3/17/08
VARIETY
By Julio Martinez
Scripter Richard
Greenberg's sci-fi-infused sojourn among the lives of five post-WWI
Manhattanites has one glaring flaw that North Hollywood-based Theater
Tribe manages to turn into a virtue. An unseen machine that spouts
revelations from the future, thereby diminishing the abilities of the
characters to control their own lives, drives the central plot of "The
Violet Hour." Helmer Stuart Rogers astutely plunges his
capable ensemble through every ponderous and illogical twist and turn
of Greenberg's text, turning imperfect drama into highly accessible theater.
Set in 1919, the action centers on the tribulations of neophyte publisher
John Pace Seavering (Thomas Burr), whose slim startup finances will allow
him to publish just one initial book. Unfortunately, his lover, African-American
chanteuse Jessie Brewster (Angelle Brooks), is intensely petitioning
him to publish her memoir, while his best friend, Denis McCleary (Jeff
Kerr McGivney), wants him to choose his weighty tome. Insinuating themselves
into the dilemma are Seavering's high-strung assistant Gidger (Kyle Colerider-Krugh)
and McCleary's emotionally unstable debutante fiancee, Rosamund Plinth
(Elizabeth O'Brick).
Allowing these five agenda-driven personalities to have at each other
based simply on the initial attributes the scripter endowed upon them
would have made for intriguing drama. The seed of such a scenario is
planted when Seavering admits he has no creative talent in his own right
but knows how to spot and nurture it in others.
Instead, Greenberg deluges Seavering and company with reams of time
machine-disgorged information that lays out everyone's future with deadening
but recognizable detail. It soon becomes obvious that Jesse is standing
in for expatriate American singer-dancer Josephine Baker and the Denis/Rosamund
duo are subbing for the tragic icons of Roaring '20s literature, F. Scott
and Zelda Fitzgerald.
Burr offers a captivating
portrayal of the callow Seavering,
who is at first entrapped by and but subsequently transcends the volumes
of facts heaped upon him. His struggle to obtain maturity is highlighted
by his endearingly awkward courtship of Jessie. Brooks is a sensual delight
as the life-burdened singer who treats the young publisher as a romantic
boy toy yet projects her deep need to have Seavering validate her life.
McGivney and O'Brick are perfectly
paired as impractical
lovers who manically believe the only solution to their lives is for
Seavering to publish McCleary's book. McGivney's McCleary projects such
a raging, colorful irreverence against the status quo, he makes plausible
that his book might have something to say. O'Brick
offers a tantalizing glimpse into the darkness of a haunted soul, valiantly attempting
to push away the madness that would eventually overtake her.
In a tour de force portrayal of
an insignificant being fighting for recognition, Colerider-Krugh's ragingly offended Gidger chews up almost
every inch of Theater Tribe's miniscule stage, including the furniture.
Given the limitations of space,
the designs of Douglas Lowry (sets), Susanne
Klein (costumes), Luke Moyer (lighting) and Thadeus Frazier-Reed (sound)
are uniformly excellent.
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3/17/08
LA Weekly
(THEATER PICK)
By Steven Mikulan
Richard Greenberg’s 2002 play is set
on April Fool’s Day, 1919. John Pace Seavering (Thomas Burr)
is a young, novice New York publisher who has enough money to only
print one book. Will it be the ridiculously massive novel of his
former college friend Denis (Jeff Kerr McGivney), who is dating
heiress Rosamund Plinth (Elizabeth O’Brick), or the show-business
memoir of John’s new girlfriend, a Negro nightclub singer
named Jessie Brewster (Angelle Brooks)? As John stalls for time,
his stuffy, cantankerous and most assuredly gay office assistant,
Gidger (Kyle Colerider-Krugh), tries to deal with a mysterious
machine that has just arrived. By Act 1’s end, the two discover
the pages it has been spewing out are of book proposals and accompanying
manuscripts from the future. They stand appalled and self-consciously
naked as they read how their era — and Seavering himself — will
be judged by academics not yet born. Director Stuart Rogers
brings out all the nuances of this funny yet melancholy fable about
decisions and consequences. (It’s also a wicked send-up of
our own times, as seen by the disbelieving citizens of 1919.) The
likable Burr shows a flair for comic interaction, even if he really
isn’t convincing as someone who wants to spend his life publishing
books. He gets solid support from the other cast members, especially
the over-the-top Colerider-Krugh. Susanne Klein’s costumes
neatly evoke the story’s era and Douglas Lowry’s set
makes the most of a claustrophobically small stage.
