And just like that, a star is born

By Anthony Chase

 

From the moment Vanna Deux steps onto the stage as the “internationally ignored song stylist” Hedwig Robinson, it’s clear we’re witnessing something special. In Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a 2nd Generation Theatre production now at Shea’s Smith Theatre, Vanna, already established as one of Buffalo’s premier drag performers, reveals a substantial theatrical pedigree that elevates this production to must-see status.

 

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the story of an East German “slip of a girlyboy” named Hansel, who trades his genitals (in a botched sex-change operation) in order to marry an American GI and escape to the West. The honeymoon ends quickly. Left with an “angry inch” after the failed surgery, Hedwig is subsequently abandoned by her sugar daddy to the impoverished tedium of a Kansas trailer park. She forms a rock band and falls for a young man who steals her music and becomes a huge star under the name, Tommy Gnosis.

 

Through a series of rock songs and monologues, Hedwig tells her life story while pursuing her other half – both literally and figuratively – raising profound questions about identity, love, and wholeness. Vanna Deux sings the role brilliantly and embodies every painful step of Hedwig’s voyage with precision, punch, and irrepressible wit. What we witness is a tour de force of controlled chaos as this actor, vulnerable yet defiant, hilarious yet profoundly moving, delivers the interpretation of Hedwig I didn’t know I needed to see. 

 

John Cameron Mitchell created the Hedwig persona during the mid-1990s at New York’s SqueezeBox drag-punk club, inspired partly by his own background and a German babysitter from his childhood. Stephen Trask wrote the songs. After early performances in clubs, Hedwig premiered Off-Broadway at the Jane Street Theatre in 1998, earning critical acclaim, an Obie Award, and a devoted cult following. Recognized as a pioneering work in queer theater, the show is celebrated for its raw portrayal of gender identity and resilience, and its influence on musical theater continues to be felt worldwide.

Naturally it’s inspired numerous productions, and these are typically done with an agenda. Often, it’s a performer seeking self-promotion in a way that allows for a bravura performance, the sort that serves as bait for all the hackneyed critical phrases — “master class,” “spot-on,” “pitch-perfect,” “nothing short of brilliant” – while at the same time, burnishing credentials as progressive in these oh-so-very woke times. Typically, these productions rock their little hearts out, but still seem self-conscious, and forced. They try too hard, because telling the story is not their primary goal. To paraphrase Avenue Q, there’s “a fine fine line” between progressivism and appropriation.

 

This production busts beyond that description. 2nd Generation Theatre has assembled a talented and sensitive team of artists headed by Michael Gilbert-Wachowiak as director and Allan Paglia as music director to tell this story. The proceedings seem delightfully unplanned and instinctive. We have happily stumbled into a club and, quite by chance, are about to see one of the most extraordinary performers of our lifetimes. She’s reached a frustrating and embittered moment in her life and career. Occasionally she swings open the fire door and we hear her loathed ex-collaborator, Tommy Gnosis, loudly amplified as he performs to a much larger crowd at Shea’s Performing Arts Center, next door – at least within the fiction. 

 

Vanna Deux seems entirely at ease in the role, striding onto stage on opening night with such confidence that it felt like a slice of reality, totally natural, entirely relaxed, and seemingly spontaneous. 

 

Of course, Hedwig does require a dose of actual spontaneity, and in terms of “working the audience,” Vanna Deux is the master/mistress of that art form, a talent honed on countless drag performances. No event in the audience goes unremarked upon. In this regard, Vanna Deux is in his/her/their element. 

 

But what is Vanna Deux’s element? The startling excellence of the performance sent me rummaging for my program to read the bio: “Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at A.R.T.; … The Sound of Music at Forestburgh Playhouse (he played Rolf – Germans seem to be a sort of specialty); Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Show; Zsa Zsa in La Cage aux Folles at Woodstock Playhouse.” And wait — “BA Theater Performance from Wagner College and MFA in Acting from Harvard /MXAT” – which means that our Vanna attended the Institute for Advanced Theater Training, a joint program between Harvard University’s American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) and the Moscow Art Theatre School (MXAT). 

 

WTF? Apparently, this performance merely seems to have come out of nowhere. Vanna Deux is a highly accomplished artist and their credentials are certified.

As Yitzhak, Hedwig’s long-suffering husband and backup singer, Kristopher Bartolomeo continues a streak of perfect casting following his recent triumph as Dorian Gray and Lord Alfred in Dorian at Irish Classical. Bartolomeo brings a seething intensity to the role, creating a compelling contrast and contradiction to Hedwig’s larger-than-life presence. The power dynamics between the two performers generate an electric tension that propels the narrative forward. Their rock duet on the reprise of “Wicked Little Town” is an especially thrilling moment.

