A Shimmering Water World

Reviews by Beverly Creasey

In my theater rounds of late, I’ve seen some delightful shows---with some standout performances I’d like to trumpet before they disappear: James Tallach is supplying plenty of suspense and sex appeal as the charismatic villain in the Concord Players’ THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL Timothy John Smith in Stoneham Theatre’s MY FAIR LADY gives a powerful, visceral performance as an unconventional Henry Higgins. Eric Hamel, in the same show, fiddles and whistles his way around Covent Garden, making the chorus numbers pop…And Ricardo Engermann adds hilarious pratfalls to the Wheelock Family Theatre’s energetic THE LITTLE MERMAID.

A fairy tale about humans and sea creatures living in harmony could not be more timely, given the current British Petroleum disaster which threatens the Gulf Coast. Linda Daugherty has fashioned the Hans Christian Anderson tale of THE LITTLE MERMAID into a sweet love story in a Shimmering Water World, and Wheelock makes the production kid friendly with lots of puppet fish and tiny lobster children to flesh out the story. (The Wheelock Family Theatre production swims through May 16th.)

Director/ set designer James P. Byrne’s clever ocean ripples with gossamer silk waves and billowing winds through which sail schools of silvery fish and a colony of mer-people. One particular mermaid dreams of becoming human and experiencing life “above.” Wheelock’s inventive production stars the charming Andrea Ross as the adventurous girl who saves a Prince from drowning and then makes a bargain with a witch to join him on land.

What makes WFT’s version work is the humor. The wee audience loved the sillier elements (like Ross splashing the humans or Ricardo Engermann’s spectacular pratfalls) and the older crowd giggled with admiration for Margaret Ann Brady’s spot on whale sounds. Jane Staab supplies the emotional heart of the story as the Great Sea Mother and Johnny Lee Davenport cuts quite a swath as the powerful King. Stacey Stephens’ imaginative costumes seem to flutter and float as the little mermaid and her sisters cavort in the water.

"The Little Mermaid" (16 April - 16 May)
WHEELOCK FAMILY THEATRE
@ 200 The Riverway, BOSTON MA
1(617)879-2300

HONK in Theater Mirror

Just Ducky at Wheelock
By Beverly Creasey

George Stiles and Anthony Drewe’s cheeky barnyard musical, HONK! (based on Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Ugly Duckling”) is getting a high flying production at Wheelock Family Theatre (playing through Feb. 28th)

Director Jane Staab’s energized cast includes some of Boston’s top performers—working side by side with a passel of talented kids as fish, ducklings, and assorted fauna. The musical will appeal to children for its silly antics but adults will find it refreshingly irreverent… and vegetarians (like me) will be overjoyed with its pro-animal stance: All the creatures on the farm know that “people are bad news!” Poor Mayor Turkey (Gary Thomas Ng) is positively phobic over the thought of Thanksgiving.

Aimee Doherty is sublime as the doting mother duck who produces a brood which includes an odd looking, oversized hatchling. She refused to give up on him because he’s different, even though everyone else disapproves, especially her less than helpful husband (Mark Linehan). Doherty can break your heart with a weepy like “Every Tear a Mother Cries” and triumph with a transcendent mother and child reunion.

Cheo Bourne is magnificent as the exuberant signet mistaken for a duckling. There are several show stopping numbers in HONK! but Bourne’s gorgeous love song about another swan, “Now I’ve Seen You” will leave you breathless.

Scott Severance and company strut the heck out of a hilarious “Wild Goose Chase” and Peter Carey has a hopping good time as a saucy song and dance frog. Sarah deLima makes a grand dame of a fowl, Jaime Montessano a magnificent lap cat and Brian Richard Robinson a nasty tomcat of a villain (who croons the Sondheimish “Play With Your Food”). Music director Jon Goldberg gets terrific singing from the whole menagerie. I was worried that the smallest of audience members might get restless in the long first act but I heard nary a “peep!”

Beverly Creasey reviews A Tale of Two Cities

Revolution And Redemption
By Beverly Creasey

Here’s the reason to celebrate in these difficult economic times: Wheelock Family Theatre is still able to mount large scale productions where many theaters cannot. Their latest is Dwayne Hartford’s adaption of Dickens’ monumental A Tale Of Two Cities (playing through November 29th).

Dickens, who wrote so eloquently about human suffering, was himself victim of circumstance spending time as a child in debtor’s prison and later finding work as a child laborer in a factory. Like Sydney Carton in A Tale Of Two Cities, Dickens served as a lawyer’s clerk before finding success serializing his stories in the newspaper.

A cast of fifteen actors recreate the harrowing stories of ordinary people caught up in events surrounding the French Revolution. Justice and morality are Dickens’ bread and butter and his scope is broad. We meet dozens of characters who swirl around carton and the Manettes, as they move closer and closer to disaster, in the person of relentless Madame Defarge.

Bill Mootos as Sydney Carton functions both as narrator and principal player in Dickens’ sweeping morality tale. He falls in love with Lucie Manette (the lovely Robin Eldridge) and pledges his loyalty to her and her family despite her affection for another. Mootos is the consummate Dickens actor, navigating the delicate balance between melodrama and naturalism. His charismatic performance as the sardonic antihero carries the production. M. Lynda Robinson, too, gets the Dickensian exaggerations just right, as Lucy Manettes’s hilarious, high strung governess.

Alas, opening night goblins got into sound system on Halloween eve, making it hard to hear the actors over swelling music punctuating the mood, movie style. In addition, my theater companion had great difficulty distinguishing between London and Paris as one scene often runs right into the next and many of the actors playing both French and English do so without a change of costume. It takes a few minutes to realize that the Englishman hasn’t travelled to the continent. He’s now an entirely different character (and nationality). Hats are added for the revolutionaries in Act II which is most helpful but a good knowledge of the story ahead of time is your best bet to follow the script.