Annie, Beck Center

Among all the “fingernails-on-a-chalkboard,” cringe-inducing songs of all time, certainly “Tomorrow” ranks right up there. But that may be just because it’s so damn memorable.

Far from a slam, the status of the song that honors the day that will never come may actually may be a compliment to Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin who wrote the music and lyrics for Annie.

This is a show that can win you over, with the right performances and production, and Beck Center hits many of the right notes even if there are a couple less than stellar elements.

This is a major endeavor for Beck, and a sure-fire lock for many sold-out houses due to the hordes of pre-teen girls and their families who will troop in. And they’re being treated to some admission price-worthy theater.

As Annie, the embodiment of the cartoon orphan who leads FDR out of the Depression, Anna Barrett does a fine job. She displays solid stage presence and a singing voice that, while not exactly stripping the paint of the walls (a la Broadway’s original, Andrea McArdle), is certainly up to the task.

She is backed up by The Orphans, the other little girls who animate their hand-me-down rags with plenty of chutzpah and capable singing on “Hard Knock Life.”

Daddy Warbucks is played by Gilgamesh Taggett with some much appreciated underplaying, throwing away lines that become even funnier as a result. And his strong vocals add to the luster of the proceedings.

A standout in a smaller role is Matthew Ryan Thompson as the con artist Rooster. Moving with sinuous intent as he crafts a greasy, unctuous character with the moral depth of a fruit fly, Thompson almost singlehandedly makes “Easy Street” the showstopper it should be.

Unfortunately, his task is not aided greatly by a rather stiff Molly Huey as his henchwoman Lily. And as for Miss Hannigan, the usually reliable Lenne Snively has wonderfully nasty moments but doesn’t quite knit together a whole character that feels as strong as some of the others.

And it must be said that Leslie Feagan has just the right jut of chin to play FDR, along with the clenched Hyde Park accent.

Director Scott Spence and choreographer Martin Cespedes use the voluminous Beck main stage to excellent effect as they maneuver their battalion of actors through Trad A Burns’ many sets and scene changes.  

This Annie is a worth successor to Beck other recent holiday blockbusters, and is sure to make the little girls you know sing “Tomorrow” for many more tomorrows to come. Hey, relax, it’s why God invented aspirin.

Annie

Through January 6 at the Beck Center, 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, 216-521-2540

A Carol for Cleveland, Cleveland Play House

 (Stephen Spencer, at rear, and Charles Kartali)

Imagine this: A new holiday play is built around the shared flashback structures of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It features an omniscient narrator, a curmudgeonly/desperate central character, and many carbon copies of other characters from those two iconic works, including one mash-up—a wise-beyond-his-years little boy with a lame leg who is a pint-sized Clarence with a Tiny Tim impairment.

Gentle reader, you would be forgiven if you suspected that this was a set-up for a wild, no-holds-barred parody of Christmas clichés. But no, this is all played with a straight face and nary a burp of genuine wit in A Carol for Cleveland, now at the Cleveland Play House.

Written by two local luminaries (script by Eric Coble, based on a novella by Les Roberts) the play is 90-minute slide down a razor blade of treacly sentimentality and tone-deaf lunges at a tale of redemption.

It’s enough to make Santa abandon his toyshop and go out back to suck down a bottle of Wild Turkey and pass out in a reindeer stall.

As a transplanted Clevelander, Coble has achieved much success as a playwright, with productions blossoming all over the country and a couple more pending on and off Broadway. And I say huzzah for him! But that doesn’t excuse the watery, un-spiked eggnog that he’s serving up in this dreadful concoction.

Set in the late 1970s, Ed Podolak is an unemployed steel worker from Pennsylvania who is looking for a job in Cleveburg. And we see in flashbacks how Ed’s happy life progressed through marriage and children until the economy hit the skids.

Now, Ed is alone on Public Square on Christmas Eve, and he steals some cash from a Salvation Army bucket. But little Charlie Torbic sees what he does, calls him on it, and then invites Ed to dine with his parents and sister.

Even a not-too-bright eight-year-old can guess where all this is going, so I won’t burden you with the obvious. The entire enterprise lacks a shred of dramatic tension, and on top of that it is spoon-fed to the audience by a narrator, dubbed This Guy (a game Stephen Spencer), who tries to capture the folksy vibe of the Stage Manager in Our Town.

But here the trick doesn’t work, coming off more like a playwright's crutch. So This Guy becomes a narrator/stalker, hanging around the fringes of scenes and peering in through windows. And the identity of This Guy, which is meant to be the curtain-closing surprise, will only be so for those who have never seen a movie or play before, in their entire lifetimes.

Coble’s script doesn’t just wear its heart on its sleeve, it blows chunks of it in your face. A jolly fellow nicknamed Fez (because on his head he wears a…oh, never mind) actually says, “I make life better for those around me.” Okay, Fezziwig, thanks for the clue.

And a jolly Mr. Torbic presides over a jolly dinner while his jolly African-American neighbors George and Daisy and their daughter Ann establish themselves as the whitest black family to ever stride across a stage.

Indeed, everyone is jolly in this Christmas clusterfreak, except for the temporarily grumpypants Ed. And even though Charles Kartali gives his all in that role, he is never able to squirm out of the stereotyped hammerlock that Coble forces on him.

The same is true of director and CPH Associate Artistic Director Laura Kepley. One hopes she is soon give another play to direct that isn’t filled to overflowing with the theatrical equivalent of high fructose corn syrup.

Sentiment is enriching and enlightening when it is earned, as it is in those works that C for C leans so heavily upon. When it isn’t earned , it grates. Sorry, Zuzu, even though recorded bells are pealing at the end of this one, no angels are taking flight.

A Carol for Cleveland

Through December 23 at the Cleveland Play House, Allen Theatre, 1407 Euclid Avenue, 216-241-6000

Magic Flute, Talespinner Children’s Theatre

(Lauren B. Smith and Troy Bruchwalski)

There is wonder afoot on the west side for children as Magic Flute spins its web around everyone, from toddlers on up, at Talespinner Children’s Theatre.

Adapted from the Mozart opera by Anne McEvoy, this one-hour production features all kinds of kid-pleasing elements: audience participation, colorful costumes, captivating performances, inventive set pieces and a story that’s pretty easy to follow.

In this much condensed and child-friendly telling, the bird catcher Papageno is talked into portraying a prince by the three ladies who attend the nasty Queen of the Night. When Papageno is confronted by the Queen, she makes him go through tests (much against her sensible husband’s Sorastro’s wishes) until, with the aid of his flute, he wins the day. And the Queen discovers happiness.

Under Alison Garrigan’s lilting direction, the actors find many ways to entice and attract their youthful audience. Troy Bruchwalski is handsome and quite funny as Papageno, aided at times by his dedicated gal pal Papagena (an adorable Lauren B. Smith).

Michael Regnier lends heft to the wise Sorastro and the three ladies (Elaine Feagler, Tania Benites and Charles Hargrave) chirp and mince about with amusing deftness. The only character that doesn’t quite come across clearly is Monostatos (Hargrave again), Sorastro’s aide of sorts.

But all is saved by Heather Stout’s Queen, a sneering stack of grimaces and complaints until Papageno’s magic flute tames her serpent and she mellows out in bliss.

It’s a happy ending that is well earned, and one that should please all little kids (and their wranglers) who attend this fanciful flight.

Magic Flute

Through December 23 at Talespinner Children’s Theatre, the Reinberger Auditorium, 5209 Detroit Ave., 216-264-9680

Santaland Diaries, PlayhouseSquare

 Yep, every adult’s favorite elf named Crumpet is back again in this David Sedaris vehicle. Santaland Diaries is a holiday cartful of cynical laughs that has become as reliable a part of the season as Santa himself.

This time there’s a new actor, Allan Byrne, starring in this Cleveland Public Theatre production, staged at the Playhouse Square 14^th Street Theatre. And while the balding, satchel-eyed Bryne brings much-appreciated maturity and layers of neurotic baggage to the part, the one-person show lurches a bit fitfully under the direction of Eric Schmiedl.