 

The band, credited as “The Angry Inch,” delivers Stephen Trask’s glam-rock score with appropriate grit and precision. Under Allan Paglia’s music direction, numbers like “Sugar Daddy” and “Midnight Radio” build to exhilarating climaxes, while more introspective moments like “The Origin of Love” take on a more haunting quality.

 

I understand that there are some readers who are looking for a quick thumbs up / thumbs down from me accompanied by a few pithy quotable remarks.  If that describes you, you’re done and can stop reading now.  My more devoted readers might like to be reminded that the songs and text of Hedwig are impressively sophisticated.  Take for instance, “The Origin of Love,” a song inspired by a tale told in Plato’s Symposium, of all things, where humans were originally whole beings-conjoined pairs with two faces, four arms, and four legs. According to the myth, the gods, fearing the power of these beings, split them in half, leaving each person searching for their “other half” — the origin of love. The myth has fascinated modern scholars for its insistence on the gender ambiguity of sexual desire.

 

In the context of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hedwig sings “The Origin of Love” to express her longing for completeness and her belief in soulmates. The song uses vivid, almost storybook-like lyrics and imagery to depict how love is born from this ancient separation and the yearning to be whole again. This is augmented at 2nd Generation by David Butler’s playful videography. In her interpretation of songs like, “Tear Me Down” and “Wig in a Box” it becomes clear that Vanna Deux is a performer who understands that Hedwig’s outrageous exterior houses a soul desperately seeking wholeness.

 

David Butler’s set and projection design deserve further praise, particularly in how the projections integrate with the narrative’s exploration of identity and division, and for the way he recreates the interior design of the Old Spain restaurant that once occupied the room in real life – a concept that was later repurposed when the Old Spain restaurant became a Swiss Chalet. The Berlin Wall imagery provides a potent visual metaphor for Hedwig’s fractured sense of self as well as for a divided world. Similarly, Devin Prokop’s costume and wig designs are more than mere spectacle – they’re essential storytelling elements that evolve throughout the performance, as the enormity of Hedwig evolves then devolves, and the personality of Yitzhak emerges.

Director Michael Gilbert-Wachowiak has crafted a production that honors the show’s punk-rock roots while never losing sight of the profound human story at its center. The pacing is impeccable, surging to a rock and roll score, while allowing moments of outrageous comedy to land fully without ever undercutting the emotional devastation beneath.

 

Like its charismatic protagonist, the show exists in the spaces between – neither traditional musical nor straight play, neither pure comedy nor tragedy. It’s a meditation on division and wholeness, on the arbitrary borders we create and the painful cost of crossing them. The cathartic conclusion allows Hedwig to achieve a kind of integration through empathy that has eluded her throughout her life, and by then, the audience has been taken on a journey that feels like a reconciliation too.

 

And so, the hackneyed pull-quote phrases I have selected on this occasion are “tour de force,” “pitch-perfect,” “a must-see performance,” and “A Star is Born!” I give Hedwig and the Angry Inch ten stars. Sometimes we encounter moments of theatrical perfection so unexpectedly.    

 

https://www.theatertalkbuffalo.com/post/review-hedwig-and-the-angry-inch

THE NICETIES at Shea’s Smith Theatre: A Tense Academic Showdown Explores Race, History, and Power.  And it’s good!

Eleanor Burgess’s play, The Niceties, plunges the audience into the incendiary depths of a debate between a professor and her student over the exclusion of African Americans from the teaching and writing of American history. While the publicity describes this as a tour de force “about who gets to write history,” such a description is disingenuous. At its core, this is a play about differences in strategy, or what the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci called praxis – the unity of theory and practice. The professor believes change must happen slowly and strategically to be sustainable; the student sees ideas and actions as inseparable, demanding immediate cultural rupture.

 

Second Generation Theatre has staged a well-paced and strongly acted production at Shea’s Smith Theatre, directed with confidence by Gabriella Jean McKinley. Her direction shines in navigating the play’s complex terrain, modulating the pacing to allow the intricate dialogue to breathe while maintaining audience engagement throughout the prolonged confrontation.

Click HERE to read the full article.

Click HERE to purchase tickets to THE NICETIES.

