Bob's Take: Best of year’s stage shows should take another bow

By Bob Fischbach

Other than the French documentary “La Danse” at Film Streams and Bollywood’s “3 Idiots” at Oak View, no new movie titles are opening this week in the metro area. Just this once a year, my movie column becomes a theater column, saluting the best of the year on local stages.

And a fine year 2009 was, too. Here are my top 10 picks, plus a few more titles that were just too good to go unmentioned.

1. “Bat Boy: The Musical,” Omaha Community Playhouse. Tim Abou-Nasr’s performance as an anguished half-bat, half-human was mesmerizing in this campy, bloody, funny show that also managed to be poignant, thanks to Carl Beck’s sharp direction and standout ensemble work.

2. “I Love You Because ...,” The Candy Project. A new company of 20-somethings broke the laugh meter with this musical tale of dating woes in New York City. Amanda Miller, Dan Chevalier, Andy King and Cathy Hirsch added shows to a sellout run at P.S. Collective.

3. “Compleat Female Stage Beauty,” SNAP. Michal Simpson was at the top of his game as a Shakespearean actor specializing in female roles who must yield to women on the stage. A powerhouse ensemble included Randy Vest, Jennifer Gilg, Connie Lee, Denny Maddux and more, ably directed by Michele Phillips.

4. “Rent,” SNAP. Lush, big-voice harmonies marked this intimate production of Jonathan Larson’s rock musical. Tight quarters seemed to amp up the emotional electricity, along with soaring solo work by Audrey Fisher, Jason Carroll, Wayne Moore and others. An extended run failed to quench ticket demand.

5. “Reefer Madness,” Blue Barn Theatre. This musical spoof of a 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film was sexy, cheesy and over-the-top funny. Great set, great costumes, great choreography — this show had it all, plus terrific leads Paul T. Hanson and Jenn Witt ably backed by talented character actors.

6. “Almost, Maine,” Omaha Community Playhouse. The aurora borealis casts a romantic spell on a small town, and a cast of six playing 19 quirky characters casts a comedic spell on the audience. Director Amy Lane made magic with this frothy concoction of light fun, sweet sentimentality and just a touch of frostbite.

7. “Speech & Debate,” SNAP. New faces, new title, new ground to cover as three misfit teens face inner turmoil and sexual scandal together. Joe Fogarty, Noah Diaz and Colleen O’Doherty captured the psyche of contemporary youth, and director Daena Schweiger steered audience mood at will from howling laughter to squirm-inducing discomfort.

8. “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” John Beasley Theater. If you only experienced the transcendent moment of dance known as a Juba, you got your ticket’s worth. But August Wilson’s play set in a 1911 boardinghouse delivers so much more. Carl Brooks, TammyRa, John and Tyrone Beasley led a standout production.

9. “Loose Knit,” Great Plains Theatre Conference. Hardly anyone saw this one-night stand, but the ensemble was so good that the show will open again May 27 at SNAP. A group of knitters finds more in common than yarn as details of their love lives intertwine. Having playwright Theresa Rebeck there for a Q-and-A added to the fun.

10. “Wit,” Blue Barn Theatre. Phyllis Doughman held an audience spellbound with her polished, nuanced turn as Dr. Vivian Behring, battling ovarian cancer. A sparkling script, innovative scenic and lighting design and fine direction from Kevin Lawler combined for a memorable evening.

Added sparks:

Visual feast: The Blue Barn’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” produced alchemy, thanks to Susan Clement Toberer’s innovative staging, Carol Wisner’s lights, Martin Scott Marchitto’s scenic design and Jennifer Pool’s costumes, along with the cast.

Best original work: “Mountain Lion” and “Mrs. Jennings’ Sitter,” Shelterbelt. Omaha playwright Ellen Struve’s sharp writing about suburban life was enhanced by outstanding acting and direction.

Overachieving ensemble: The cast of “Twelve Angry Men” at the Omaha Community Playhouse rocked, and so did Sara Houston’s scenic design that allowed for a real rainstorm to interrupt the symbolic one in the jury room.