Written originally by the humorist Sedaris when he was 33, the role has been played by actors of many different ages. And that is one good reason to change the age of the person in the script—especially these days when so many people in their 40s, 50s and older are forced to pick up demeaning jobs just to pay the bills.

Bryne doesn’t look like he’s in his early 30s, and that’s a good thing. Slumped over and a bit defeated, he fits this irreverent character in every other way possible.

And he definitely has some high points in his performance. His explication of “Santa Santa,” the weirdly committed Santa actor at Macy’s, is hilarious. As is Bryne’s fractured rendition of Billie Holiday singing “Away in a Manger.” It’s just a shame it’s over so soon.

In other ways, director Schmiedl doesn’t give Bryne the help he needs. At the start, Bryne never really connects with the audience, so we are left trying to catch up to him as he takes his journey through the nasty bowels of Santaland. And many of the vignettes run together too much, without the necessary clarity when introducing new characters in the story.

Both actor and director could take more chances with this intriguing version of Crumpet, and find even more poignant resonance when the narrator comes to discover some Christmas magic himself.

Santaland Diaries

Through December 22 at PlayhouseSquare, 14^th Street Theatre, 216-241-6000

How His Bride Came to Abraham, None Too Fragile Theater

(NTF chooses not to provide production photos of their shows and this blog chooses to place images at the start of each review. So...here's a photo that makes sense, sort of, once you read what follows.)

It’s no revelation that the large religious and cultural divisions in the Middle East always come down to personal stories and individual moments of either beauty or tragedy. But it never hurts to be reminded.

And in How His Bride Came to Abraham by Karen Sunde, now at None Too Fragile Theater in Akron, those hostilities are embodied in two people: a male Israeli soldier and a female Palestinian terrorist. They meet war-cute in the Israeli zone of southern Lebanon.

That obviously sets us up for massive fireworks, but the play slips a gear right at the start. First, Sabra, the young woman is helping Abraham limp into a hiding place she had established earlier. Then, they fight each other. And immediately after that, Sabra is gently tending to Abraham’s injured foot.

These fast switchbacks, within a few minutes, never let the audience fix on the mindsets of these two stressed out young people. And that makes the ensuing dialogue—ranging over all manner of inflicted injuries and atrocities, hopes and dreams—less compelling than it might be if we really understood who these two were from the start.

The complex relationship between the two eventually gets intimate before the inevitable tragedy that ends the talk for good. And there are some telling moments, as when Abraham says, reflecting on his family’s tortured past, “How can I keep death alive inside me?”

Meanwhile, the playwright reaches for political balance, showing how innocent young people are dragged into these conflicts when their individual inclinations might take them somewhere else entirely.

It’s a big task. And while the play does raise important points about the connections these two have with their countries and their families (Abraham’s grandmother’s voice is heard from time to time), the resulting “peaceful” fusion they create feels less monumental than the playwright intends.

As directed by Sean Derry, the two actors handling this ambitious material are starkly believable, even when the scenes are less so. Leighann Niles Delorenzo is wiry and focused as Sabra and Gabriel Riazi matches her intensity while adding a charming layer of naïveté. Grappling with each other on a mound of sandy dirt on the small NTF stage, each turns in an admirable portrayal.

But the oversimplification of what it takes to quell conflicts like these undermines a promising script. If playwright Sunde had not tried to wrap everything up so neatly, the play might resonate more clearly in a world where solutions are sought more than achieved.

How His Bride Came to Abraham

Through December 8 at None Too Fragile Theater, 1841 Merriman Road, Akron, 330-671-4563

Follies, Baldwin Wallace University

 The clueless former Senator of Alaska Ted Stevens once described the Internet as “a series of tubes” sending information from one place to another. He was wrong about the Internet, but he may have stumbled on a metaphor that works for Baldwin Wallace University’s musical theater department.

It seems that this program has a series of tubes that sends talented young performers directly to the Broadway stage. And the reason for that is on full display in Follies, the iconic James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim musical now at the Kleist Center on the BW campus.

