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Tom Hariel & Neon Boots Office Manager Justin Bryan Earnest Mcdowell enjoying the Galloway playing pool on Sunday Texans vs. Tennessee Titans game on Sunday houston paparazzi Fun @ Neon Boots trodding the boards Pamela Robinson & friends having ...from 30 a birthday party easy, but more experienced directors don’t always pull it off this well. And she wisely guides her cast into line-readings that give some of the overwritten passages a know- ing, ironic edge. As Chandler, a young man with a big imagination who may be too smart for his own good, recent UNO graduate Mason Joiner gives a remarkable performance, projecting the requisite intelligence when talking about astronomical events and other scientific subjects. Yet he makes plain the emotional brittleness that his upbringing First night of dance lessons has engendered and Chandler’s desper- ate yearning to free himself from the stric- tures his mother has imposed. He’s like a colt with an IQ of 180 eager to play in new pastures (even if he still sleeps on Star Neon Boots Live! ~ Houston, Texas Wars sheets). I can imagine a Shivaree, who seems to have traveled the world at a young age, either a bit more earth-mothery and weatherbeaten than Ashton Akridge or, conversely, more diaphanous and gamine- like. Akridge seems to split the difference, a kind of minor league Sally Bowles with a Former Mr. BRB Craig Sanford & syrupy Southern accent, innocently seduc- Donnie Pledger-Manzano having a ing with an appealing down-to-earth pres- few before dance class ence that camouflages a toughened spine. And with the help of Choreographer Kim Karnell, Akridge seems well on her way to being an assured belly dancer. While Cammie West is too young and radiates a healthy glow that Mary Ann, Chandler’s Mom, probably hasn’t seen in many years, she embodies the concern of a mother who can’t let go and the world- weariness of someone who struggles to make the best of an extremely challenging situation. It’s good to have West back in town. As the putative woman of Chandler’s dreams, Rebecca Elizabeth Hollingsworth submerges herself into a hooker with a heart of, well, silver or bronze, even con- vincingly changing the sound of her voice. By turns, Hollingsworth is sexy and giggly and tough, all the while keeping one eye on Houston City Council Candidate the money due her. After all, this is a trans- Jenifer Rene Pool action and there’s a pimp she’s afraid of. @ her meet & greet [continued on 32] GayMardiGras.COM • September 24-October 7, 2013 • Facebook.COM/AmbushMag • The Official Mag: AmbushMag.COM • 31 Bottom still shines as a brilliant, complex tions at ABCT, Bean elicits truthful, multi- work about racism, certainly, but also about dimensional portrayals from his cast. If I the limits of power, the quest to establish can’t argue with his realistic staging ap- oneself, and the need to express oneself in proach, I do wish he would bring out more your authentic voice. of the scripts’ metaphysical and expres- What is astonishing about this produc- sionistic qualities. What I can argue with in tion is how vividly each of the four musi- Ma Rainey is some of the scenes’ static cians are portrayed; unlike other versions qualities; even in a cramped rehearsal room, I’ve seen, including on Broadway, in which you would expect more movement from Levee overshadows the others, here all these characters. four are equals. Over 12 years, Bean has I also had mixed feelings about Bean’s developed an ensemble of “Wilsonian” use of recorded music. In most productions actors and such veterans as Evans, Will- of Ma Rainey the actors play their various iams and Aubry insure that each role gets instruments; perhaps because of this some the prominence it’s entitled to. worthy actors have avoided doing the play. Williams simply disappears into Cut- I can’t blame Bean for using some of this trodding the boards fire that glows within those who know their ler, a representative of the old guard, offer- city’s finest thespians even if they’re not oversize self-worth. ing arguments that seem self-apparent and likely to wind up at Preservation Hall. But ...from 31 Oh, and did I mention Wesley sings to not merely from an earlier era. Evans makes every time the music came on and the Slow Drag a calming presence with a deter- miming started, it took us momentarily out In the most simplistic role, Blake the manner born in Rainey’s sassy style? mined voice of gravity. Aubry, in his finest of Wilson and Bean’s carefully constructed Buchert’s greasy