Overachieving ensemble II: The inmates and mental health staff of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at the John Beasley Theater. Director Tyrone Beasley had a very sane day when he cast this finely performed show.

Tough love award: Butch Reel and Stan Spurgeon for retelling Omaha’s civil rights history honestly, yet wrapping it in the sugar and spice of the Motown era. “What’s Goin’ On” had something important to say, and said it well.

I <3 Candy
Yummy debut by The Candy Project

You don’t need to wait for “The Odd Couple” theme played during intermission to understand that these people couldn’t be less suited for one another.

“I Love You Because,” the sparkling musical comedy from The Candy Project that runs through August 16th at the P.S. Collective, is a study in contrasts.

Austin (Andy “Velvet” King) is an uptight doormat of a man imprisoned in a sweater vest (argyle, no less) who makes a living as a greeting card writer. He falls for Marcy (Cathy Hirsch), an artsy, free-spirited photographer. Austin’s equally opposite sidekick Jeff (Dan Chevalier) is a lovable yet Lebowski-like slacker who wears “Chick Magnet” and “Wanna Go Halfsies on a Bastard?” t-shirts. He hits it off with Diana (Amanda Miller), a bespectacled, hair-in-a-bun, by-the-numbers actuary.

And the results couldn’t be more delightful, especially as the first fully staged work from the inventive twenty-somethings of The Candy Project.

Supported by an onstage band and backed by Katie Miller (NY Woman) and Joey Galda (NY Man) in a variety of roles, “I Love You Because” is a smart, sassy, sophisticated-without-being-snarky introduction to a group of New Yorkers looking for love across all five boroughs and, at times, even in the wilds of Hoboken.

Large stackable boxes laminated with Gotham-centric images make for seamless scene changes and a simple rotation (think here of a Rubik’s Cube) is all it takes to transport us from the neon glare of the Great White Way to a bachelor pad to O’Dennehey’s Bar, “the home of the heartbreak crowd.” Removing the set pieces - as in the clever strap-hanging subway scene peppered with those classic “I<3NY” t-shirts - allows the troupe to vie for what might be a P.S. Collective record by cramming nine people onto the microchip-sized stage.

It’s a Sisyphean task to pick favorites in such a talented cast, but there’s nothing quite like King’s velvety voice, especially when climbing to a higher register in his solo, “Maybe We Just Made Love.”

Or maybe it’s the buoyant bounce of Amanda Miller belting it out in “We’re Just Friends” or in spitting the motor-mouth ditty “The Actuary Song,” where she uses both an adding machine and a laptop to crunch the numbers on Marcy’s “RT” quotient – that’s her recommended “Rebound Time” when it’s only logical that she date Mr. Wrong (Austin and his Bat Man thermos) before pining for Mr. Right (same thermos).

Hirsch shines in a solo of her own, the tender yet soaring “Just Not Now” and the always hilarious Chevalier rocks it throughout the evening in a goofy idiom that is all his own. Katie Miller and Galda are splendid as a comedic backdrop, especially when striking that iconic cherub pose. You know the one…the seraphs with chins resting on hands tableau that may as well be straight from one of Austin’s lame greeting cards.

Sweet without being saccharine. Cute without being cloying. The Randall T. Stevens-directed “I Love You Because” is, just like the sugary snacks found at all of their shows, a treat that has this reviewer proclaiming “I <3 Candy.”

“I Love You Because”
The Candy Project
Through August 16
Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.
Sundays at 1 p.m.
Tickets $15, $12 for TAG members & students
P.S. Collective
6056 Maple Street
thecandyproject@yahoo.com or 502-7832

Musical plays up the perils of dating

It's like an R-rated musical version of “Friends.”

“I Love You Because ... ,” a small, off-Broadway musical that hit it big in 2006, follows four 20-somethings through the trials and tribulations of dating in contemporary New York City.

And boy is it fun, and funny, to watch.

