Playwright Carter Lewis uses a light touch to address heavy issues. In such past works as Women Who Steal, Ordinary Nation and The Cha-Cha of a Camel Spider — all produced by Florida Stage — he has gathered current social ills and shaped his observations about them into entertaining, and often challenging, theater.
Certainly that is the case with his latest play, The Hummingbird Wars, a world premiere at The Theatre at Arts Garage. As expressed in Lewis’s hyper-articulate voice, his characters experience a barrage of contemporary woes in a highly theatrical atmosphere that is well worth letting wash over you, even if Lewis seems to be in his most downbeat mood about the zeitgeist.
His title metaphor concerns the tiny bird that expends so much energy flapping its wings trying to stay aloft, always just a few hours away from expiring. The same could be said about all of us today, suggests Lewis, as illustrated by one suburban Minneapolis family whose mettle will be sorely tested in the course of 85 intermissionless minutes.
Mel, the wife, has never met a social cause that she did not feel passionate about. Currently, she is perplexed over the corporate encroachment in their neighborhood, so she storms off to lead a protest against the rumbling bulldozers clearing nearby land. On the other hand, her husband Warren — a recent veteran of the Afghanistan war — is so disinterested in outside events that he never leaves his house. His goal seems to be small. He just wants to get a straight answer from his cable television company, a foolhardy aspiration, as anyone who has tried already knows.
Their teenage son Pete, who exists in a personal fog, faces his own challenge when he begins finding progressively larger and more lethal firearms around the house — surely a commentary on the proliferation of guns in society. Then there is Mel and Warren’s lesbian daughter Kate, whose lover Tracy moves into the household and finds her respiratory condition aggravated by the increasingly toxic environment. Relatively speaking, the hummingbird has it easy.
Todd Allen Durkin, South Florida’s resident schlubby Everyman, heads the cast as Warren, back home and out of uniform, but still being bombarded by life. Jeni Hacker, taking a breather from her usual musical roles, embodies stressed-out Mel well, down to the worry bags under her eyes. Lewis often takes the risk of writing parts for young actors, believing that the right actors will somehow turn up. He, and director Greg Johnson of Montana Repertory Theatre, are fortunate to have the services of Andrew Griner Jr., Gretchen Porro and Joline Mujica.
The Hummingbird Wars is a pessimistic play, but Lewis serves its dark message with more than a little humor. The Theatre at Arts Garage has grown more adept at fitting increasingly complex designs on its informal stage, notably Michael Amico’s cookie-cutter home setting and David Nail’s lighting, complete with a terrific lightning storm. Lewis’s plays continue to be full of ideas worth gnawing on, and artistic director Lou Tyrrell seems content to keep championing his work.
THE HUMMINGBIRD WARS, The Theatre at Arts Garage, 180 N.E. First St., Delray Beach. Through Sunday, Feb. 2. Tickets: $30-$45. Call: (561) 450-6357.
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As that wise philosopher Forrest Gump once observed, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” The same goes for Boca Raton’s Wick Theatre, which has been hit or miss for the three productions of its existence.
First there was its solid, polished — and now Carbonell Award-nominated — Sound of Music, which raised the bar of expectations only to have them dashed by the subsequent mess known as White Christmas. Now, however, the company is back on track with a lavish, spirited production of the Depression-era backstage musical 42nd Street, surely the hardest of the three shows to pull off.
In 1980, using the 1933 Busby Berkeley movie as his source material, Gower Champion turned it into a stage extravaganza of so many sets, costumes and tapping feet that few regional theaters would dare try to replicate it.
But with pure chutzpah, the Wick has done exactly that, serving up the show’s abundance of production numbers, grafted onto the song trunk of Harry Warren and Al Dubin. They include such familiar tunes as We’re in the Money, Shuffle Off to Buffalo and Lullaby of Broadway, choreographed here by Ron Hutchins with giddy abandon and a devotion to excess.
The story, as you probably know, centers on a perky ingenue named Peggy Sawyer (Julie Kleiner) from Allentown, Pa., who lands a chorus job in a big new musical called Pretty Lady, directed by the infamous Julian Marsh (Jim Ballard), badly in need of a career comeback. When his temperamental star, Dorothy Brock (Aaron Bower), breaks her ankle during an out-of-town tryout, novice Peggy is tapped to fill in and save the show. It is cornball stuff, but it manages to get us from one musical number to the next.
As Peggy, Kleiner is all wide-eyed and spunky, but she is the standout tap dancer the show requires. In 42nd Street’s climactic number — and Pretty Lady’s — kind of a Slaughter on Tenth Avenue knockoff, she shows she has the necessary star quality. Ballard is aptly brusque as Julian and Bower is pure diva but also more talented than the character is said to be.
The sets, acquired from Gateway Playhouse and adapted by designer Sean McClelland, rely too much on insubstantial cloth backdrops. Still, the production looks good because of the costumes from the Wick’s inventory, a blend of the original Broadway wardrobe and the revival.
Credit director Norb Joerder — a longtime veteran of the Jupiter Theatre — with managing the large cast and the show’s complex traffic flow. He is not one to give the show a startling new conceptual spin, but his 42nd Street is still a massive achievement that packs an entertaining wallop.
42ND STREET, The Wick Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton. When: Through Sunday, Feb. 9. Tickets: $58. Call: (561) 995-2333.