Category: Art & Theater

New twist on religious iconography at Currier

The mother-and-child theme has been part of Ann Agee’s art going back to a 1999 porcelain figure recently revived for the Rena Bransten Gallery’s RBG at 50-Focus on Ceramics exhibition in San Francisco. She’s frequently returned to the form, but recently Agee has taken a different approach, making Madonnas with a feminist touch.

“Madonna of the Girl Child” has grown into a significant body of work, and on March 7 the Currier Museum will begin showing five of the largest figures from it. Also on display at the exhibition, running through June 5, are two relief works done in porcelain, welded steel and epoxy resin, “Offering Madonna” and “Donatello Riff Madonna.”

In a recent phone interview Agee said she made the first piece out of curiosity in 2019, then a few more to fight a bout of altitude sickness. Occasionally she’d ask herself why she was focusing on religious icons. It was, she decided, a good way to look at and comment on their inherent oppression.

As she walked through churches on a trip to Italy, the clash between depictions of violence like the crucifixion and the gentle nature of the Madonna got her thinking.

“So many horrific things that were the guides to how to live your life … don’t do that, watch out for this,” she said. “Then you see the Madonna, and it’s … have a child, and everything is peaceful.”

Amidst this warmth and maternal comfort, however, something stark stood out to Agee.

“It’s always a boy child,” she said. “I wanted for myself a Madonna that held a girl child and publicly showed the interest that a mother could have in her. That this child, this girl, could deserve your hopes and dreams in the same way that your boy child could. Slowly, it became a little bit of a campaign.”

The upcoming Currier display is a departure for Agee, who usually displays her Madonnas in groups of mixed sizes. It will be held in the Manchester museum’s Welcome Gallery, which is a space between other spaces.

“There’s a sprawling staircase, it spreads out to both sides, and there are banisters of a different material,” she said. “I decided to keep it really simple, and have the work stand up to all that’s architecturally going on in that room, and the movement of people coming and going.”

The five pieces are the largest ones she’s done, Agee said.

“I’ve enjoyed slowly learning how to make things bigger,” she said. “Last summer I was sitting on someone’s deck and looking out into this grass and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to just have a big red figure in the grass there?’ So I made one in red, and then I made one in pink.”

She was further inspired by a trip to Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italy. “I was looking at all the white marble sculptures that are in the garden there. They’re not really that big, but they’re one color. There’s all this stuff around them, and they hold their form. That’s basically the shift in these Madonnas, they’re big and they’re a solid color.”

The works, however, further Agee’s “campaign” for a feminist reinterpretation of religious iconography. More than a simple exploration of motherhood, “Madonna of the Girl Child” is a critical commentary on the way these traditional symbols have reinforced gender roles. Agee’s art usurps an image steeped in patriarchal culture.

This shift is a deliberate act of reclaiming this symbol for women. Agee wanted to present a vision where a mother could hold and nurture a girl child with the same devotion and aspirations traditionally reserved for sons. In this new context, the Madonna figure becomes a symbol not just of motherhood but of equality.

Ann Agee: Madonna of the Girl Child
When: Friday, March 7, through Thursday, June 5
Where: Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St., Manchester
More: annageestudio.com

Featured photo: “Offering Madonna” by Ann Agee. Courtesy photo.

Easygoing Escape to Margaritaville hits Palace

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

New England spent most of February waking up to single-digit temperatures and the sound of snowplows in the street, so the latest musical at the Palace Theatre couldn’t arrive at a better time. Set in a sunny resort somewhere near the equator, Escape to Margaritaville is a frothy, guilty pleasure that’s packed with Jimmy Buffet songs.

With a book from a pair of sitcom veterans, the jukebox musical’s mood is best summed up by Tully (Matt McCloskey), who sings at the hotel bar and is modeled after the writer of “Changes in Latitudes” and the show’s title song. “The deeper you go,” Tully says, “the less interesting it gets.”

To paraphrase the Bard of the Keys, this evening comes with a license to chill.

The plot centers on a bachelorette getaway. Tammy (Megan Quinn) is finding some respite from her boorish fiance ahead of her wedding. Rachel (Jen Fogarty-Morgan) cares more about getting a soil sample from an island volcano for an energy venture that apparently involves potatoes, but falls quickly in a fling with the one-week-stand specialist Tully.

While that’s happening, Tammy is warming to the polar opposite of her husband-to-be, a genial bartender named Brick (Adam Fields). With those parts in place, and a few colorful denizens like hotel owner Marley (Nakiiya Coleman), old-timer J.D. (Jacob Medich) and handyman Jamal (Tyler Price Robinson), the Parrothead-pleasing songfest moves forward.

Though Escape to Margaritaville is aimed at the people who instinctively know the last two words in the chorus of “Why Don’t We Get Drunk,” it’s also fun for folks who are new to Buffett’s brand of trop rock. In fact, the Palace company had little awareness of him before rehearsals, one of which was canceled due to a foot of snow falling.

That would change.