It's the debut show of The Candy Project, a new troupe of 20-somethings who plan to showcase small musicals with young themes.

If their next offering is as refreshing, sassy and well-sung as this one, The Candy Project is in business. “I Love You Because ...” ranks with the best of a busy theatrical summer, thanks in no small part to savvy direction by Randall Stevens.

A late-July preview at the P.S. Collective in Benson found this talented cast of six (two chorus members play multiple roles) more than ready for an audience a full two weeks before the show's official opening, which is tonight. Fair warning: The bawdy script doesn't shy away from sex talk or occasionally profane language.

The show kicks off when buttoned-down Austin (Andy King), a greeting card writer, finds his girl in bed with another guy. His older brother, Jeff (Dan Chevalier), advises him the best way to win her back is to pretend not to care. Jeff sets up a double date with new women.

Meanwhile, free-spirited photographer Marcy (Cathy Hirsch) dumps her boyfriend, and her actuary gal pal Diana (Amanda Miller) works up a formula for how long it will take to rebound.

Soon Jeff and Diana are pretending to be “just friends” who have sex, while opposites Austin and Marcy war over their differences.

Lyrics by Ryan Cunningham and music by Joshua Salzman capture the pitfalls of dating with comedic flare and originality, and it's a pleasure to listen to their tuneful score. Just as pleasurable: the vocal blend of all six cast members, who are as good at funny character bits as they are at shaping a melodic line.

Highlights include Austin and Marcy's first date, in which he goes on and on about his ex (“But I Don't Want to Talk About Her”); Diana's breakup-dating formula (“The Actuary Song”); Jeff's fear of becoming a real couple (“That's What's Gonna Happen”); and all four of them, alone and miserable, singing “But I Do.”

Katie Miller and Joey Galda are screamingly funny as the show's chorus, mostly playing a succession of coffee baristas, bartenders, restaurateurs and waiters. They sing great as well on numbers like the cynical “Perfect Romance.”

Chevalier, who has gotten better and better as a singer, retains his gift for bug-eyed, rubber-faced physical comedy in a hilarious scene in which his back goes out as he and Diana get it on.

Cast and show are so good, you won't mind a shoestring budget at all. Scenery is just a platform, a screen on one side and six wooden boxes that shift and rotate to become a sofa, a taxi, a subway car, whatever.

The money got spent where it mattered, on a kicking instrumental trio: Luke Furman on keyboards, Anthony King on bass guitar and Vince Krysl on drums. They're a real part of the show, onstage behind the actors.

Contact the writer:

444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com

I WANT CANDY

Foursome spearheads sweet off-Broadway musical
by Warren Francke

The four vagabonds who call themselves the Candy Project and cruise cyberspace as “Candy Chemille” know what it is to live, theater-wise, in a mansion. They know the difference between preparing their first non-cabaret musical, I Love You Because, in motley rehearsal spaces, and doing a big show at the Omaha Community Playhouse.
That’s because Cathy Hirsch as June, and Amanda Miller as Mazeppa the stripper, recently did Gypsy at the Playhouse. Their cohorts, Andy King and Dan Chevalier, performed there in A Christmas Carol and Shakespeare in Hollywood. As Hirsch (who won the Taggie for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, Great American Trailer Park) puts it, they’ve worked “where everything is done for you.”

And where there’s that little blessing called a “budget.” Now, the homeless four prepare for their opening weekend at the Pizza Shoppe Collective in Benson by rehearsing at Northside Christian Church, at a school and “during car rides, and even one time on someone’s roof — which landed the cast a matching set of sunburns and a vow not to do that again,” explained Candy. No, make that Cathy.

For “just plain silliness,” the four concocted the name Candy Chemille for the Candy Project’s email account, combining Cathy and Andy into Candy, and jamming Chevalier and Miller into Chemille. People kept responding to Cathy as Candy, and the first draft of their license for I Love You Because was issued to Candy and later corrected.

