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October 26, 2018
Penguins Prepared for Popper’s Performance
Mr.
Popper’s Penguins kicks off our Children’s Theatre
Season this week, with the official opening tomorrow afternoon at two. The show opens now and runs all the way
through Dec 30. Even with this extended
run, weekday matinee tickets are already going gangbusters. Based on the popular children’s classic by
Richard and Florence Atwater, Penguins
tells the tale of a gentle British house painter
with a fondness for Antarctic exploration, who finds himself and his family the
proud domesticators of a family of penguins. The heartwarming show is directed by Josh
Chenard, music directed by Jason Marks, and choreographed by Wes Seals. An entire menagerie of penguin puppets has
been created by Kylie Clark, who designed and built the puppets for last
season’s Knuffle Bunny. Derrick Jaques, last seen at Virginia Rep in Mary Poppins, returns as Mr.
Popper. Keaton Hillman (1776, Shakespeare in Love), Renee McGowan, Emma-Claire Polich, and Eva
Marie Tuck round out the cast. Set
design is by Chris Raintree, with lights by BJ Wilkinson, and costumes by
Jeanie Nugent. Justin Janke is stage manager. The show will be the first production in our
newly renovated Children’s Theatre home at Willow Lawn. With financial support from Federal Realty, we’ve
added brighter lighting, new bathrooms, and fresh paint and carpet to make the
theatre even more family friendly.
Songsters Serenade Society of the Cincinnati
Virginia Rep dusted off
Theatre IV’s very first musical, We the People, for presentation last Saturday
evening following the annual dinner of the Society of the Cincinnati at the
Commonwealth Club. The Society is the
nation’s oldest patriotic organization, founded in 1783 by officers of the
Continental Army, and our nation's first hereditary organization. The founders
of the Society assigned their descendants the task of preserving the memory of
the patriotic sacrifices that made American liberty a reality. We the People is a musical revue written by
Bruce Miller in 1975 in honor of the Bicentennial, featuring songs that were
song before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. Tunes include the familiar (“Yankee Doodle,”
“Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be,” “Simple Gifts”) and the forgotten (“How
Stands the Glass Around,” “Come Shake Your Dull Noodle,” “Brave Wolfe”). Bruce and Phil provided historic narration,
and Georgia Rogers Farmer, Grey Garrett, Will Hart, and Jeff Linquist sang,
accompanied by Will and Jeff on guitar. Sue Griffin provided colonial costumes, and Derek Dumais set up and ran
the sound. We the People toured
extensively between 1975 and 1989—the 200th Anniversary of the Ratification of
the Bill of Rights. Plans to revive the
show in 2025 are now in full swing, just in time for the Semiquincentennial (go
ahead, look it up).
Riddick to Receive VET Recognition
On Tuesday, the Virginia
Rep Awards Committee announced the recipient of our 2019 Virginia Excellence in
Theatre Award to be presented at the annual Anything Goes Gala on Sat, Jan 26. This year’s honoree, deVeaux Riddick, has
been a cornerstone of RVA’s cultural community for 66 years. Along with his late partner, Robert Watkins,
deVeaux founded, in 1952, DESIGN—one of RVA’s first interior design firms. He began his work with Virginia Rep in 1956
when he starred at the Tavern in Shaw’s Don
Juan in Hell (pictured in RTD), working with Barksdale co-founders Tom Carlin, Stu
Falconer, Perky and Pete Kilgore. DeVeaux
and Robert co-founded The Richmond Ballet in 1957. That same year, they designed the first Bal
du Bois, an assignment they would continue for more than a half century. In 1959, deVeaux and Robert designed
Barksdale’s new stage house, installing seating platforms that surrounded the
stage on three sides, and moving a load-bearing brick wall nine feet upstage. Later, they co-founded The Concert Ballet of
Virginia and The Theatre at Bolling Haxall House. In 1980, they designed the scenery for The Philadelphia Story in Theatre IV’s
first adult season. All the while,
deVeaux also acted, brilliantly, in theatres all ‘round town. Richmond theatre would be far less than it is
today without the irreplaceable talent of deVeaux Riddick. It is our privilege to honor him.
