Review of Jackie and Me at The Children's Theatre in Minneapolis

Quote of the Day:  The unwritten rules run the deepest. Mr. Rickey in Jackie and Me, a play about breaking the color barriers in 1947 when Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, based on the book by Dan Gutman, adapted for the stage by Steven Dietz, and directed by Marion McClinton, playing through April 14, 2013 at The Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis, MN.

Nine of us attended this show, and we give it 18 thumbs up! "A realistic view of the times," said Pete who was going to college and playing baseball in the 1960's. "It's a good way to show children what it was like back then."

Ansa Akyea as Jackie Robinson, photo by Dan Norman, CTC

 

The stage is set like a baseball diamond. Our seats are on the first-base line. The tension builds as the lights dim, the players take the stage, and we're pulled into another time and place. Joey Stoshack has to write a report for his history class on an African American who's made an important contribution to society. Joey, an avid baseball fan, chooses Jackie Robinson. With the help of a Bond Bread card with Jackie's photo on it, Joey uses his special gift to travel back in time and lands in the office of Mr. Rickey the day he signs Jackie to the Brooklyn Dodgers, April 9, 1947.

 

Brandon Brooks as Joey Stoshack, photo by Dan Norman, CTC

 

How exciting to be present when history was being made! Joey was ready to celebrate. Mr. Rickey signed Jackie with a word of warning. "They will say all these awful things and more. They'll threaten you and your family." He asked Jackie if he was up to the challenge and if he was man enough not to strike back. Jackie said, "Yes, sir, I am." They shook hands and changed the world of baseball forever, and Americans of varying colors and backgrounds started to play together.

 

photo by Dan Norman, CTC

 

Not all the players were accepting of the change. They signed a petition stating that they'd rather be traded than play with Jackie. He was told to use a different door to the clubhouse. He wasn't allowed to stay at the same hotels as his white teammates, or eat at the same restaurants, drink at the same fountains, or be treated with the same respect. Jackie got hate mail and death threats. He was risking his life and the lives of his family to play baseball, to change the way people treat each other, and to pave the way for other players like him.

 

Ansa Akyea as Jackie Robinson, photo by Dan Norman, CTC

 

This is the first play where I've been so riveted to the story, that I was surprised when the lights came up for intermission. Certain scenes and lines from this play brought tears to my eyes.

 

Brandon Brooks as Joey Stoshack with Spencer Harrison Levin, and Braxton Baker

 

You don't know how much you can learn from a baseball card!

 

Brandon Brooks (Joey) and Gerald Drake (Flip)

 

Jackie and Me shows us what it was like for someone to be the first to do something both brave and dangerous, to put aside personal fears, and dare to make a difference in the world. The entire cast does an amazing job of making this time and place feel so real. I want to encourage everyone to attend this show, for the history, the baseball, and the chance to travel back in time to understand what it might have been like for another person.

 

Go to Children's Theatre Company for showtimes and tickets. Call Sundays, starting at noon, for a chance to score $10 tickets for the upcoming week's shows. It is well worth the time and price of admission!

 

Go. Create. Inspire!

 

Journaling Prompt:  If you could travel back in time, where would you go? Who would you like to meet?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review of Appomattox at The Guthrie Theater

Quote of the Day:  No lie can live forever. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Appomattox by Christopher Hampton is a play in two acts, currently playing at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. The first half of the play is set during the American Civil War with all the main players of the time, President Abraham Lincoln, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, and their wives, generals, soldiers and slaves. The battle is raging to end slavery, save the union, and end oppression.

The second half of the play is set 100 years later during the Civil Rights movement with all the main players of the times, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Governor George Wallace, J. Edgar Hoover, Lee Harvey Oswald and Edgar Ray Killen, and citizens who march, protest, and die.  The battle rages on to end oppression through desegration of schools, elimination of Jim Crow laws, and voting equality.

