costumes), Brad Caldwell (set), SuGonczy (lights)—were all top notch.

If L’imitation reminds one of Mad Maga-zine, its social concerns still resonate in a citywhere the mayor tries to pass for black. Nowget a ticket at Le Chat before they’re all gone.And don’t forget to screen Imitation beforeyou do.

The Woolgathererat The Big Top

As the lights dimmed at the Big Toprecently, I felt bad for Ashley Ricordand Michael Aaron Santos who

would be acting for a nearly empty house. Yetthat didn’t stop them from giving two of thisyear’s most memorable performances.

In William (Extremities) Mastrosimone’sThe Woolgatherer, Rose has invited Cliff, atrucker whose rig has broken down, back to hersmall efficiency apartment in South Philadel-phia. A mating dance of sorts then occursbetween these two bruised individuals, a shycandy store cashier and guy whose cross-country lifestyle is more given to “slam, bang,thank you ma’am” action. With funny, well-

crafted dialog, it’s reminiscent of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair deLune, only better.

In this classic meeting of opposites, the naive, socially inept Rose seemsto blossom under Cliff’s attention. His charm makes it understandable whya shy woman like Rose might fall for him and invite him home. Yet just whenyou think it’s magic time, Cliff says or does something that causes the tightlywound Rose to push him away again. By the end of the evening, after secretshave tumbled out of closets (literally), we would love to know of their future,if any, together, but are satisfied that they may have found temporaryhappiness.

Real life couple Ricord and Santos played off each other beautifully,adept at both the play’s deadpan humor (regarding a suicide who left a poem,he says, “Good she was a poet. What if she had been a novelist?”) and, likeworld-class opera singers, spinning out its arias of pain and desperation.

Santos, who could be Adrien Brody’s younger, cuter brother, can gofrom Shakespearean nobles to blue collar guys in chameleon-like fashion.So real is he that we never feel he’s patronizing Rose or hooked up with hermerely for a quickie. As he delivered an extended monolog on the life of atrucker, his frustration was palpable, his ingenuity was admirable and hispassion was unmistakable. He was, in a word, magnificent.

Mastrosimone doesn’t fully explain the origins of Rose’s neuroses andso Ricord had both more and less to play with. If she reminded one of a sweet,wounded bird, she also brought a spunk to Rose who, I imagine, is oftenplayed weaker, more neurasthenically. Rising to her previously set highstandards, Ricord and her ever-talented finger, were wonderful as always,particularly in the more emotionally-charged second act. That said, I lookforward to her doing something totally different that could stretch herprodigious talents even further.

Along with the members of InSideOut Productions, Jim Winter directedfluidly, allowing the relationship to unfold at the proper pace and never lettingthe emotionality get out of hand.

Although The Woolgatherer is no longer running, Ricord and Santosare available to perform it for you and your friends, salon-style, in the comfort

of your own home. If you value theater, you will immediately get intouch with them to do so.

Fences at theAnthony Bean Community Theater

After seeing August Wilson’s Fences at the AnthonyBean Community Theater you might just say, “JamesEarl who?” For in the role of Troy Maxson, former Negro

League baseball player, former petty thief and, now in 1957,upwardly mobile Pittsburgh garbage collector, Wilbert Williams, Jr.eclipses Jones and indelibly makes the role his own, now andforever.

This is not to demean Jones, one of our finest actors, in anyway. Yet when I saw the original production at Yale Rep, Jones’mellifluous voice simply didn’t jibe with what you would expect anilliterate, former Alabama farm boy to sound like. Williams does.

And Williams does more. Punctuating Troy’s lines with arhythmic “errr”, shifting between volcanic rage at a disobedient(from his perspective) son and tender concern for a brain-damagedbrother, Williams reveals the petty pride, the self-delusion and thebone deep money-consciousness that drives Troy to animalisticintensity and fearsome desperation.

Williams makes every word (and there are lots of them) vital andwhen Wilson finally stops speechifying and gets down to business,whether Troy is battling his sons or the Devil himself, Williamsbecomes a force as powerful as a hurricane, as unyielding as atsunami, as terrifying as fire and as primal as anything in nature.

Bearing Troy’s chip on his shoulder, understandably con-vinced that “blacks have to be twice as good” to succeed, bitterabout his bad timing that caused him to be over 40 when major leaguebaseball teams were finally integrated, and exultant when acommission awards him a driver’s slot on the collection route (eventhough he doesn’t have a driver’s license), Williams raises Troy toShakespearean status while never abandoning his roots in theAlabama dirt. In short, Williams is an unacknowledged nationaltreasure who we are fortunate to have trodding the boards in NewOrleans.