Scagg is not quite on the And shows off an early version of twerking? performance yet, brings uncertainty to universe. level of his castmates but Buchert gets the Like I said, “Where has she been all these Toledo’s avowals of discrimination as These are mere quibbles, however. job done without upsetting the play’s bal- years?!” though he no longer trusts his own judg- Bean and his ABCT are to be commended ance. Scagg, after all, is Shivaree’s desig- If Rainey is the heart of this Tony- ment causing him further inner torture. for enabling New Orleanians to go on Au- nated bad guy, leavened by some humor. nominated play, her four-man band is the And Sean Jones blazes as Levee. Vain gust Wilson’s dramatic 100 year journey Hamlet he ain’t. soul. As they wait (and wait) for the singer enough to blow a week’s pay on a pair of through history. Michael Martin has created a persua- in the “band room”, trumpeter Levee (Sean sporty shoes and daring enough to flirt with sive book-lined room for Chandler though Jones), trombonist Cutler (Wilbert L. Will- Rainey’s lover, he reveals the multifaceted the relationship between his and Shivaree’s iams, Jr.), pianist Toledo (Alfred Aubry) and What Do You Say To a challenges of dealing with whites in a scath- apartments could have been better delin- bassist Slow Drag (Harold X. Evans) argue ing monolog. Jones evinces power, pride Shadow? at The eated. about how to deal with the White Man and and swagger but humbles himself as he When Shivaree opened at the Long relate terrible incidents of racial tries to sell his songs. Shadowbox through Wharf Theater in 1984 it got a devastating injustice.There are humorous stories but Damian Taylor is very good as the write-up in the New York Times. Perhaps if also existential challenges to God that cut Sept. 29 stuttering Sylvester, making him tougher it had been this production that was re- to the bone. Brava Mary Pauley! In Michael than the pampered prince he usually comes viewed, it’s name would’ve been much Such scenes feature the glorious lan- Allen Zell’s new one act play What Do off as. Coti Sterling Gayles’ Dussie Mae more familiar to us by now. guage that would be found in Wilson’s knows when to come on to girlfriend Rainey You Say To a Shadow? this extraordi- future Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, plus the nary actress holds the audience in her excess verbiage that inflate most of his and when to hold back, making her not only spell for some 50 minutes as a 91- Ma Rainey’s Black works as well. Most important, nearly thirty sexy but smarter than she appears. years after its debut, Ma Rainey’s Black As with all the other Wilson produc- year-old French Quarter denizen who Bottom at Anthony Bean enters a book store and embarks on a Community Theater lengthy monolog. As minutes go by in which little through Sept. 29 substantive is said, a lesser performer As I watched Demitrus Wesley’s gal- would have had viewers snoozing. In- vanizing performance in the title role of Ma stead, Pauley draws us in with discus- Rainey’s Black Bottom, around the middle of the second act it hit me. Given how sions of literary technique, Carlos perfectly right every utterance, every move Marcello, and her dim assessment of of hers was on this opening night, surely playwrights and poets. So natural is she must have done the role previously Pauley that you expect to encounter elsewhere. her the next time you walk though the Suffice to say I was flabbergasted Quarter. when Director Anthony Bean told me after We wait in vain, however, for the show that this is only Wesley’s second something dramatic to happen. Ulti- time on stage (the first was earlier this year mately, turning off a lamp becomes a in ABCT’s El Hajj Malik) All I can say is major action. “Where has she been all these years?!” Though her character has Based on an actual event, Ma Rainey is what first brought playwright August Wil- Mitteleuropean blood and “obvious Ger- son to widespread public attention and, man heritage”, Pauley eschews any with it, ABCT completes his 10-play cycle sort of accent which I didn’t mind. What chronicling the African-American experi- I did mind was that whereas I thought ence in the 20th century. It is a mostly Zell might be leading us into a tale of triumphant conclusion. World War II, or Cold War, intrigue or Ma Rainey is set in a Chicago record- privation, all we got was philosophical ing studio in 1927, a time when the legend- and aesthetic mumbo-jumbo. ary blues singer was at the height of her It would seem that Zell has put us fame.