Theater Reviews: DEARLY BELOVED and Neil Simon’s RUMORS

Rumors
Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy at Progress Energy Center
Through June 15

 

Dearly Beloved
Theatre in the Park
Through June 28

Fans of farce have their pick of shows when it comes to local theater. The annual summer series Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy (an unfortunately literal title during this heat wave) opens its season with Neil Simon’s 1988 play Rumors, while Theatre in the Park has Dearly Beloved by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten. Both feature energetic direction and performances, and both also suffer from weak scripts.

Rumors takes the form of an upscale drawing-room comedy, with virtually every beat of action punctuated by a slamming door. A dinner party for the deputy mayor of New York has gone horribly awry, with two of the guests (Lynda Clark and Eric Carl, reuniting from Theatre in the Park’s recent production of Angels in America), arriving to find the servants gone, the hostess missing, and the host with a bullet through his earlobe. The situation grows more and more out of hand as more guests arrive, but the plot feels self-conscious and stuck in the 1980s, with lame running gags about crystals and the characters’ similar names. (Note to aspiring playwrights: Naming the male characters “Ken,” “Len” and “Glenn” is mildly clever; having several conversations that point this out is not.)

The actors put everything into their performances (particularly the droll Martin Thompson as bespectacled Lenny Ganz) and, at the performance I attended, managed to remain professional despite a fire alarm that forced an impromptu intermission. The problem is with the material, which is Simon at his sitcom-iest. If that’s your thing, this play is for you.

Dearly Beloved is on the opposite end of the social spectrum from the upper-crust parody of Rumors. The play is the first of a series set in the small town of Fayro, Texas, emphasizing the trials and tribulations of the Futrelle sisters, a trio of middle-aged women who once performed as a gospel group called “The Sermonettes.” If you laughed at that name, then you have an idea of the play’s humor.

Directed by Ira David Wood III, Beloved chronicles the events of a massively disastrous wedding that features government cheese for catering, a UPS delivery man in a too-short robe as the minister, and the bride and groom nowhere to be found. Wood keeps the action moving, but like Rumors, the play has the feel of a broad, 1980s-era sitcom, with running gags about hot flashes and bull insemination. Again, there’s some good work, particularly Larry Evans’ physical comedy as doped-up guest Wylie Hicks, but the script’s crowd-pleasing humor lacks the wit found in an average episode of King of the Hill. Your enjoyment might depend on how many low-budget Southern weddings you’ve been forced to attend. —Zack Smith

Reprinted from the Independent Weekly

 

Javier Grillo-Marxuach on THE MIDDLEMAN TV Series, Part Two

The Middleman - From TV to Comics and Back Again, p2

By Zack Smith
posted: 06 June 2008 11:04 am ET

In part one of a two part interview, we spoke with writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost, Medium) about adapting his once TV pilot script into the Viper comic book series The Middleman and then back again into ABC Family’s new television series debuting June 16^th.

We continue the conversation tracing the origins of the series in the following part two…

 

Interview with Comedian Mike Birbiglia

Goodnight’s Comedy Club—Mike Birbiglia has made a career out of revealing things most people would rather keep quiet. Case in point: The subject of his hour-plus of all-new material he’s workshopping at Goodnight’s. “I’m working on a whole new show called Sleepwalk with Me, where I go into detail about a sleepwalking disorder I have,” says the 29-year-old comedian. “For a long time, I was kind of in denial about it, and that’s one of the themes of my shows—how we’re in denial about our various issues.”

Birbiglia, who calls his blog his “Secret Public Journal,” has parlayed his most embarrassing moments into a regular feature on the Bob and Tom radio show, three Comedy Central specials and, most recently, a CBS pilot with Bob Odenkirk and Six Feet Under’s Frances Conroy. He says his comedy has taught him “the degree to which I push aside things I don’t want to deal with.”

Sleepwalk, which Birbiglia hopes to turn into an off-Broadway show and TV special, chronicles his battles with his disorder, which sometimes leads him to act out his dreams. “For instance, I’d have a recurring dream where there was an insect jackal thing hovering over my bed, and I would jump on the bed in real life in a karate pose and go, ‘There’s a jackal in the room!’ to my girlfriend,” Birbiglia says. “She got so used to it that she could talk me down: ‘There’s no jackal.’”

Birbiglia is excited about performing at Goodnight’s and feels that Sleepwalk features “the most real and true and intense and revealing stories, but it’s the funniest of my shows.” How does he make his humor work? “A lot of my comedy has its roots in the fact that the joke is on myself, so that’s made it easier.” —Zack Smith

For more information, visit www.goodnightscomedy.com or www.birbigs.com.

Reprinted from the Independent Weekly

 

Javier Grillo-Marxuach on THE MIDDLEMAN, Part One

By Zack Smith

Javier Grillo-Marxuach has enjoyed a lot of success as a writer in Hollywood, working on such shows as Lost, Medium and many other sci-fi and fantasy shows (seriously. It’s a lot.). Now, he’s getting to do his own show…and he owes it in part to comic books.