Despite Williams, however, and Anthony Bean’s fine directionwhich shows a deep affinity for interpreting Wilson’s works,clarifying the thicket of words and pacing it such that not a minutedrags in Fences’ nearly three hour running time, I remain unconvincedthat Fences is a great play, worthy of its Tony Award and PulitzerPrize. Certainly, Wilson writes captivating dialog that deals withimportant issues, but it goes on and on and on. If 25% of Fencesis brilliant with some of the finest writing ever to grace a stage,

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Darryl Lutcher, Gwendolyne Foxworth & WilbertWilliams, Jr. in Fences

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there’s no escaping that 75% of it is talky andmelodramatic.

Fortunately, on Scott Edwards’ exquisiteback yard set, Bean & Co. almost make youoverlook this. Harold X. Evans hits all the rightnotes as Troy’s friend Bono. Kenneth Brown,Jr. gives a beautifully calibrated performanceas Troy’s older son, a musician who proves tobe more responsible than Troy gives him creditfor; Brown gets better with each role anddisplays an increasingly impressive range.

After much talk about lima beans and ribsand other lunch fixings, Gwendolyne Foxworthfinally lets go in the second act as Troy’s wifeRose who must confront the fact that herhusband has been untrue to her. Minglingstrength, passion and disappointment, Foxworth

refuses to let Troy’s excuses of “I had to listen to my heart” seduce her. (Hereis an instance where Wilson’s insistence that his characters learn to “singtheir own sings” has a slightly misogynistic tinge to it.) We feel for this womanwho has sacrificed so much personal happiness and her own dreams toinvest them in a husband who betrays her and her hope of avoiding a familyof “half brothers and half sisters” as she lived with growing up. With wisdomand grace, however, Foxworth takes in her husband’s child after his mistressdies in childbirth. The love she had for Troy has evaporated but her naturalwarmth is redirected to the innocent babe.

Though I generally believe directors should not act in their own plays,Bean is absolutely brilliant as Troy’s brother Gabriel, but that doesn’t makehim, one in a long line of Wilson’s addled characters, any less annoying orone-note-ish. The cast’s only weak link, but not a fatal one, is Darryl Lutcheras Cory, Troy’s son who aspires to a college football scholarship. Lutcherhas potential, but is not there quite yet.

Bean & Co.’s production of Fences with its extraordinary lead perfor-mance is unquestionably a worthy achievement. But their King Hedley IIof two years ago remains as the benchmark against which other Wilsondramas will be judged.

Urinetown: The Musicalat Rivertown Repertory Theatre

For most of the first act, watching Urinetown at RivertownRep was like sampling a dish where all the ingredientswere there but it tasted kinda bland. Finally, just in time for

the Act One finale, the seasoning was added and acting, choreog-raphy, direction and lighting, as well as the material itself, cametogether to make for a yummy rest of the show.

In this indictment of big business cum send-up of Brechtianmusicals, right may triumph but that doesn’t guarantee a happyending. But since it’s hardly a reality show, everybody gets to go offsinging and dancing. Having had its New Orleans premiere last springat Delgado, this is our second Urinetown of the season and, overall,Gary Rucker’s production was the more polished of the two.

As LittleSally, the pint-sized ren-egade whooffers wrycommentaryon the side,Casey LeighThompsonhad just theright edgelayered witha hint of inno-cence. Car-rie Blackplayed thevirginal HopeC l a d w e l lwith strengthand pluck;she foundthe humor byplaying itstraight yetmade a be-lievable rebelleader whenshe finallydecided tofight for the good of the land. Richard Arnold got better and better asthe show progressed; he didn’t let his clarion voice and good looksget in the way of not taking himself too seriously. His Bobby Strongwas courageous and smart but not too smart which made hisportrayal all the sharper for it.

As Officer Lockstock, protector of the status quo and LittleSally’s interlocutor, Lucas Harms was good but will be even betterin ten years when he’ll be able to bring a tad more world-wearinessto the role. Meredith Long-Dieth’s Penelope Pennywise, the matronof Amenity #9, was also good but didn’t fully convey the imperious-ness and lacked the stylization that Tracey E. Collins brought to therole at Delgado. And if Delgado’s Luis Q. Barroso was too oily as urinalbaron Caldwell B. Cladwell, Rivertown’s Roland “Butch” Caire, Jr.was not oily enough; he wasn’t bad but seemed a bit lightweight fora corporate heavy.

