NOT BORN YESTERDAY. June 2021 - An Octoroon - Tevye In New York - Julius Caesar & Others - LIVE THEATER IS BACK!

 AN OCTOROON (Hollywood)

This Obie Award-winning play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins will launch live performances on Fountain Theatre’s new outdoor stage in June. Judith Moreland directs this outrageous deconstruction of a moustache-twirling melodrama by 19th century playwright Dion Boucicault. Matthew Hancock stars as a modern-day Black playwright struggling to find his voice among a chorus of people telling him what he should and should not be writing. He decides to adapt his favorite play, Boucicault’s 'The Octoroon' - an 1859 melodrama about illicit interracial love. The Black playwright quickly realizes that getting White, male actors of today to play evil slave owners will not be easy, so he decides to play the White male roles himself - in whiteface. What ensues is an upside down, topsy-turvy world where race and morality are challenged, mocked and savagely intensified. 

Mara Klein

This theatrical melodrama tells the story of an octoroon woman - a person who is one-eighth Black - and her quest for identity and love. The cast includes Rob Nagle as playwright Boucicault; Mara Klein (photo) as Zoe the Octoroon; Hazel Lozano as a production assistant, and Vanessa Claire Stewart as a Southern belle in love with the plantation owner (Hancock in whiteface). Meanwhile, Leea Ayers, Kacie Rogers and Pam Trotter portray three startlingly modern slave women. The play satirizes racial stereotypes in a whirlwind of images and dialogue that forces audiences to look at America’s racist history exposed.

Production manager for the Fountain’s outdoor stage is Shawna Voragen, with scenic design by Frederica Nascimento. Stephen Sachs and Simon Levy co-produce; associate producer is James Bennett, while Barbara Herman and Susan Stockel are executive producers. Theatre is at 5060 Fountain Avenue (at Normandie) in Los Angeles. For information call (323) 663-1525 or go to www.FountainTheatre.com.

TEVYE IN NEW YORK (Beverly Hills)

Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts re-opens in June with an outdoor performance space with tiered seating, creative lighting and sound. With a firm commitment to the health and safety of staff, artists and patrons, it accommodates 100 socially distanced audience members each night. This Return of In-Person Audiences to The Wallis launches with the World Premiere performance of a one-man show written, co-directed and performed by Tom Dugan and co-directed and designed by Michael Vale.

Ever wonder what happened to Tevye, wife Golde, and their daughters, after the curtain came down in Fiddler on the Roof? Tevye in New York finally answers this decades-old question. Follow Tevye as he fights for his piece of the American dream - his journey with his family across the Atlantic Ocean, through Ellis Island, and into the crowded streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. You’ll fall in love with Tevye all over again in this funny and poignant one-man show. For performance dates and ticket information: 310-746-4000 or https://thewallis.org.

 JULIUS CAESAR & OTHERS (Topanga Canyon)

Best known for presenting lively and engaging renditions of the works of William Shakespeare, Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum will open the season on Saturday, July 10 at 7:30 p.m. with a fresh look at Shakespeare’s iconic thriller about power, politics and the elusive nature of truth through a different lens. Director Ellen Geer tells the tale from the vantage point of the Soothsayer. Audiences yearning for live theater after a year-long drought can satisfy their cravings by returning the next day, Sunday, July 11 at 4 p.m., for the opening of 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'. This version infuses the Bard’s beautiful language with music and song to heighten the pleasure. For tickets call (310) 455–3723, or go to www.theatricum.com.

NOT BORN YESTERDAY. May 2021 - ELISABETH BERGNER - a true story

 

Why I love live theater is back on my agenda, having received a letter from solo performer Arnold Weiss regarding Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner, who I'd mentioned seeing perform onstage in a past column. Arnold wrote: "I'd give a million dollars to have seen Elisabeth Bergner in "First Love" - I'd seen her in two films. She had a great presence - to me the perfect Rosalind opposite Olivier in "As You Like It"…" Hence, this true story!

In the early 60's I was a young beginner-actress who by pure luck had managed to be cast as understudy to the great Joan Plowright in "A Taste of Honey" on Broadway. When the show closed in New York City, I found myself on the road with the National Tour - nine months that now count among the most exciting and fruitful of my life.

Whenever we were in a town where another Broadway tour was playing, we sometimes managed to get to see these fabulous shows. It was in Chicago that I saw the great Elisabeth Bergner in the stage adaptation of Romain Gary's memoir "Promise At Dawn." Now titled "First Love" the play was on its pre-Broadway tour. They had a Thursday matinee (ours was on Wednesday) so with other cast members I eagerly went and sat in orchestra seats close to the stage.

In my memory: The play was about Gary's mother, Nina Kacew, a Polish Jew, living in Nice, France, during the brutal Second World War. The person I saw onstage had no theatrical airs, she was clearly uneducated, but a highly patriotic and energetic woman, whose love for her son was boundless. Romain (Hugh O'Brien) was a young man, a loyal Frenchman, determined to fight the Germans. His mother encouraged him to join the Free French Air Force headquartered in England. In one marvelous scene, forever etched in my memory, he came to say goodbye to her in full military dress before going away to war.

Ah, was she proud of him! What levels of ecstasy surged through her bosom as she took him out of their house to show the neighbors, exclaiming, "This is my son! See him. See how brave he is. How magnificent!" The neighbor-actors were fine with their admiration, but that was not enough for this woman Bergner inhabited. To my utter amazement she looked out at us sitting, watching in the dark. "See my son! He will save us from these beasts!" she cried and in a burst of enthusiastic joy dragged him down off the stage to us.

I saw her next to me, her eyes blazing, the actor-son squirming in embarrassment but grinning happily. "This is my son, my hero!" she said to me proudly, and I believed her with all my heart. At that moment I knew that as an actress I could never again hide behind a fake wall and not share totally with my audience. Elisabeth Bergner taught me that and, from that time, my playwriting and directing has always been inter-active with an audience.

Olivier & Bergner "As You Like It"

A few days later I was shocked to hear that the show was going to Broadway without her. I learned through the theater grapevine that she and the director, Alfred Lunt, had a disagreement over her interpretation of the role. They chose director over actor and it opened on Broadway with Hungarian star Lili Darvas on December 25, 1961. The show closed after 24 performances.