The Spy Who Punned Me, or… From Old Creamery With Love, or… Punraker, or…

By K. Michael Moore
Photos by Lily Allen-Duenas

(L-R) Keegan Christopher as Myron; 
Mike Long as Jacob Seal

Cedar Rapids Puns are generally something a person loves, or hates. In a lot of ways, so is dinner theater. In both cases, the decision is entirely a matter of opinion and personal preference.

I LOVE puns (as several friends will attest with displeasure, no doubt!) – not sure about the old adage claiming they are the “highest” form of humor, but I love them. Dinner Theater, well, that I have found can be marvelous or disastrous… and every space in between.

Old Creamery Theater’s dinner theater production, The Spy Who Killed Me (written by James Daab) is a pun-laden farce of the spy thriller genre, performed at the Clarion Hotel in Cedar Rapids (Note: NOT at the OCT’s usual Main Stage or Studio spaces in Amana).

It ain’t Shakespeare, but it is far from disastrous.

An Itch to Scratch

By K. Michael Moore

Cedar Rapids - Some of my most amazing memories are of sitting in some friend’s basement, or around a table at some dive, tossing back a couple beers and having a bull session with my creative, often acerbic, always dreaming, creative friends. The unplanned conversations that spark a “You know what we could do…?” brainstorming session, that maybe leads to nothing at all but a couple laughs and a memory, or maybe becomes the next sensation. SPT’s Tales from the Writers’ Room series makes me feel like I’m watching those conversations every single time I go. The SPT troupe has this unplanned feel to everything, and it’s beautiful. They don’t waste time worrying about perfection, they throw together the funniest, best stuff they’ve got and see what sticks. And the result is really, really enjoyable.

For those who don’t know, Tales is like Cedar Rapids own SNL – a variety show of local writers and acting talent, with musical interludes between sketches. As far as I understand, like SNL, the performers come together in the week ahead of the 2-night set, and cram like hell to memorize, block, and put up a full evening of sketch comedy, spoken-word, and often electrifying concert-style music. Each season has a theme the writers must utilize, and each specific session has a specific topic – both must be included or at least nodded to in each sketch. In addition, each session includes the talents of the usual band of SPT ne’er-do-wells, and also 2 Guest Actors, a Guest Writer, and Musical Guest Artists. This season’s theme is “7”, and this weekend’s particular session was 7 Year Itch.

Menagerie's Delicate Power, and a Giving of Trees

By K Michael Moore
Photos by Len Struttmann

L-R: Spina, Schneider, Rezabek, Shedeck

Marion - The Glass Menagerie is often regarded as Tennessee Williams’s masterwork, filled with depth and broken, redeemable, challenging characters. In brief (as brief as possible!), the 1930’s: the Wingfield family, long abandoned but haunted by the unnamed Mr. Wingfield, struggles along on the income of an unsettled and dreaming Tom (David Schneider), who is also the Narrator of the piece. His older sister, Laura (Hannah Spina), destructively shy and with a crippled leg, has no prospects to make her own way in the world, little to no ambition past her record player and her glass figurines, and no likelihood to obtain a husband to provide for her. Their mother, Amanda (Traci Rezabek), is an aging southern belle who married the wrong man and lives largely in her own memory and her own vision of her children. Tom dreams of escaping the prison of the family flat, of adventure, but remains to keep his mother and sister from being destitute. Laura dreams of her glass figurines, of a boy she adored in high school. Amanda dreams of what she once was – or thought she was – and that her children would aspire to marriage and happiness, but she fails to understand what would make them happy. Needless to say, such a mix in a tiny St. Louis apartment leads to strife. Enter Tom’s friend, “The Gentleman Caller,” Jim O’Connor, played by Kyle Shedek, invited to dinner by Tom but at Amanda’s insistence in an effort to marry Laura off. Jim has no idea of Amanda’s intentions and doesn’t even know Tom has a sister.

Giving Tree’s inaugural production of Menagerie is a solid show, and shows the promise of future endeavors. It is not without its flaws, but it is a wonderful show. One of the show’s greatest accomplishments is that not one of the characters is flat or one-dimensional. As Director Heather Akers points out in her Director’s Note, it is all too easy with a script such as this to paint the characters too thin. Tom can easily become a selfish, alcoholic bum with no respect; Laura a willingly invalid spinster, afraid to face the world; and Amanda a manipulative harpy with a dash of insanity. At no time does the Giving Tree troupe allow this to happen. And that’s the true power of the production – Giving Tree shows us these infinitely human characters without either apology or excuse, but with simple understanding.

Year-End Wrap-Up!

