Month: June 2024

Johnny Skeeky; or, The Remedy for Everything a Very Funny New Take on Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi

Steven Epp and Bradley Greenwald Photo by Dan Norman

Johnny Skeeky; or, The Remedy for Everything closes out the 2023/2024 season at Theater Latté Da. The reimagining of Puccini’s comic opera Gianni Schicchi using Puccini’s music but with a new Libretto by Steven Epp and Bradley Greenwald is set in the present day on a luxury yacht. Epp and Greenwald not only wrote but direct and star in it as well and they are dead brilliant in each and every one of those duties. Is it opera? Technically it is, but if you brought someone in off the street and didn’t give them a program, they might not come away thinking they saw an Opera, they may think it was a musical parodying operas. As I’ve come to appreciate opera more and more over the last four years, having one on the schedule has come to excite me whereas in the beginning it was more likely to be a sense of foreboding. This is the kind of opera that helped me conquer my opera anxiety, because it isn’t anything to fear. It’s in English, it’s easy to understand, it’s very funny, and well frankly there is about 80% more dialogue than I’ve ever seen in another opera. You can take your teenagers to this, you can take your Grandma to this, one content warning though, there is some adult language.

What Epp and Greenwald have done is written themselves a little gem of a modern comic opera building on the original work by Giacomo Puccini and original Librettist Giovacchino Forzano. They take a lot of liberties with the plot aside from just updating the setting, but the core message and story ideas are there. I’ve never seen a comic opera outside of Gilbert and Sullivan that actually made me laugh, something to do probably with having to read the subtitles and try and match what is being said to the very stylized singing. This Libretto is funny and in a very modern way, that speaks to Epp and Greenwald’s writing as well as their direction of the cast and their own, delicious performances. It’s a 10 person cast filled with Twin Cities favorites such as Jay Albright, Benjamin Dutcher, Anna Hashizume and James Ramlet, they all have their moments as does the entire cast. But, this is without a doubt Epp and Greenwald’s show. Their notes in the program talk about Epp’s wife commenting on overhearing them as they collaborated just laughing and laughing. That laughter represents the joy of creation, when it comes from a sense of play as opposed to blood, sweat, and tears, though I’m sure there was some of that as well. That playfulness, that sense of silliness translates to the stage and then out into the audience. Johnny Skeeky; or, The Remedy for Everything is truly just that if as they say laughter is the best medicine.

The Music Director is Sonja Thompson working from the orchestration by Robert Elhai makes a 5 piece band sound much fuller and richer than one would think possible. The music is very good and one can see why Peter Rothstein wanted to commision Epp and Greenwald to make something new and fun with Puccini’s music. Benjamin Olsen’s set design is impression, we have a suite on a luxury yacht but through the windows we can see the deck of the ship and the horizon. There are also some useful tricks built in that are hidden from sight but allow for some surprises in the staging. Karin Olson’s lighting design is very effective, especially during a scene in which a hurricane is coming and another when the boat is set on fire. Every aspect of this production sings, except for when they do a lot of talking of course. I don’t know what Epp and Greenwald did best, I think it’s a three way tie, they just nailed everything.

Johnny Skeeky; or, The Remedy for Everything runs through July 7th at Theater Latté Da for more information and to purchase tickets go to https://www.latteda.org/johnny-skeeky

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The Servant of Two Masters Dishes Out the Absurdity to a Dizzying Degree at Lyric Arts

Katrina Stelk, Kyle Marks, Alex Stokes, and Brandon Osero. Photo by Molly Weibel

The Servant of Two Masters adapted by local favorite Jeffrey Hatcher and Paolo Emilio Landi from the original 1789 commedia dell’arte classic by Carlo Goldoni, is a joyfully funny and self aware production. There is no attempt at selling this as realism, in fact the play opens with an apology by the patron of the theater company that the troupe is running late. Once the players arrive we are treated to several minutes of behind the scenes silliness as the stage manager and performers work out what they will be doing. The play reads like a Shakespeare Comedy crossed with an episode of Three’s Company directed by Corky St. Clair. It involves a pair of twins, one of which the male, is dead and the other a female who has taken on the identity of her brother posing as a man. There are multiple pairs of lovers who all seem on the brink of losing their true loves, and at the center is a quick thinking but not terribly bright servant who tries to serve two Masters at the same time in order to get paid and fed by both. This adaptation premiered in 2004, if it sounds familiar, you may have seen a later adaptation from 2011 that starred James Corden titled One Man, Two Guvnors which updated the play from 1700’s Italy to 1960’s England.