Review by Anthony Chase

There is no other musical quite like The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. With adults playing children who invest all the energy and earnestness of gladiatorial battle into a trivial competition, this show combines elements of You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown and Pageant, with maybe a touch of A Chorus Line. The result is utterly unique.

 

The setting is a geographically ambiguous middle school somewhere in Putnam County, New York, where a crew of nerdy children, most bearing the scars of parental damage, compete in an annual spelling bee. Presiding over the proceedings is the charming Rona Lisa Peretti, the number-one realtor in Putnam County and a former spelling bee champion herself. At her side is Vice Principal Douglas Panch, who serves as judge and word-pronouncer. Mr. Panch has returned to the Bee after a five-year absence stemming from an unspecified “incident” at the Twentieth Annual Bee. (He’s in a better place now.) Add to this the participation of Mitch Mahoney as the Official Comfort Counselor, a duty he is undertaking in fulfillment of the “community service” requirement of his parole.

 

The show evolved from an original improvisational play called C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, created by Rebecca Feldman and performed by The Farm, a New York-based improvisational comedy troupe. It was developed into a full musical through a workshop process with music and lyrics by William Finn and a book by Rachel Sheinkin. Opening on Broadway in 2005, it ran successfully until 2008.

 

Spelling Bee requires four audience volunteers to stay onstage for most of the first act, adding an element of unpredictability to the proceedings.

 

Let’s address those four volunteer participants right away. Despite making a significant impact throughout much of the show, they work without pay and vanish after their moment in the spotlight. I respectfully suggest that professional actors make poor audience volunteers. Discomfort and humiliation are essential ingredients of comical audience participation. On opening night, three of the volunteers were recognizable local actors who were, unsurprisingly, comfortable on stage and eager to join in the choreography and stage business as if rehearsed. The fourth was an embarrassed and out-of-place person who struck comedy gold with every awkward gesture. That fourth person saved Act One. I adore her, whoever she was, including her surprise victory in spelling “oubliette.” I hope she had a wonderful evening and a safe journey home to Amherst, or wherever she is from. As for the others, I trust I will see you onstage again soon and expect that you will add this show to your resumes under “improv work” or “additional skills.”

 

Now, onto the professional cast.

 

Amy Jakiel ideally embodies the nurturing yet no-nonsense Miss Peretti. She possesses the requisite vocal versatility and creates a woman suffused with kindness, patience, and genuine love for children. She also convincingly portrays a take-no-prisoners spelling bee competitor and relentless real estate agent – tasks invested with equal measures of professionalism and competitive spirit. Jakiel bestows the same stern kindness on Mr. Panch as she does on the children, alternating between warm looks of approval and withering glances of warning. Her habit of broadcasting awkward private details about everyone with cheerful obliviousness delights throughout. As the heart of the show, Jakiel carries this responsibility with elegant assurance.

 

Vice Principal Douglas Panch, by contrast, has issues. This pivotal role combines absurdly simple and impossibly obscure words with an improvisational nature, while the subtext of Mr. Panch’s unwelcome romantic yearning for Miss Peretti creates abundant opportunities for spontaneous comedy. (Jay Reiss, an improv artist who originated the role, is credited for “additional material,” including the hilarious responses provided when contestants ask for words to be defined or used in sentences.) Steve Copps mines every opportunity in this role at Second Generation, crafting a character both jocular and psychologically fragile, earnest in his desire to succeed but often unable to focus on the task. The exchanges between Jakiel and Copps provide many of the evening’s highlights.

 

Brian Brown brings both pathos and wit to the role of Comfort Counselor Mitch Mahoney, delivering deliciously snarky comedy while showcasing his impressive vocal abilities.

 

Among the “child” competitors, Derrian Brown stands out with a full-throttle, no-holds-barred performance as magic-footed William Barfée. The journey of this adolescent boy, who uses his foot to write out words before spelling them aloud, anchors the play’s emotional core. Burdened with allergies and a rare mucus membrane disorder that keeps him from breathing through one nostril (as well as a deadly peanut allergy), Mr. Barfée shields himself from a cruel world with rudeness and condescension until his unlikely friendship with competitor Olive Ostrovsky awakens his humanity. Under Brown’s confident guidance, combining brilliant physical comedy with vocal prowess, this plot thread proves both hilarious and genuinely touching.

 

Sabrina Kahwaty creates a beautiful counterpoint as Olive, whose father never arrives to see her make the spelling bee finals or pay her $25 entrance fee. Kahwaty charts a compelling course from shy girl haunted by abandonment to budding self-confidence, while maintaining Olive’s essential kindness and openness. Her scenes with Brown as Barfée shine as brightly as her poignant moments with Miss Peretti, who clearly recognizes a kindred spirit in this sensitive girl.