Andy King was the first to fall for the musical, and sold Cathy who found it “funny, romantic and contagious.” They’d worked together on Bellevue Little Theater’s Into the Woods with Dan Chevalier — Cathy as Little Red Riding Hood, Andy as Prince Charming and Dan as Jack of beanstalk fame.

All three later took part on or off stage in Amanda Miller’s musical Fat Girlfriend at the Shelterbelt Theatre. Andy and Cathy asked the other two to join them as “talented young performers” who “share our same vision for creating something out of thin air.” Since royalties require more than thin air, they performed two cabaret shows at the Benson pizza parlor and raised enough to buy rights to the off-Broadway musical set in contemporary New York City, involving four characters dealing with breakups.
Cathy plays a Bohemian photographer, which suits their approach sans budget “to find a show we could do in true Bohemian fashion … with little or no set, in whatever performance space was available, and still pack a punch.”
They round out the cast with Katie Miller and Joey Galda. When they discovered all six cast members played musical instruments, they decided for a time that they’d also be the show’s band. And they thought for a time they didn’t need a director. Such notions, later discarded, are seen by Hirsch as the show’s “evolutions.”
It was their evolving good fortune that Randall Stevens had returned to Omaha after working in Arizona theater for several years.
“He offered his talents as director, and has been an absolute blessing,” Hirsch said. “He understands our style and our special camaraderie and collaborates with it and us, rather than against us.”
The cast solved the direction problem and coped with the space problem, but also battled with the matter of time.
“All four of us were in several other shows throughout this process,” Hirsch noted, and “scheduling became a nightmare” with jobs, school and vacations added into the theater mix.
But they got it together in time for a Saturday preview performance and were “overwhelmed by the audience response. The show was a full 15 minutes longer than rehearsal due to applause and laughter.” ,

I Love You Because runs Fri. and Sat. at 7:30 p.m., and Sun. at 1 p.m., Aug. 7-16 at the Pizza Shoppe Collective 6056 Maple St. Tickets cost $15, $12 for students. For information call 507.7832 or visit thecandyproject.com.

Cold Cream

...

You’d think such a polished production would spoil me for a start-up group squeezing a cabaret show into the Pizza Shop Collective in Benson. Think again.

First, the usual excuses: the Bellevue Little Theatre revived The Lion in Winter. But, the weather was winter, too, so the drive to Olde Towne was delayed.

And From Shelterbelt With Love began running down on California St. , but it conflicted with a New Year’s Resolution: no love until February, so catch it later. But one of the Shelterbelt playwrights, Amanda Miller, was performing in Benson with Dan Chevalier, Cathy Hirsch and Andy King.

They call themselves The Candy Project, a compression of their names. They plan to do newer, less-performed musicals, starting next summer, so they needed a fundraiser.

Amanda’s mom, music teacher Pat Miller, drove three hours from Elgin , Neb. , to play keyboard. Andy’s brother, Anthony, played guitar. Their mother took tickets. Friends from work at the World-Herald were rooting for Cathy, and Dan did what he does better than anyone else in town: acted spacey, dazed and clueless in an endearing, entertaining style.

The result? All four made us want to see more of them in musicals. Dan and Cathy did the funniest bit, singing “A Stud and a Babe” from I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. The sweetest song came from Andy crooning “Lucy’s Laugh” from Homemade Fusion, and Amanda delivered the strongest vocals, especially in “Unworthy of Your Love” from Assassins.

With one winning song after another, intermingled with choreography and comedy, the final impression was that they wear well, each with a distinctive, appealing persona. So you’re glad they got together and you’re sorry it was a one-night stand.

-Warren Francke

Candy Project offers a sweet idea in sour times

The spirit of “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!” is not dead.

In the face of economic recession, as established stage venues tighten their belts,

four optimistic young actors are starting a new theater company.

 

The Candy Project will specialize in little-known musicals that star twenty somethings

like its founders: Cathy Hirsch, Andy King, Amanda Miller and Dan Chevalier.

