First read-through today for Six Degress. Bridget is directing, with Shawn assisting and stage-managing. Leads are Karen (Ouisa), Michael K. (Flan), and Chris (Paul). My wife Kitty is Jennifer, our petulant son Ben is Michael S. And there are Ken, Shannon, Allie, Casey, Bruce, John, John Josh, Jay, Matt, and Tiffany. That's a lot of actors for a 90-minute play, and we've doubled two of the roles.

My networking coefficient is somwhat less than 50%, as I've worked before with Bridget, Michael K., Chris, Ken, and Allie.

Michael K., as I expected, is not using his book for his shorter monologues already, even though he's directing another show, one that opens next Friday. I was surprised at how funny my part is; or at least everyone at the table thought it was funny. It's one of those parts where the humor is in the timing.

One of the reasons that I don't know many of the cast is that they're relative youngsters. Matt is a senior in college, for instance.

This is only the third time, as far as I can figure, that I've played someone's father, and the other two don't really count. I played Paul Sycamore in a church basement production about 15 years ago. I played Reece in Communicating Doors, and it's only in the last 5 five minutes that he has a scene with Phoebe, and even that was under a couple ounces of makeup.

Almost ten years ago I played Ferdinand in The Tempest, and Steve (playing my father) was actually about three months older than me.

So I'm going to be someone's father, hunh? I'm not sure that I like the idea.

posted: 6:56:44 PM  

Cooking with Elvis, by Lee Hall, directed by Tom Prewitt, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

What is it about Elvis Presley? What accounts for his cult? The answer perhaps can be found in Lee Hall's black comedy at Woolly Mammoth, that Elvis is a coefficient in the equation food = love. Cooking with Elvis, directed by Tom Prewitt, could prove to be the most entertaining entry in Woolly's season.

The story is told through the eyes of Jill, a precocious, unhappy, chubby 14-year-old girl in a working-class northern England family. Her father (known only as Dad) is quadriplegic and mute from an automobile accident two years ago (less than a vegetable, he is called a "cabbage"). Her hope is that he might at least regain speech if he can be jolted by a well-cooked meal, so Jill escapes into the kitchen and the mysteries of domestic science (home economics to you and me).

Meanwhile, her mother (Mam), feeling all of her 38 years, seeks out the sexual attentions of other men. The main action of the play begins when Mam brings home studly baker's supervisor Stuart for the first time.

Oh, and the Elvis part? Before his accident, Dad was a professional Elvis Presley impersonator. In several fantasy sequences of Jill's, Dad steps out of his wheelchair and recreates the Elvis magic.

It's a script that's conscious of its own Luhrmannesque theatricality: Jill announces each scene directly to us, usually with a portentous title. The play offers a rare opportunity for Woolly technicians to indulge in sheer glitziness, with follow spots, fog, and even a mirrored disco ball. There is a (broken) proscenium arch with a red drape behind which scene changes happen. It's good work by set designer Robin Stapley to fit all of the locations of Mam and Dad's house into the American Film Institute space.

Kate Turner-Walker's costumes for Mam, each one more desperately tarty than the last, outshine Dad's Elvis wardrobe.

Director Hewitt knows how to slow a scene down for dramatic or comic effect, as when Jennifer Mendenhall as Mam squeezes out a monologue given to Dad, or in the first act closing scene between Stuart and Jill that sets up a triangular conflict to be played out in act two.

Rick Foucheux as Dad is worthy of note, for his forced inaction in most of his scenes (he is allowed a few whining grunts from time to time). When he takes the stage to sing, he proves that there's a little bit of Elvis in each one of us. Kimberly Gilbert is winning as Jill, but stumbles over the obstacle that blocks most adult actors who play young teens (and an adult is really needed, given the demands of this script): sometimes gawky reads to us as spastic.

The script is problematic when it comes to the character of Stuart. As we see him in act one, he's just a horny guy, and none too bright. But for him to meet the Itysian fate waiting for him in the second act, he must somehow become a sexual predator and divisive force, and that never happens in this production.

Nevertheless, his story is linked to the biggest laugh of the show, "It's a good job I killed the fucking tortoise." See the show and learn more.

posted: 6:34:55 PM