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3/21/08
Daily
News
By Evan Henerson
"The century
is young,'' proclaims publisher John Pace Seavering, on the
verge of selecting his house's first book for publication in
Richard Greenberg's "The Violet Hour.'' Given that we're in 1919,
and World War I is barely concluded, Seavering's optimism seems
a bit misguided.
For the L.A. premiere of "Violet Hour," -- the first play Greenberg
wrote after his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Take Me Out," -- director
Stuart Rogers delivers a production that is smart, witty, smoothly acted
and heartfelt. The play itself is a bit flawed, but this is by no
means the first time Rogers and his NoHo-based Theatre Tribe have
spun gold out of straw.
With
scenic and technical designer Douglas Lowry's able assistance, the
Tribe's tiny Lankershim Boulevard space houses a cluttered
startup publishing house, piled high with boxes of submitted
manuscripts. Behind a clear door is the outline of a back room where
a mysterious machine will start spitting out documents. We never see the
machine, but we sure see the papers.
Before this takes place, however, Seavering's dilemma is brought
to light. With financing enough to publish but one book, Seavering
(played by Thomas Burr) must choose either his best friend
Denis' (Jeff Kerr McGivney's) unwieldy epic of a novel or the
memoirs of Jessie Brewster (Angelle Brooks), a black blues
singer and the publisher's mistress.
It's a no-win proposition. Denis needs the novel to impress the
father of the meat industry heiress (Elizabeth O'Brick) he hopes
to wed. But if Seavering drops Jessie's memoirs, Jessie probably
dumps him. There's also the question of legacy: the characters'
and the nation's. The work he gives to the world, Seavering
correctly senses, will have significant repercussions.
Greenberg tosses more than a few balls in the air in this ambitiously
conceived but half-delivered exercise. We've got love stories,
race relations, gay relations, madness and loyalty. And much of this
comes into play before this machine of unknown origin starts printing out volumes
of information from the future.
Director Rogers and his cast know where Greenberg's humor lies
(much of it with Kyle Colerider-Krugh as Seavering's fussy
clerk Gidger) and how best to use the play's suspense and romance.
Greenberg writes rich monologues, and there's a beautiful bit
of poetry where Denis describes the sound of his beloved's
laughter. Of course, the playwright will undercut this ode as
the play progresses.
Burr nicely inhabits the idealistic Seavering, a man forced to
live, quite literally, for a whole bunch of tomorrows. Boyish
of face but still worldly, Burr's Seavering makes us recognize
the character as a man of worth. Brooks' quietly sexy Jessie brings
him easily down to size, while Colerider-Krugh's scene-stealing Gidger
is overshadowed by positively nobody.
If Greenberg's time-bending ending is a bit too pat, what's come
before leaves more than enough to reflect upon and digest once
you've hit the sidewalk.
The playwright churns out new plays about as frequently as his
paper machine. Theatre Tribe may produce
with far less frequency, but when Rogers and company present,
they rarely fail to hit the mark.
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3/14/08
CurtainUp.com
By Laura Hitchcock
Who hasn't thought, "If I could rewrite the script of my life,
knowing what I know now, I'd do everything differently and life would
be perfect?" Playwright Richard Greenberg takes this premise and
runs with it, paralleling the predictability of unimaginative theatre
with erasing the unpredictability of life.
One thing you can be absolutely sure of in the work of this ever-astonishing
playwright. What you see won't be anything like what you saw in his last
play. There'll be none of the baseball obsession and naked team lineup
that swept the awards board for Take Me Out Greenberg has played with
time before in Three Days of Rain, which Julia Roberts chose for her
Broadway debut, but The Violet Hour has more in common with Barrie's
Dear Brutus, in which houseguests leave a party and find themselves in
another dimension.