Riverside Reviewed
“’Nobody likes cops,
especially black ones,’ says the streetwise protagonist of Between Riverside and Crazy. ‘Black civilians think we Uncle Tom,’ intones Pops, himself a retired
black NYPD officer. ‘White civilians think we’re uppity.’ This lovingly-drawn individual is one of a
handful that populate Riverside,
Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer-winning play that’s strong on character. Every time you think you know where the show
is going, Guirgis changes course.” Rich
Griset, STYLE Weekly. “Cadence Theatre
and Virginia Rep’s electric and multilayered co-production of Stephen Adly
Guirgis’ 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama doesn’t hesitate to grab us by the
lapels and bark more than one compelling tale in our faces. With a blunt, buzzy and electric script, Riverside slowly and expertly layers on
questions that weigh on each character’s mind. Am I a man or just a cog inside an indifferent machine? Is there a limit—and ultimate purpose—to
righteous indignation?” Tony Farrell,
Richmond Times-Dispatch. “As the show’s
fulcrum, David Emerson Toney lands a powerhouse performance as the outspoken,
but emotionally-guarded Pops. The rest of the excellent cast create convincing
characters with distinctive personalities and spot-on accents. Director Tawnya
Pettiford-Wates has allowed the actors to shine, while keeping the interactions
lively.” TV Jerry, 4 stars out of 5.
Nat at NAMT in NYC
He’s definitely a
Nathaniel, not a Nat, but when the abbreviation for your name so closely
matches the acronym of an organization you hold dear, well … c’est la vie. Our fearless leader ventured back to the Big
Apple this week to attend the 30th Annual Festival of New Musicals
presented by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) on Thurs and Fri. Forty-five minute cuts of eight brand new
musicals were presented for an audience of about 700 industry
professionals. Broadway successes including Thoroughly Modern Millie and The
Drowsy Chaperone took their first bows at previous Festivals, and every
year promises to introduce adventurous artistic directors nationwide to the
Cole Porters, Rodgers and Hammersteins, and Paseks and Pauls of tomorrow. One contender that made it into this year’s
cut was none other than Oliver Houser, the talented young actor who played the
leading role of Melchior Gabor in our 2012
production of Spring Awakening. Oliver wrote the book, music, and lyrics for XY, which Nathaniel saw on Friday. XY tells
the story of Chris, who can’t quite shake Christine. She’s with him everywhere he goes, staring
back when Chris looks in the mirror. But
when Chris falls in love, the divide between then and now begins to blur.
XY is
a musical drama about accepting the past and coming home to the most unfamiliar
of places: ourselves.
Following the publication of last week’s Good News Friday, we received our favorite type of correction, one that taught us something new! We wrote, “As we all know, the Good News is that after the storm had past, most of RVA escaped far less scathed than originally predicted.” This sloppiness prompted Steve Murden to write, “I'll take you up on the corrections challenge. The storm had passed, not past. ;-)” Thanks, Steve, for catching this homophonic error. Now I know, some of you may be saying, “Hold the phone, passed and past aren’t homophones, they’re homonyms.” At least that’s what I would have said before I looked it up to be sure. Turns out a homophone is a word that has the same sound as another word but is spelled differently AND has a different meaning. Examples of homophones are: to and two and too; pray and prey. A homonym, on the other hand, is a word that has the same sound AND the same spelling as another word, but a different meaning. Examples of homonyms are: the bank where you store your money and the bank that keeps the river in its place; the row that’s something you do in a boat and the row that’s made when you put things in a straight line. Speaking of rows, what kind of homos are the row (rō) that’s something you do in a boat and the row (rau̇) that is a noisy disturbance or quarrel? Those are homographs. Who knew?
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