READ TODAY'S STORIES AND E-EDITION SUBSCRIBE |  CONTACT US |  SIGN IN

Print story only Print story with comments Email Twitter Facebook Pinterest
Eighteen shows. $20,000. Let's do the math.
Published: 6/24/2011 5:48 PM
Last Modified: 6/24/2011 5:48 PM

Sunday will be the third annual Tulsa Awards for Theatre Excellence, underwritten by the George Kaiser Family Foundation.
The ceremony, which will be at the Cascia Hall PAC, will award a total of $20,000 in cash prizes to local theater companies, as well as honor Bartlesville native Joe Sears as the 2011 TATE Distinguished Artist, and Billie Sue Thompson, as the inaugural recipient of the Mary Kay Place Legacy Award.
Picking the winners in contests such as this can be something of a fool’s game, so we won’t even try. Instead, we’ll list the strengths and weaknesses, based on the Tulsa World’s reviews of the nominated shows.

OUTSTANDING YOUTH PRODUCTION
For this category, we’re truly in the dark, as the Tulsa World does not review productions that feature school-age performers.
We can say, however, that the award will go either to Clark Theatre, which is up for its productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Annie,” or Spotlight Children’s Theater, for “Babes in Toyland” and “Robin Hood.”
History would say Clark has the advantage — it has won this award the last two years. But upsets can always happen.

OUTSTANDING THEATRE PRODUCTION
“After Miss Julie” by Odeum Theatre. Class and sexual warfare in the servant’s quarters of an English manor house.
PROS: Fine performances by the three cast members (Will Carpenter, Cassie Hollis, Sara Cruncleton) as they portrayed the ever-shifting balance of power among them.
CONS: A play that pulled a few too many of its punches. An exchange of dialogue — “Do I shock you?” “Not as much as you’d like to” — sums it up.
“A Lesson Before Dying” by American Theatre Company. The struggle to reclaim the humanity of a condemned prisoner.
PROS: The claustrophic atmosphere of the set, and some startlingly real performances by the supporting cast (Vanessa Adams-Harris, Shrae Johnson, Andy Axewell, B.J. Johnson).
CONS: An inexperienced performer in the lead role, and a too-stately pace kept this potentially incendiary drama from catching fire.
“And the Winner Is…” by Heller Theatre. A Hollywood player discovers the afterlife isn’t quite what he imagined.
PROS: A vigorous performance by the leading man (John Gibson Miller) that made the best of a stereotypical character.
CONS: A puerile script by Mitch Albom that was neither funny nor insightful.
“Blood Relations” by Midwestern Theater Troupe. University of Tulsa professor Michael Wright’s drama about a most unusual family reunion.
PROS: A solidly constructed naturalistic play, highlighted by a remarkably detailed set; Sara Cruncleton’s performance as a woman desperate to be part of a family — any family.
CONS: The four characters — each more or less representing one of the classical elements — did not mix well together, so that the drama and suspense did not build as it should.
“Bug” by Odeum Theatre. Tracy Letts’ dark tale of low-rent romance, rampant paranoia and insect infestation.
PROS: Fearless, intense performances by Whitson Hanna, Leslie Long, Dale Sams, Elizabeth Gigliotti-Samples and Axewell, sensitive direction by David Lawrence, and a “so real you could almost smell the mildew” set.
CONS: A not terribly effective effect that robbed the final scene of its visceral power.
“Eye of God” by Theatre Pops. Small-town woman finds what she hopes is love with an ex-con who says he’s found God.
PROS: Valerie Stefan’s sensitive portrayal of the story’s main character, a simple person wanting simple things.
CONS: Distressingly sedate pacing and performances, so that play’s many scenes were more like isolated vignettes, and the play’s theme about the corrosiveness of misguided religious zeal was blunted.
“Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde” by Heller Theatre. Court transcripts and contemporary accounts detailing the playwright’s fall of the graces of London society.
PROS: Bravura performance by T. J. Bowlin as Wilde, deftly directed by Julie Tattershall.
CONS: The nature of the play makes for static staging, and the supporting cast, while very good, is given little opportunity to develop the characters completely.
“Life with Father” by Theatre Tulsa. Domestic comedy set during the late 19th century, that is one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history.
PROS: Billie Sue Thompson’s assured direction of the show’s large cast, a leisurely pace that never seemed to drag, the yin and yang performances of Ed Dill and Melissa Harris as Father and Mother.
CONS: Maybe a little too genteel and too modest in its aims to stand out from the rest of the pack, but otherwise, nothing major.
“Macbeth” by Playhouse Tulsa. Shakespeare’s bloody tale of war, horror and murder, done in modern dress.
PROS: Director and star Chris Crawford never took the easy way of portraying the show’s violence — whether physical, psychological or supernatural — and the complexity of the characterization of the Macbeths (Crawford and Courtneay Sanders) made the tragedy palpable.
CONS: A few scenes — such as the Macduff and Malcolm scene — that ended up trading clarity for action.
“Man From Nebraska” by Theatre Pops. A man attempts to understand and deal with a sudden and shattering loss of faith.
PROS: Some fine supporting performances by Dale Whisman, Jan Simpson, Lorie Lyons, Kelli McLoud Schingen and Kurt Harris.
CONS: Direction was tentative and unfocused, so that the main character’s spiritual crisis was not dramatized, simply described. Many individual scenes never came together — and some didn’t belong in the play at all.
“No Child…” by Theatre North. An actress tries to bring a bit of theater into the lives of a rundown New York City high school.
PROS: Superb performance by Whitney Davis, who convincingly and distinctly portrayed 16 different characters of all ages, races and genders.
CONS: The script told a familiar story in not too original a fashion.
“Shining City” by Playhouse Tulsa. A priest-turned-therapist confronts a variety of types of ghosts in modern-day Dublin.
PROS: The interaction between actors Chris Crawford and Cody Daigle as healer and patient through a pair of extended dialogues, and one of the year’s most chilling scenes at the final blackout.
CONS: Wandering Irish accents from some of the cast.
“Speech and Debate” by American Theatre Company. Three high school misfits band together to take on a corrupt teacher.
PROS: Actors (Paige Clark, Topher Payne and John Tom Knight) who perfectly capture all the energy and anxiety of teenagers in extremis; sharp use of sound and light in the play’s “internet” scenes.
CONS: An overlong dance segment that belabored the very obvious point it wanted to make.
The Scarlet Letter” by Theatre Tulsa. Adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel about adultery and hypocrisy in 17th century New England.
PROS: Director Michael Wright’s staging brought out surprising, but welcomed, moments of humor from this tragic story.
CONS: The uneven acting – from the highly stylized to the demotic – was often jarring.