I expected this show to be filled with strong scenes of war, racism, and fight for justice. I prepared myself for an intense night of theater where history would come alive. I got glimpses of it. For the most part, though, it was all exposition. If I wasn't leaning forward, trying to catch all the lengthy dialogue, I was sitting back, wondering how late it was getting. The show runs two hours and 55 minutes, on a good night. We did not get a good night. The stage "broke" towards the end of Act I, and they halted the action. They pulled the curtain and gave us an early intermission. After we finally saw that scene, we wondered if they couldn't have acted around the set moving glitch and finished Act I. But, who knows. It might have messed up all sorts of blocking and prop/set moving. Either way, it added at least 35 minutes to an already long night. Since we had over two hours drive back north when it was done, and I'd brought my 14-year-old son, I was cringing. He had been interested in seeing this play. He's interested in history and politics and has dreams of becoming a lawyer. He said the show was hard to follow and was annoyed with President Johnson, calling him obnoxious. He said, "After the stage broke, I kind of wanted to go home because I wasn't following it very well." Although, we agreed that the second Act was better.

The play consists of scenes pulled out of history. What I like is that Hampton brings us into the intimate settings and conversations of those main players. We see their struggles with decisions about the wars, Civil and Vietnam, and the people who fought them, and why. We see them trying to make the right decision regarding people of other races. We see them as flawed human beings who were placed in positions of power.  I really liked the scene between Generals Grant and Lee. They show great respect for each other and compassion for the soldiers. Grant knows that in order to heal the nation, he needs to show the Confederate soldiers that they can go back to their farms and businesses with their horses and their dignity. Lee says something like, oh, we could pull back and hide in the hills and continue this fight through gorilla warfare, but for how long? And, to what end? Our men are starving, now. What will they do? So, they sign their treaty at Appomattox, hoping for a peace-filled future.

Act 2 starts out with a video clip of President John F. Kennedy on television stating that it is time to end oppression and give full freedom for voting, education, and job opportunities for all people, black, white or otherwise. At the same time, we see Lee Harvey Oswald spewing out obscenities towards the president and his N-loving ways. (We heard the N-word and the F-word many times in this play.)

The language is harsh in this play, coming from some hate-filled people, as well as those trying to sound powerful. I expected intense drama, scenes acted out that would cause an emotional reaction. What I got was more exposition and a telling of what happened. This play lacks action. Maybe they were trying too hard to make it look good and forgot to give the actors power to tell the story through their characters. Moving the set pieces off and on, while the actors rode on them, limited the action even more. We heard about Lincoln's death. We heard about Kennedy's assassination. We heard about the killings of the civil rights workers. In the final scene, we had to listen to two hard-hearted bigots talk of their killings and how they didn't even see them as crimes, even though they were in jail for committing them. It leaves you with a bleak picture of human beings, especially Americans, who live and die with hate. That no matter how many wars are fought, marches made, or laws enforced, hate lives on.

I did have a few favorites scenes, however. One was when the slaves learned that they'd been freed. They walked on singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." They saw President Lincoln, called him "Father Abraham" and kissed his hand in gratitude.

 

Photos from the Guthrie media page.

 

The other scene that really drew me in was when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is speaking to a crowd before the March from Selma to Montgomery. The actor Shawn Hamilton became Dr. King. I felt the energy in the room rise. I had goosebumps on my arms all the way down to my toes, and we clapped along with the cast when he was done saying, "No lie can live forever. Truth crushed down to earth will rise again. We shall overcome...Mine eyes have seen the glory!" Oh, ya. I caught the connection. The battle rages, and we will march on. It is worth going to the show to see that performance in person.

 

 

I also enjoyed performances by Harry Groener as both President Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson, and Mark Benninghofen was excellent as General Grant and Nicholas Katzenbach, Johnson's attorney general. He actually had some stage movement and his face and body language helped to tell the story.

 

The female characters are horribly under-represented. They seem like just extensions of their husbands and have few lines. Perhaps Hamilton is trying to show how voiceless women were then. Even President Lincoln blows off the idea of women's right to vote. I'd like to see a play about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Sojourner Truth. I love her famous line, "Ain't I a woman." Hampton touched on that for about one second of his play.