Just as Chad Talkington’s lighting became more atmospheric inAct Two, Kelly Fouchi’s choreography finally came into its own in thesecond act number Snuff That Girl, in which P.J. McKinnie and LeslieLimberg moved as though they’d just put their fingers in an electricsocket. They looked great! However, the decision to do the Cop Songas a rap number, as well as making some of the characters expresslygay, was not so much offensive as just out of place for a piece whosemind set is more rooted in the 1920s than 1990s.

I wish I could explain why the majority of the first act lackedoomph and pizzaz but I can’t, so I guess we’ll just leave it at that. Butsince Urinetown is one of the top five American musicals of the last25 years, I’ll take an imperfect production of it over another Hello,Dolly or Annie any day.

Where the seasoning was just right from start to finish wasMessina’s buffet dinner that preceded the show. Creamy oyster andartichoke soup, lemon-caper Tilapia, melt-in-your-mouth grilled ribeye topped with marshan devin were all delicious while the stringbeans with pimientos, pasta Malian and salad with raspberry dress-ing were nearly as scrumptious. Add to all that the lightest cheese-cake, in a variety of flavors, I’ve had in a long while and it all addedup to Messina’s best menu yet.

Picasso at the Lapin Agileat Minacapelli’s Dinner Playhouse

Minacapelli’s branched out beyond its usual romanticcomedy and small-scale musical fare recently withSteve Martin’s—yes, the Steve Martin—Picasso at

the Lapin Agile which depicts an imagined meeting between AlbertEinstein and Pablo Picasso at a small bar in Paris in 1904, the dawnof the 20th century.

The script is equal parts ha-ha comedy and metaphysicalruminations as the characters talk of aesthetics, love, artistic rivalries

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Urinetown at Rivertown Repertory Theatre


and the transitory nature of fame. Martin’srather dry humor coupled with some meta-theatrical flourishes is appealing though thereare some patches where the play’s fizzy intel-lectualism goes flat.

The play sparks to life when Picassoarrives, however, and Gary Mendoza made acompletely credible young Pablo, a gargantuanpresence full of self-aggrandizement. WestonTwardowski well-matched him in the self-cen-tered department and it was fun watching twohealthy egos showing off.

Mary Ann Carson Hemphill’s Germainewas a more front-and-center barmaid thanAndrea Frankle’s was two years ago at the RitzCarlton. Hemphill brought such a sense ofcentered reality to the role with her perky voiceof reason that you’d think that she just time-traveled in from Paris to Slidell.

Charles Vaught was bitchily droll as bar-

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tender Freddy; Paul Page exuded just the rightamount of all-American optimism and self-con-fidence; and Shawn Patterson didn’t overplayhis visitor from another era, giving just about thebest Elvis impersonation I’ve yet seen.

Ken Thompson was good, Seth Trosclairnot so. As Suzanne, a lass Picasso has trifledwith, Elizabeth Lovoie-Zelenka failed to putforth properly the play’s emotional center, butmade up for it later in the brief role of theCountess.

Jennifer H. Patterson’s direction wassmooth and made good use of Minacapelli’sdining space. Metaphysics in St. Tammany—who knew?!

Keeping with the French theme of theevening, Chef Ginger Luke’s menu was writtenin Frenglish. Though I loved the arc-en-cielrotini, I could leave out the carbs and still behappy with the delectable cordon de pouletbleu, haricort vert amandine, carottes glacéesand her juiciest poitrine Luc (brisket Luke) yet.And the pudding de pain avec de la sauce à

whiskey, c’est tres magnifique!

Pippin at Tulane’s SummerLyric Theatre

For its last show of the season, SLToffered a thoroughly enjoyable Pip-pin. Dance and musical numbers,

choreographed by Diane Lala and EdmondKresley, were highly entertaining and not slav-ishly beholden to Fosse’s original production.Kresley directed with a tendency tocartoonishness, however, and a concomitantlack of sharpness; he’s not an actor’s directorand, especially at the start, the show sufferedfor it.

But such pros as Randy Cheramie(Charles), Elizabeth Argus (Fastrada) andMildred Hong (Berthe) made up for Kresley andknew exactly what to do. If Leading PlayerJames Martin’s acting was as good as hissinging, he’d be amazing; as it is, he may wantto stick to concerts. Pearce Wegener, however,

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was all you could ask for in a Pippin—innocentof mien, bright-eyed, strong-voiced and deter-mined to find his corner of the sky.

And the chorus was the cutest I’ve seenin a long time.

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