What I loved about this production is the constant awareness that these are actors performing in a very stylized manner. They pose, they ham it up for the audience, and they are not above earning a little on the side by participating in some product placement. There is something freeing about a comedy that lets you know up front it’s not to be taken seriously. In some way it loosens the audience up and the laughs flow freely unabated by any sense of self consciousness. The production is directed by Scott Ford who has directed some of the best shows at Lyric Arts since The Stages of MN came into being and before. Here, his playful approach to the staging, the controlled chaos perfectly watch the style of the script. The use of onstage musical accompaniment, which though providing some background music composed by Melissa Bergstrom, mainly serves to provide comedic sounds to emphasize the buffoonery of the characters actions. Nice to see Callie Aho as the Intimacy Director as the show has a fair amount of risque business, and it’s good to know that there is someone making sure everyone on stage is being cared for so we can enjoy the humorous nature of these moments guilt free. Wonderfully adaptive set design by Michaela Lochen and costumes by Samantha Fromm Haddow make for a nice looking and inventive look to the show. Special praise though to Katie Kaufmann’s Mask Design work which is a hallmark of the commedia dell’arte style, they are beautifully realized and amazingly expressive (see the photo at the top for an example).

On stage the entire cast is terrific, with special shout outs to those performing through masks, which results in the loss of an actors eyes, which they say are the windows to the soul. This acting requires a different set of skills an exaggerated movement of the head in order to compliment the masks and make the face seem alive. Kyle Marks and Brendan Veerman excelled in acting through the masks, to the point I almost lost sight of the masks. Loved seeing Nykeigh Larson and Kyler Chase again, both of whom I first discovered on the Lyric Arts stage, they wonderfully played the the Masters of the Servant who are so hysterically hot for each other they can’t barely see the other without trembling all over. And fantastic to finally see what Alex Stokes can do with a good sized role, and it’s as I suspected, comic gold. My advice is for Theater’s to keep finding larger and larger roles for Stokes, he’s proven he’s capable of being much more than the one liner comic relief ensemble player.

The Servant of Two Masters runs through June 22nd at Lyric Arts in Anoka for more information and to purchase tickets go to https://www.lyricarts.org/servant/#servant-tickets

Tired of missing reviews from The Stages of MN? Do you find yourself left out when all your friends are talking about that great new play that you didn’t even know about? Never fear that never has to happen again. Now you too can subscribe and have every post from The Stages of MN sent directly to your email box. No more hoping the algorithm works in your favor and you actually see a post on facebook or Instagram. No relying on so-called friends to tip you to the best shows in town. To subscribe on your computer: from the home page on the right, enter your email address and click subscribe. On your mobile device scroll to the bottom of the page and do the same. You can also follow me on Facebook, @thestagesofmn click follow and on Instagram thestagesofmn. You can also read some of my reviews syndicated on the MN Playlist website https://minnesotaplaylist.com/ from time to time.

But that’s not all! Think I may have steered you wrong on a show? Well, I am also a member of the Twin Cities Theater Bloggers (TCTB), where you can read roundups of shows by m’colleagues and I when you follow us on facebook @TwinCitiesTheaterBloggers. We also produce the podcast Twin Cities Theater Chat!! which you can access through this link or wherever you enjoy podcasts https://twincitiestheaterchat.buzzsprout.com/ . Now you too can be in the know about all the fabulous theater happening in and around the Twin Cities.