 

Appomattox is playing at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis through November 11, 2012. Go to their website for more information. Also to note, tickets are now on sale for A Christmas Carol, a great play for the family, but not the youngest ones. Appomattox is definitely for an older audience, as is Tales from Hollywood, which I enjoyed much more.

 

Go. Create. Inspire!

 

Journaling Prompt:  What main players from history would you like to see come to life on stage?

Review of Tales from Hollywood at The Guthrie

Quote of the Day:  How was it we were so lucky? Something else I keep seeing in my dreams, all those queues, all those queues of desperate people outside the Consulates in Marseilles. Waiting all day and then turned away. Why didn't that happen to us? I mean, what's so special about writers? Heinrich Mann, act 2, scene 9, in Tales from Hollywood by Christopher Hampton.

May 10, 1933, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, attends book burnings at the University of Berlin. Book burnings in other university cities follow. Works by Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, and Bertolt Brecht are among those burned. from the program about Tales from Hollywood.

Photo from The Guthrie Theater Multimedia page Lee Sellars as Odon von Horvath, Allison Daugherty as Nelly Mann, and Keir Dullea as Heinrich Mann

For every person in nearly every part of the world who lived and fought to survive during World War II, they have a story to tell. Christopher Hampton draws from his own experiences as a non-American writer in Hollywood  in the 1960's-70's to go inside the hearts and heads of famous writers of the 1930's and 1940's and bring to light the struggle to survive as exiles, men without a country, needing to use their language to create, to connect, and to offer hope, and yet feeling so hopeless as they are silenced and sent away.

What is so special about writers? Their work is burned and banned. They're stripped of dignity and home and made to live like refugees, and yet, they survive, even thrive. The very act of trying to destroy their work and crush their spirits only adds interest and meaning to their words. People both admire and fear writers and the power of their words.

In Tales from Hollywood the exiled writers who fled Nazi Germany form a community in Los Angelos. They're trying to write in a foreign country using a foreign language with foreign ideals and concepts. And, all the while they're trying to make sense of this cruel world and eek out an existence. Bertolt Brecht questions why he is writing for the screen when he is a playwright in a medium where there is no interaction with the audience. In an interesting use of light and sound, the creative team at The Guthrie projects scenes from the play onto screens as the backdrop. So, here we have a play with elements of cinema. (See photo above as an example.) Camera crew were placed in pivotal points of the stage as part of the show. It was like watching a documentary being made with Odon von Horvath as the narrator.

I connected most with the American female playwright, Helen Schwartz (played by Julia Coffey), who is Jewish and has relatives in Germany. At first, she seems distant from what is happening in Europe, but as her relationship deepens with Odon, she learns more and tries to make a difference. She is independent and successful.

The most tragic character, though, is Nelly Mann, married to Heinrich Mann. She struggles with her identity and her relationship with her husband. Maybe she used him, or they used each other, to get out of Germany. Maybe their relationship was more friendship than romance. Maybe Nelly had so many demons that she couldn't live in the light. Allison Daugherty plays Nelly with style and courage. I was mesmorized by her portrayal of this character who seems so broken. Daugherty gives us a glimpse of how complicated Nelly's story is and how her soul is so filled with demons. I give her a personal standing ovation.

Ethan McSweeny has directed an outstanding show that is full of humor, surprises, and fantastic visual and sound elements. The Biker Chef accompanied me to this production. He said he connected with the show because of his personal history of German heritage and interest in military and stories of World War II. He said he'd recommend it to friends. It's a show that makes you laugh, ponder, hold your breath at moments of surprise or worry, and sigh. It contains adult themes, nudity, strong language, smoking, use of strobe lights, and is recommended for a mature audience.

Go to Tales from Hollywood page at The Guthrie Theater for more photos and video clips. It is playing at the Wurtele Thrust stage through October 27, 2012.

Go. Create. Inspire!

Journaling Prompt:  Have you ever felt silenced by a person or institution? Do you read banned books?