If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements.
His novel Impacted was published by The Story Plant in 2021.We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice. His plays have been produced at The Vineyard Theatre in Manhattan as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and at the Center for Puppetry Arts. 40, .īenjamin Carr, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, is an arts journalist and critic who has contributed to ArtsATL since 2019. “Ruthless!” is a fun, wacky and worthwhile piece of entertainment. The music direction from Alli Reinhardt and sound design from Brady Brown allow for songs to shine and the lyrics to be clear. And Locke’s work as the terrible Louise and later as a dim, devious assistant named Eve is also funny.Ĭonroy’s direction and the choreography from Tyler Sarkis make excellent use of Out Front’s performance space, occasionally letting the show spill off the stage into the audience. Scott, whose work is mostly limited to the show’s first act, makes the best of his time onstage as the frustrated teacher. Gospel singer Latrice Pace, playing Tina’s drama critic grandmother, gets a powerhouse comedic solo near the end of act one called “I Hate Musicals,” and it’s an absolute blast. It’s an engaging performance that ultimately makes the entire show work.
Kudos to designer Jay Reynolds and wig stylist George Deavours.) Fountain’s work also sets the anything-can-happen tone for the entire show, interacting with the audience, in on the joke, laughing at himself. One of the musical highlights of the show came whenever Dvorak and Walls would harmonize in duet.Īs Sylvia, Fountain is frequently funny, given a recurring bit of stunning costume changes. She is a special kind of performer, and Atlanta is lucky to have her. Playing Judy as a plastic, cheerfully dim housewife at first, she has impeccable comic timing, drawing laughs from elongated pauses, poses and gestures even during her opening song “Tina’s Mother,” where she answers dozens of phone calls and doorbells with the unperturbed delight of Barbara Billingsley in “Leave It to Beaver.”Įventually, Dvorak gets an opportunity to play a wildly different, equally hilarious side to Judy, and it’s here that the depths of her talent and commitment to the work come into clear view. Anderson productions of “The Secret Garden” and “Caroline, or Change,” Walls gives Tina a blunt, hilarious mean streak that makes the audience root for the character, in spite of her murderous ways.ĭvorak is an amazing singer, as evidenced previously by her work in “The Pretty Pants Bandit” at Georgia Ensemble Theatre, yet her comedy chops here are remarkable. Previously onstage in the terrific Jennie T. Walls, who played Tina during the performance attended for review, is a marvelous talent with a terrific voice and savage wit. Other crazy twists and soapy turns make the trajectory of “Ruthless!” unpredictable, but the cast is clearly having a blast doing this show. Croix (Blake Fountain), who tries to persuade Tina’s mother Judy (Anna Dvorak) to sign a contract and let Tina pursue show-biz.īut when Tina loses the plum Pippi part to classmate Louise (Courtney Locke), her violent, vindictive side emerges, leaving Judy unsure whether her daughter would be better off in juvenile detention than in the spotlight. Tina’s song-and-dance performances at the local nursing home have attracted the attention of a cutthroat talent scout named Sylvia St. Within the show, blond, cherubic talent Tina, played by Max Walls and Kayla Furie on alternating days, is desperate to play Pippi Longstocking in her school musical, as directed by her teacher, Miss Thorn (Wendell Scott). The world cannot lose shows like “Ruthless!” Without them, it would be a lot less interesting. But it also contains a rich, entertaining, self-mocking and defiant survivor’s zeal - reminiscent of John Waters, Del Shores and Charles Busch - that we cannot afford to lose sight of as LGBTQ spaces and culture come under attack. As directed by Out Front founder Paul Conroy, it aims to be a campy, farcical distraction from what’s going on in the real world, according to his director’s notes in the program.
0 kommentar(er)