As the year draws to a close, we at the Iowa Theatre Blog have gotten to reminiscing about the past 12 months. We're sure you have, too! So, we invited our reviewers to talk to us about their "best of" choices for 2014. It was a fun process: usually, we restrict what our reviewers can comment on. No one can review a show that a company they're affiliated with has produced, for example. Here, though, we gave them free reign to talk about what caught their attention, what moved them, what huge successes they saw in Corridor theatre in the year 2014. We hope you're as excited as we are to read the results! Also, we'd LOVE to hear what YOU think on the matter! Sound off in the comments here, or on FB, or Twitter... or just start the conversation at your favorite NYE party :-D What excited YOU about local theatre in 2014? What gave you hope for 2015? Read our reviewers' thoughts after the jump...

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Brings Hope Home

By K. Michael Moore
Photos By Lily-Allen Duenas

The company of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

I’m going to confess something: I adore intimate staging in theater. I love black boxes, church basements, stage seating, and all of the oddball found space work that goes on. If you haven’t seen a show at Old Creamery Theater’s Studio Stage, Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike would be a great production with which to start. Literally the Amana Middle School’s band rehearsal room, converted with a carefully crafted set and rounded thrust stage, VSMS isn’t performed, it simply and profoundly exists… right in front of your nose.

VSMS presents the story of Vanya (Patrick Du Laney) and his (adopted) sister, Sonia (Marquetta Senters). Having cared for their now deceased parents, who were aged professors with a penchant for Chekhov, Vanya and Sonia are in the long-term process of lamenting their lack of having lived. Middle aged now, and without the sympathetic mission of being home caregivers, Vanya and Sonia have little to occupy their time, save staring out at the pond and bickering with one another.

Old Creamery Airs its Private Lives

By K Michael Moore

Amana - What is it that drives us to that one person who has the singular power to make us the most crazy, frustrated, and darkest person we can be? I mean that one person who can turn us into a monstrous version of ourselves, tempt us to rage or childishness with the simplest of words – but also turns on some pilot light deep inside us, igniting not only those frightening fires but also simultaneously heating and creating the entire world for us. I am certainly generalizing here; please forgive me. But I know very few people who don’t have “that” someone, lurking like a specter of both love and fury, somewhere in their lives. Maybe they married them. Maybe they divorced them. Maybe they had a torrid affair with them in college and ran like hell, never looking back. For some, that person pops in and out of their lives, simultaneously tossing everything into chaos and bringing back an element of passion and joy that had gone away in their absence.

Old Creamery’s current production of Noel Coward's Private Lives explores the idea of that someone - not with a scalpel but with a typically Coward-esque battering ram. The show is a flippant, indirect series of jabs that keeps the audience cringing and laughing throughout.

The story shows us the roller coaster relationship of Amanda (Saffron Henke) and Elyot (Jim Van Valen), who divorced five years ago after a brutally and mutually aggressive marriage. By chance, both arrive to the same hotel, on the same day, to celebrate their respective honeymoons with their respective new spouses – Sybil (Laura Ernst) and Victor (Eric Hedlund). In the way only theatre can require, they of course happen to be in rooms adjoined by a shared balcony.

To Kill a Mockingbird Finds Power and Grace Through Empathy

By K. Michael Moore
photos by Len Struttman

the children watch Atticus (Scot Hughes) at work

Cedar Rapids - I have a confession to make. I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school and I paid it very little mind. Perhaps you are the same. For me, back then, Harper Lee’s carefully crafted morality tale, her poignant and innocent translation of the ugliness – and the greatness – inside us all, slipped past my adolescent mind in lieu of thoughts of girls, homework, a crappy after-school job. Bad me. Fortunately, Theatre Cedar Rapids has given me another chance with its current stage production of Lee’s classic.

Mockingbird is set in the Deep South during the Depression. Events of major import occur, and, as an audience, we see them and process them through the bifocal lens of young Scout (Zoey Akers) as she learns of them, and, simultaneously, through the reminiscent voice of Scout as an adult (Jean Louise Finch, played by Marty Norton), who serves as the piece’s narrator, weaving in and out of scenes, smoothly moving us forward in a story that is at once a coming of age tale and a social morality tale. As Scout, her brother Jem (Jaden Henley), and their oddball buddy Dill (Augie Charipar) play, scuffle, and trick their way through the story, they stumble in and out of people’s lives, coming face-to-face with issues such as poverty, racism, mental illness, addiction, and mob mentality, to name but a few.

Iowa City is Blessed by Good People

By K. Michael Moore
Photos by Bob Goodfellow

(L-R) Jody Hovland, Carrie Houchins-Witt, 
Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers, Osean Perez

Iowa City —“Good” theatre has long been a crucible in which we test our ideas against themselves. It makes us think, it challenges us, forces us to examine the preconceived notions we may not want to admit are present in our lives. But theatre is also entertainment, joy, and a window into our own world. Riverside Theatre’s Good People is exactly that kind of theatre. All of that kind of theatre.

The play is set primarily in South Boston – “Southie” – a rough-and-tumble part of the city. This is not a place where stars rise, but rather where “good” people make do. They make their way. And sometimes that way is not in any way glorious. Sometimes, we don’t have choices. Or we think we don’t.