In Stuart Rogers' commendably low-key and naturalistic
production for Theatre Tribe, the cast gives equal weight to both conflict
and suspense. Set on April 1, 1919, this April Fool's day
story in the new office of fledgling publisher John Pace Seavering
(Thomas Burr) first hints at something out of the ordinary when a mysterious
machine arrives and starts spouting papers which turn out to be history
books written at the end of the 20th century. Pace is alternately aided
and needled by his assistant Gidger (Kyle Colerider-Krugh) who is gay
before the word was invented and is highly insulted when he finds out
it's been co-opted by the future and replaced with "frivolity." "To
be gay is not to be frivolous. To be gay is to be light-hearted in
the face of every kind of darkness," he storms. That's just one
example of the marvelous word-play that make Greenberg's plays so unique
and as much of a pleasure to read as to hear.
Act I sets up a conflict between two authors, Pace's best friend Denny
(Jeff Kerr McGivney) and his lover Jessie (Angelle Brooks). Denny, whose
work both in length and loquaciousness evokes Thomas Wolf, says, "In
life, Pace, you either soar or plummet; it's this vast in between that
destroys the soul." His three crates contain what Pace calls " a
catastrophe of pages." Yet Pace isn't quite ready to commit to publishing
the memoirs of Jessie, modeled on Jazz Age singer Josephine Baker. Pace
says he can only afford to publish one book and this conflict appears
to be a promising dramatic premise all by itself
In Act II we join Pace and Gidger in their irresistible impulse to read
what the future will bring, not just another Great War, but the personal
futures of their friends and Pace's biography. We see how the Denny and
Jessies' passionate desires to be published may destroy them and Pace's
determination to change the future.
Burr plays a perfect Princetonian, gentlemanly, well-read but with a
voracious desire for the dark delights Jessie can teach him. Brooks as
Jessie is a mesmerizing beauty who ranges from mellow to distraught with
silken ease. McGivney finds the vitality and youthful impetuosity in
Denny who accuses Pace of wanting to undo him "because everything
I have is mine and everything you have is inherited". His beloved
Rosamund, whose name Pace hopes indicates the same fate as Romeo's Rosamund,
is a rich girl who won't marry Denny unless he makes some money because
she knows it will destroy them if he can't. Elizabeth O'Brick gives Rosamund
a high-strung delicate charm that is right for the character which suggests
Zelda Fitzgerald. On opening night, her voice was a little hard to hear
but projected better in the second Act. Colerider-Krugh plays Gidger
as written, a comic effeminate counter-point to the conflicts of the
others. Rogers never lets him go over the top. Douglas Lowry designed
the excellent set, very 1919.
If Greenberg could be categorized, it might be as a comic philosopher.
His delights and devices have a unique place among today's playwrights.
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3/14/08
LAStageScene.com
By Steven Stanley
Richard Greenberg’s The
Violet Hour seems throughout Act 1 (at least superficially) to be a
light and semi-absurd (albeit very intelligent) comedy. However with
the blackout line which concludes the act, it transforms itself in
Act 2 into a far more provocative (and intellectually stimulating)
drama. The two acts together form a funny and thought-provoking evening
of theater.
It is April 1, 1919, and John Pace Seavering, having just “hung
out his shingle in the publishing game,” must make an major decision:
whether to publish a manuscript written by his best friend Denny or one
written by his secret lover, Negro entertainer Jessie Brewster. (Only
one of them can be selected, for economic reasons.) Denny’s novel
The Violet Hour, “about 25 books” long, comes in at around “2
million pages.” Jessie’s manuscript is considerably shorter;
she has written her memoirs.
Assisting John in his endeavors is the fussy and often exasperated Gidger,
who complains that “I am your employee in a business which does
not exist.” When John replies that he holds Gidger in the highest
esteem, the latter queries, “Is Gidger my first name or my last?” Given
that John does not know the answer, it is no wonder that Gidger is exasperated.
When Denny arrives, John informs him that he is going to the theater
that evening, upon which Denny declares his distaste for contemporary
drama. “Why pay attention when you know how the play is going to
end?” (Significant words, as we in the audience will soon discover.)
Denny has just lost his job for having “said some things,” making
it more important than ever that John publish his manuscript. “After
reading my book, people won’t need to read anymore,” Denny
enthuses.