All are known to area community-theater fans. Chevalier, Hirsch and King appeared in

“Into the Woods” at Bellevue Little Theatre in September. Hirsch and Miller did Broad-

Street’s “Great American Trailer Park Musical” last July. Hirsch and King were in “A

Christmas Carol” at the Omaha Community Playhouse last month.

 

Hirsch and King hatched the idea over coffees In October. Directors and producers had

recently asked each what sort of musicals they’d like to see done.

“We found that both of us had self-edited our responses,” Hirsch said. “We were thinking

to ourselves, ‘Well, I really want to do this show, but they’ll never actually do that

here.’ ”

From there, she said, it was a short leap to asking, “Why can’t we put on these shows?”

They approached Miller and Chevalier And found enthusiastic partners.

 

The next hurdle was finding resources. “We want to start with a simple show, with

not much set, that can be done anywhere,” King said. “That show, hopefully, will fund

the next one.”

What will fund the first show - they hope - is a cabaret Sunday at 7 p.m. at the P.S.

Collective, 6056 Maple St . The four will perform tunes from some of the musicals they

hope to stage: “The Black Suits,” “Homemade Fusion,” “Ordinary Days,” “The Wild

Party” and “I Love You Because.” Other selections will come from more

widely known titles: “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” “Assassins,”

“The Last Five Years,” “tick . . . tick . . . BOOM!” and “I Love You, You’re Perfect,

Now Change.”

Tickets, $l5, can be reserved at 502-7832.

 

The four hope to stage their first full musical by late summer at

the P.S. Collective. Located in Benson’s Pizza Shoppe, the P.S.

Collective has become a staging area for a variety of art forms, including cabarets and

theater. It is the adopted home of SkullDuggery Productions, for example.

 

Friends and family are helping the young performers, loaning sound equipment,

building the set, providing publicity photos.

“This is a first step, a learning experience,” King said. “We’re just ready for whatever.”

 

As for the economic bogeyman, Hirsch offered a comeback:

“These times are when the most innovative stuff comes out.”

-Bob Fischbach

The Candy Project

Some of Omaha ’s best young talents have come together to form The Candy Project, the area’s newest theater company.

“The idea behind The Candy Project is to deliver underdone, unpublished or never-seen-in-Omaha musical theatre pieces,” explained co-founder Cathy Hirsch. “A lot of the shows we are interested in were seen Off-Broadway and are just generally not staged very often, but we think are great pieces.”

Hirsch, along with Amanda Miller, Dan Chevalier and Andy King, are the instigators of what promises to be sassy, high-energy musical theater. Both Hirsch and Chevalier are nominated for Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards; she for Broadstreet’s “The Great American Trailer Park Musical” and he for the Omaha Community Playhouse’s “Shakespeare in Hollywood .” King was seen most recently as Prince Charming in “Into the Woods” at the Bellevue Little Theatre and Miller, featured on these pages just two issues ago, is the creative force behind “Fat Girlfriend,” the musical set to premiere at the Shelterbelt this spring.

The Candy Project’s first fully produced effort is slated for this summer, but “The Candy Project - Guilty Pleasures: The Cabaret?” will deliver a taste of things to come. The cabaret, which runs one night only at the PS Collective on Sunday January 25th at 7:00 pm, features music from such works as “Title of Show,” “tick...tick...BOOM!” and “Homemade Fusion.”

Forming a company means a heavy immersion in disciplines that are largely unfamiliar to the 20-something cadre of self-proclaimed “theater geeks.”

“It’s one thing to just show up for rehearsals when you’re a face in a show,” said Chevalier, the popular comedic actor who is relatively new to musical theater. “It’s another thing altogether to be responsible for all the behind-the-scenes, top-to-bottom stuff that has to come together to make a company work.”

Thoughts of staging, sets, costumes, lighting and choreography may weigh heavily on their minds of late, but this vibrant group of some of the most sought after faces of the local stage never loses track of the fun they are having.

Perhaps Hirsch sums it up best. “I leave every rehearsal with my sides aching from laughing so hard.”

-David Williams