 

The rest of the ensemble also shines: Brandin Smalls inhabits the confident and competitive returning champion Chip Tolentino, smartly dressed in his Boy Scout uniform, who discovers that puberty and competitive spelling make treacherous companions. Stevie Kemp brings nuance to Logainne SchwartzandGrubenierre, mining both comedy and pathos from a girl whose impeccable values clash with her two fathers’ unreasonable demands for perfection. Sofia Siracuse crafts a compelling journey as Marcy Park, her mastery of six languages, dance, and violin masking a deeper struggle, culminating in an appeal to Jesus (hilariously portrayed by Mr. Smalls) to free her from excellence. Preston Williams brings warmth and authenticity to Leaf Coneybear, whose handmade clothing expresses his creative spirit and whose unfiltered enthusiasm masks unexpected gifts – when in a trance-like state, this often-underestimated dreamer spells difficult words with uncanny precision.

 

The original Broadway production proved a launching pad for several remarkable careers: Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family) as Leaf Coneybear, Dan Fogler (who earned a Tony Award playing William Barfée), and Celia Keenan-Bolger as Olive and Jose Llana as Chip Tolentino, both of whom have continued to build distinguished Broadway careers.

 

At Shea’s Smith Theatre, the technical elements present both strengths and challenges. The musical balance between band and voices generally succeeds, although performers’ top notes occasionally become shrill and indistinct through amplification. Chris Cavanagh’s set and lighting design serve the show effectively, while Lindsay Salamone’s costumes deftly capture these now-iconic characters.

 

At Second Generation Theatre, Kristin Bentley directs with keen insight into both the show’s humor and heart, allowing each character’s idiosyncrasies to shine without losing sight of their essential humanity. The show resonates because adults secretly know we never outgrow our childhood anxieties. Kelly Copps’s choreography cleverly incorporates the nervous energy and gangly movements of middle schoolers, while Allan Paglia’s musical direction illuminates both the playfulness and poignancy in Finn’s score.

This production demonstrates that even after nearly two decades, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee remains an enchanting musical that celebrates the awkward, the anxious, and the exceptional in all of us. In the end, like any good spelling bee, there can only be one winner – but in this case, that winner is the audience.

 

Sparkling Production of “Spelling Bee” by Second Generation Theatre

Merrily We Roll Along @ Shea’s Smith Theater is Delightful!

Melinda Miller, The Buffalo News: When theater people find a good idea, they don’t let it go to waste. It could be big, like turning a fairy tale that was made into a hit movie into a splashy Broadway musical, or it could be personal, like taking those pre-pandemic plans that you had for the stage and making a virtual video celebration of your city.

That’s what the women of Second Generation Theatre did when they moved “Songs for a New World” online during the pandemic, and they are hanging onto that thought to open their back-in-the-theater 2021-22 season when they bring the show back to where it started, the stage at Shea’s Smith Theatre, on Oct. 22.

In “Songs for a New World,” composer Jason Robert Brown tells stories about people making choices and the new worlds they see or want for themselves. It is designed to be performed on a very spare set. However, when Second Generation had to go virtual, director Amy Jakiel took the singers to iconic locations around the city – no “extras” for the set, but the locations and the architecture alone added impact.

They want to hang onto some of that.

“When we were choosing the season to come back with in person, we wanted to build on the things we learned when we were closed down,” artistic director Kelly Copps explained. “We’ll tie in some of the elements from the film in the use of projections, combining the experience and spark of live theater and acknowledging the last year and a half. It would seem like a waste not to share those images again, and share them with more people.”

Purchase a season FLEX PASS with incredible perks by clicking here: www.secondgenerationtheatre.com/tickets/

Continue reading here: https://buffalonews.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/second-generation-theatre-building-a-new-season-on-pandemic-lessons-learned/article_e6dcace0-09b7-11ec-80a5-678c7662c44f.html

Something magical is happening at Shea’s 710 Theatre. And it’s a joy to report that the local talent onstage is simply astounding. Along with the Ujima Theatre Company and Second Generation Theatre, Shea’s is producing a spine-tingling production of the musical THE COLOR PURPLE. (Read the full review below!)

https://www.broadwayworld.com/buffalo/article/Review-THE-COLOR-PURPLE-at-Sheas-710-Theatre-20230916