For several years, readers have been familiar with The Middleman, the action-packed and wickedly funny series about Wendy Watson, a directionless twentysomething who gets sucked into the wonderful world of mysterious conspiracies and science gone mad when she takes a job with a mysterious figure hired to clean these messes up…a milk-drinking hero known only as the Middleman. Published by Viper Comics and illustrated by Les McClaine, the book enjoyed a considerable amount of critical acclaim, and led to Grillo-Marxuach doing several projects for Marvel Comic and other publishers.

But The Middleman had its origins as a TV pilot script…and now it’s returned to its roots as a new one-hour series premiering on ABC Family June 16th.

Read Part One of our talk with Grillo-Marxuach on the series here!

 

I’m on USA TODAY’s Pop Candy Podcast!

I was featured as part of Whitney Matheson’s “Candy Hotline” this week!  This is my fourth appearance in the podcast.

You can stream or download the podcast from here:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/popcandy/2008/06/podcast-eavesdr.html?loc=interstitialskip

 

Howard Shum on HYPERKINETIC

By Zack Smith 

Writer, inker and filmmaker Howard W. Shum is about to take readers on a trip to the far reaches of the universe. The man who combined 1930s pulp adventure, Hong Kong action and outright madness in Gun Fu is back with Hyperkinetic, a new SF/comedy miniseries from Image about four ass-kicking girls with lasers blowing things up in deep space. If that’s not enough to pique your interest, here’s Shum himself with the lowdown on the book.

 

Read the full interview here!

 

Dark Horse Reprints HERBIE!

SHAWNA GORE ON DARK HORSE’S HERBIE COLLECTIONS

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by Zack Smith

Once in a while, we at Newsarama are privileged to report on the return of a legend. This is one of those times.

Tony Isabella declared him “the greatest character of all time.” Bob Burden teamed him up with the Flaming Carrot. Dan Nadel declared him an undiscovered classic in Art Out of Time. And Marv Wolfman nearly broke into comics by entering a fan-story contest in the 1960s (he came in second).

His name is Herbie Popnecker. And he’s back.

Full story here!

 

Interview with Mike Farrell (M*A*S*H)

21 MAY 2008

Raleigh
Mike Farrell
Quail Ridge Books and Music—As wisecracking-but-loyal Dr. B.J. Hunnicutt on the long-running series M*A*S*H, Mike Farrell became a television icon. Though he’s worked regularly as an actor and producer since then, most of Farrell’s work has been behind the camera as a human rights advocate, involved in everything from antiwar and anti-death penalty activism to refugee aid. He visits Quail Ridge Books tonight as part of a month-long, 8,000-mile tour to promote the paperback edition of his autobiography, Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist.

Just Call Me Mike is one of the rare books that seem to have gained the endorsement of liberals and conservatives alike (both George McGovern and Bill O’Reilly contribute glowing blurbs to the back cover). When we spoke with Farrell on the road, he’d just had dinner the night before with former CIA agent Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson.

M*A*S*H was the ultimate fluke—a hugely successful series with explicit antiwar elements aired while the Vietnam War was going on. Farrell, who’s seen many of the current, commercially unsuccessful Iraq films and feels that “the quality is quite extraordinarily high,” believes the intense coverage of the war in the electronic media has helped keep audiences away. “I’m still very saddened that these wonderful efforts to tell stories about this awful war aren’t receiving the attention I think they deserve,” says Farrell, who adds that he liked In the Valley of Elah and Rendition, but did “not care much” for Lions for Lambs.

What would it take for a socially relevant fictional work to connect with today’s audience? “It would take some careful packaging, staying away from an overt message, making the message more subtle,” Farrell says. “I think people are overwhelmed [by war coverage], generally. They want to be entertained, taken away from the reality of the day. So to do it in a way that would be successful, I think you’d have to find a way to do it that was allegorical, rather than overt.” He maintains that despite its continuing popularity, M*A*S*H could not be done today. “If you came with an idea like that, [networks] would run from it.” —Zack Smith

Visit www.quailridgebooks.com for more info.  Reprinted from the Independent Weekly

 

Dark Horse Comics to Reprint GANTZ

LEARNING ABOUT THE GANTZ MANGA COMING FROM DARK HORSE

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by Zack Smith

“Your lives are over. What you do with your new lives is up to me!”

Gantz. For years, this has been the manga series that American fans have longed to see reprinted in the U.S. This darkly satirical, action-packed story of recently-deceased souls resurrected by a mysterious force to kill for it is one of the most popular weekly series over in Japan. Demand for it in the U.S. has reached a fever pitch – and last summer, Dark Horse Comics announced that it had finally gotten the license to reprint it in the States.

With the first volume set to drop in June, we talked with Michael Gombos, Dark Horse’s Director of Asian Licensing, about what it took to bring Gantz to the fans – and what they can expect when it arrives.

Read the full interview here!

 

Larry Doyle on I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER

CHECKING IN ON “I LOVE YOU BETH COOOPER”‘S LARRY DOYLE

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by Zack Smith

Larry Doyle has a resume that any comedy writer would envy. He’s been regularly published in such well-known periodicals as Esquire, The New Yorker, New York and Spy, and has also worked on classic animated shows such as Beavis and Butt-Head and The Simpsons, where he won two Emmys as part of the writing staff. Now, his first novel, I Love You, Beth Cooper, is being made into a feature film by veteran director Chris Columbus, starring Hayden Panettiere from Heroes as the titular character.

Read the full interview here!