As for shows that weren't nominated for the TATE but should have been:
"Mauritius" by Heller Theatre. A powerful quintet of performers made Theresa Rebeck's dark comedy about families, flim-flam men and stamps crackle with energy.

"Reasons to be Pretty" by Odeum Theatre. Neil LaBute's acid-etched tale of four very insecure people finding all sorts of ways to make each other miserable in the name of love was just about perfect in its execution.

So. Pick your favorites. And we'll see what happens Sunday.



Reader Comments


To post comments on tulsaworld.com, you must be an active Tulsa World print or digital subscriber and signed into your account.

ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

Subscribe to this blog


Archive

 
James D. Watts Jr's Blog Archive:

2/2013  1/2013  12/2012  11/2012  10/2012  9/2012  
8/2012  7/2012  6/2012  5/2012  4/2012  3/2012  
2/2012  1/2012  12/2011  11/2011  10/2011  9/2011  
8/2011  7/2011  6/2011  5/2011  4/2011  3/2011  
2/2011  1/2011  12/2010  11/2010  10/2010  9/2010  
8/2010  7/2010  6/2010  5/2010  4/2010  3/2010  
2/2010  1/2010  12/2009  11/2009  10/2009  9/2009  
8/2009  7/2009  6/2009  5/2009  4/2009  3/2009  
2/2009  1/2009  12/2008  11/2008  10/2008  9/2008  
8/2008  7/2008  6/2008  5/2008  4/2008  








Home | Contact Us | Search | Subscribe | Customer Service | About | Advertise | Privacy
Copyright © 2013, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved.