"It was a dark and stormy night…" Well, not really - a bit chilly, but it DID rain dangerously close to the beginning of The Turn of the Screw and Little Brother: Little Sister at MSU Summer Circle — which made for a significantly smaller audience than usual, but significantly better seats for us, who never seem to come early enough to position our chairs near the center. (It's best to come an hour or more early and bring FOOD, wine, cash for ice cream....)
I digress. Back to "dark and stormy," because these shows were. The acting was excellent all around with Sarah Goeke and Andrew Head in The Turn of the Screw, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from Henry James' original 1898 ghost story. Lots of mysterious spooky evil in this one - with Sarah convincingly descending from a sweet young applicant for a governess job to a ghost-obsessed crazy person. Andrew was impressive as he transformed frequently from the creepy intense uncle, to the stooped lady housekeeper, to the charming/sinister boy, Miles. The play is haunted by a repressed Victorian sexuality and ghostly obsession - and directed by Kirill Sheynerman.
Little Brother: Little Sister by David Campton features a post apocalyptic sexuality as a teenage brother and sister experiment with their budding desires/taboos, while their caretaker "Cook" snores in a chair. Cook wakes up and wreaks her discipline, and demonstrates her own fears of "the door behind the door" that no one must ever go through, and is cajoled into revealing memories of life "before." To add to the confusion and weirdness, this absurdist piece has both teenagers convincingly played by women (Julia Hays, Brittany Nicol) and the Cook played by a man Caleb Wolfe. Julia who was such a feminine ingenue last week makes a believable young boy, and Brittany bursts with adolescent girl power. The play explores the risks/drives of growing up, facing hopelessness, fear, sex, death... and yet we go on... to what? This show was directed by Anthony Head, the multiple-role player in the first show. These Summer Circle actors/production teams must put in an aMAZing amount of work to produce these three weeks of shows every June with so many overlapping actors.
Of course, tomorrow (Friday and Saturday) there's the family show "Stop Copying Me" at 6pm (not 6:30) that runs before a repeat of this adult double feature. I'll be there for that with my three Lansing grandchildren, but will NOT be letting them stay for these later shows!
http://theatre.msu.edu/index.php/productions/summer-circle-theatre/
I digress. Back to "dark and stormy," because these shows were. The acting was excellent all around with Sarah Goeke and Andrew Head in The Turn of the Screw, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from Henry James' original 1898 ghost story. Lots of mysterious spooky evil in this one - with Sarah convincingly descending from a sweet young applicant for a governess job to a ghost-obsessed crazy person. Andrew was impressive as he transformed frequently from the creepy intense uncle, to the stooped lady housekeeper, to the charming/sinister boy, Miles. The play is haunted by a repressed Victorian sexuality and ghostly obsession - and directed by Kirill Sheynerman.
Little Brother: Little Sister by David Campton features a post apocalyptic sexuality as a teenage brother and sister experiment with their budding desires/taboos, while their caretaker "Cook" snores in a chair. Cook wakes up and wreaks her discipline, and demonstrates her own fears of "the door behind the door" that no one must ever go through, and is cajoled into revealing memories of life "before." To add to the confusion and weirdness, this absurdist piece has both teenagers convincingly played by women (Julia Hays, Brittany Nicol) and the Cook played by a man Caleb Wolfe. Julia who was such a feminine ingenue last week makes a believable young boy, and Brittany bursts with adolescent girl power. The play explores the risks/drives of growing up, facing hopelessness, fear, sex, death... and yet we go on... to what? This show was directed by Anthony Head, the multiple-role player in the first show. These Summer Circle actors/production teams must put in an aMAZing amount of work to produce these three weeks of shows every June with so many overlapping actors.
Of course, tomorrow (Friday and Saturday) there's the family show "Stop Copying Me" at 6pm (not 6:30) that runs before a repeat of this adult double feature. I'll be there for that with my three Lansing grandchildren, but will NOT be letting them stay for these later shows!
http://theatre.msu.edu/index.php/productions/summer-circle-theatre/
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