Next to arrive is the Josephine Bakeresque Jessie, whom Gidger refers
to as the “tawny nightingale” (or “raven-skinned songstress” among
other sobriquets), famed for her unique way of ululating when she sings.
John is clearly taken with the furtive nature of their relationship since “everything
in my life has been so safe, I’ve been longing for something clandestine.” When
it comes to publishing Jessie’s manuscript, though, John still
vacillates, infuriating the
chanteuse. “It’s all right for you to f--- a n----- but
you don’t want to be a n----- press,” she accuses.
Completing The Violet Hour’s quintet of characters is the beautiful,
forward (for the era) meatpacking heiress Rosamund Plinth, who is Denny’s
fiancée. When John informs Rosamund that he is only “considering” publishing
Denny’s book, she flies into a rage. If Denny’s manuscript
remains unpublished, Rosamund will be forced to marry her father’s
choice of husbands for her. “Everything is riding on this,” she
informs John. “Denny and I are the only happiness that is possible
for each other.” If there’s no book, there’ll be no
blessing, and poor disinherited Rosamund will be very poor indeed.
In the midst of all this, a machine has been delivered to the offstage
outer office, a machine which starts spewing out hundreds of pages of
the printed word, the contents of which will not be revealed here so
as not to spoil the surprises ahead in Act 2. Suffice it to say that
as Gidger’s agitation increases, so does his frustration with John’s
total disinterest in the machine’s bizarre behavior. “Doesn’t
anyone care that something phenomenological is happening in the very
next room?!?” screams Gidger to no avail.
There is much that could be revealed here about The Violet Hour’s
second act, but the less the audience knows about “the machine” and
what it’s up to, the better. For those whose curiosity is insatiable,
the following paragraph will provide a few hints. Those wishing to be
completely surprised may skip to the next.
Gidger asks, “What’s World War I? Why I?” and later, “What’s
happened to the word ‘gay’?” John tells Gidger, “Look
at us. We’re period. These aren’t clothes we’re wearing.
They’re costumes.” Gidger declares, “Whatever will
be will be” and begins humming “Que Sera Sera.” Later,
from outside the office, he cries out, “Oh my God! I am never again
going to eat red meat!”
One of the pleasures of Greenberg’s script is the intelligence
of his humor. Take this exchange, for example, discussing Rosamund’s
unique (and according to Denny “great”) laugh.
--Her laughter is tiered.
--As in lachrymose?
--As in layered.
--Oh … tiered.
In many ways, The Violet Hour is a work which defies description. At
one point, I jotted down, “Bizarre! I don’t know
quite what to make of this.” It’s quite possibly a play requiring
a second viewing in order to be fully appreciated. Fortunately, a number
of sensational performances (and the overall quality of the production)
make this an appealing proposition.
As John, Thomas Burr (a young John Ritter) underplays superbly to Kyle
Colerider-Krugh’s deliciously over-the-top Gidger,
one of the most colorful performances of the year. In the role of
Rosamund, lovely Elizabeth O’Brick captures the look and the sound
of an educated woman of another century. Jeff Kerr McGivney does
fine work as the desperate Denny, and shines particularly in a poignant
Act 2 monolog. Finally, and possibly best of all, is Angelle Brooks as
Jessie, whose sudden rage in the second Act 2 is devastating,
and brilliantly performed.
Stuart Rogers, who won the Best
Director Ovation for last season’s
The Long Christmas Ride Home (which unfortunately, due to the illness
of a cast member, I missed and could not reschedule), confirms
with this production that he is a talent to be reckoned with. Douglas
Lowry’s office set has the look of a century ago as do Susanne
Klein’s costumes, and Thadeus Frazier-Reed has done a fine sound
design. Luke Moyer’s lighting captures the sepia toned quality
of a bygone era, and turns gradually violet (as in the play’s title)
for one of the evening’s more affecting scenes, an emotional conversation
between Denny and Rosamund, interrupted by a sudden arrival at which
the lights return abruptly to their amber brightness. A most effective
lighting design indeed.
With this L.A. premiere, Theatre Tribe proves itself once again
one of L.A.’s finest (and classiest) troupes. Theatergoers in
search of stimulating, thought-provoking entertainment will find much
to enjoy, and talk about, in The Violet Hour.
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