This haunting play, studded with glorious Sondheim tunes, takes place on an old Broadway stage that’s ready for the wrecking ball. But first, a reunion is held for the old performers, many of whom appear in ghostly forms.

It’s a challenging and daunting work, brought to vibrant life by a huge cast under the direction of Victoria Bussert. When Bussert is on her game, as she is here, there is no one who can stage a production with more grand scope and yet maintain a craftperson’s attention to detail.

The show revolves around two couples whose marriages have faded into irrelevance. Buddy & Sally and Phyllis & Ben are now on in age, lamenting past decisions, infidelities and missed opportunities.

These roles are double cast among BW’s talented students. The older versions of this foursome on the second night of the run—Clare Hoews Eisentrout (Sally), Ciara Renee (Phyllis), Alex Syiek (Ben) and James Penca (Buddy) all performed with clarity and specificity.

The only missing element was the middle age of the characters, inaccessible to these young performers, that informs so much of Sondheim’s lyrics and Goldman’s book. But these remarkable young actors maximize every other aspect of their portrayals. And it’s quite likely that the students who share these characters on other nights do exactly the same.

The sprawling cast also includes several BW faculty members, who turn in sparkling cameos. But the overwhelming impact of this production is often due to the elegant set design by Jeff Herrmann, the sumptuous costumes by Charlotte Yetman and lighting designer Mary Jo Dondlinger’s evocative touches.

This Follies is a feast for the eyes and ears, staged with a gloss and professionalism that few theaters in the region can match. And you can include the touring Broadway shows in that mix.

Follies

Through November 18 at Baldwin Wallace University, Kleist Center, 95 Bagley Road, Berea, 440-826-2240.

Beauty and the Beast, PlayhouseSquare

(Hilary Maiberger as Belle and Darick Pead as Beast)

No matter how you do Beauty and the Beast, you’re bound to attract an audience. Especially those height-challenged folks (kids, to you) who are treated to this Disney theatrical production.

And the youngsters won’t be disappointed by this touring show, even though they may squirm a bit as it lumbers along for almost three hours, with intermission.

Adults, however, could find entrancement hard to come by in a production directed with children’s theater broadness by Rob Roth. Indeed, there’s so much mugging going on around him that Darick Pead in his Beast costume seems positively understated.

Fortunately, he and Hilary Maiberger as Belle have ideal voices for these fine songs, and Pead finds some pathos in the Beast who is desperate to find a true love before his hirsute and be-fanged fate is sealed.

Maiberger is less successful in conjuring an interesting personality to go with her sterling pipes. She never quite captures the feisty, eccentric spirit of this girl who is considered a book-reading oddball in her little town.

In the hugely comical role of Gaston, Jeff Brooks has guns that won’t stop and a powerful voice. But he never fully dominates the stage as Gaston should, leaving a hole at the center of the feud that leads to the final confrontation with Beast.

As for the mansion’s servants who are all on their way to becoming household furnishings under the enchantress’s spell, it’s a mixed and mostly ungratifying bunch. Hassan Nazari-Robati exudes plenty of energy as Lumiere, but he lacks variety in his various candle lighting moments, relying on the same grins no matter what the situation.

Mrs. Potts, as portrayed by Erin Edelle, doesn’t offer the ample maternal quality that makes this character memorable, and Edelle’s rendition of the title song is thin and unaffecting. Jessica Lorion tries to have fun with the maid Babette but comes up short, as does an over-the-top Shani Hadjian as Madame de la Grande Bouche. 

Instead of playing characters, these actors all seem to be diving for the closest and easiest laugh. And that begins to wear out one’s patience.

As for the set design by Stanley A Meyer, it seems equally overdone, sporting lots of fairy tale book foliage and super-cutesy little cottages. This approach proves distancing, never allowing the audience to fully buy into the story itself.

Even so, much of the Alan Menken/Howard Ashman/Rim Rice music shines through, giving kids and oldsters a familiar rush. With this show, that’s always the beauty part.

Beauty and the Beast

Through November 18 at the palace Theatre, PlayhouseSquare, 1518 Euclid Avenue, 216-241-6000