“Now I get it; I’m kind of a converted Parrothead,” Director Carl Rajotte said by phone recently. “We’re having a blast teaching this show. There’s a lot of stylized dancing, a Caribbean feel, and then just all the puns. The show is written for people who enjoy puns, and all of the actors are laughing during rehearsal.”

In a joint interview, Fogarty-Morgan and Quinn discussed the cast’s mood as a Feb. 28 opening night approached.

“It’s a really nice, easy story,” Fogarty-Morgan said. “It’s fun, it’s goofy and silly. The music is amazing and wonderful and you get to hear it in a new way, which will be fun for the fans. They put together a phenomenal cast, and everyone’s really going to have a good time.”

Quinn, a Palace favorite who also runs their Youth Theatre Company, is pleased to see many fresh faces in Margaritaville. “Besides Jen and one other person, I have not worked with any of these people before,” she said. “They are all so good, so talented and very funny. We’ve been having such a good time with them, so that’s been a nice experience.”

Early on, both Quinn and Rajotte were certain “for an embarrassingly long time” that Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” was a Buffett tune, but they since have come far. Everyone has a favorite now — “Cheeseburger in Paradise” is Quinn’s go-to, and Fogarty-Morgan is a fan of “Five O’clock Somewhere,” which began as an Alan Jackson tune with a guest vocal before Buffett took sole ownership by making it a staple at his concerts.

Rajotte selected the new work with an eye on the schedule, and the Palace will keep the tropical vibe alive by handing out leis to audience members. No word yet on whether blenders will be whirring with the show’s signature drink, though. The show is a great way to clear thoughts of frigid temperatures and seasonal stress, if only for a couple of hours.

“We always strive to do at least two brand new shows per season,” he said. “It’s the perfect time to do it, with the cold and snow … I keep on falling on the ice, but then I get to come in here and have a good time with this music and this show, and I know the audience will, too.”

Escape to Margaritaville

When: Fridays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 2
& 7:30 p.m., and Sundays, 2 p.m. through
March 23. Also Thursday, March 20, 7:30
p.m.
Where: Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St.,
Manchester
Tickets: $39 and up at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: The cast of Escape to Margaritaville. Courtesy photo.

Faithless is a fast-paced look at modern religion

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

A play with humor, intelligence, drama and the pacing of a West Wing episode, Jon Klein’s Faithless arrived on director Monique Peaslee Foote’s desk at an inconvenient time. New Hampshire Theatre Project head Sean Robinson gave her the script, asking if she’d give it a read, when “I was in no position, with no desire to do it,” she said by phone recently.

Then she dug into the story of a family crisis confronting Gus, an aging atheist, and his two grown stepchildren; Calvin, a minister, and Claire, who teaches comparative religion but is a skeptic until a head injury causes her to think she’s seen the divine. The cause of the conclave is Gus’s adopted teenage daughter Rosie, who’s decided she wants to become a nun.

“I was hooked after three pages,” Foote said. “Number one, it’s funny, and I think we’re at a time in life where that’s good. It’s witty, and it’s fast-paced…. I’m all about a 90-minute show, no intermission these days. Get me there, tell me the story, and then I’m going to peace out. And that’s what this piece does.”

Foote describes the play’s four actors as “whip smart” — Jim Sears playing Gus, Stephanie Lazenby as Claire, Matt Recine in the role of Calvin, with Michelle Levine playing Rosie. “Each of them, their comedic timing is everything,” she said. “I mean, I have to do little to no work, because they’re bringing all of it.”

Preparation began at a pace befitting the script. “I knew the rehearsal process wasn’t super long, so as a director, I set the scaffolding,” Foote said. “Sometimes you get those golden groups of people where they all kind of get it, and we started that way — everybody got it. We’re all on the same page at the same pace.”

Blocking done, the cast was ready, she continued. “Now we get to play. Let’s dig into the layers of these guys. The biggest problem for us in rehearsals is to stop them from laughing. I’m like, all right, guys, get [it] together, like, let’s go. Because they’re funny, they’re just hilarious people. So we’re all there just laughing our tails off. It’s great.”

Faithless is the first Klein work that Foote’s been involved with. “He’s pretty clever,” she said. “Quite frankly, I haven’t done a ton of research on Mr. Klein, but what he has right is the story, and the way people talk to each other. The banter, the way they just throw it back and forth is really wonderful and real.”

In a review of a Washington, D.C., production of the play, DC Theatre Arts writer Amy Kotkin agreed. “The playwright’s sure-fire dialogue combines lofty questions with very funny analogies to popular culture,” she wrote. “Watch how he references time-shares, dodgeballs, crowbars, and Little House on the Prairie as his all-too-human characters slug it out.”

Foote joined New Hampshire Theatre Project in 2009 as an actor. Directing “is fairly new to me, but I really think I love it,” she said, Collected Stories, a two-woman play she directed last year starring Genevieve Aichele and Amy Desrosiers, was nominated for multiple New Hampshire Theatre Alliance awards.

“We didn’t win, but it was nice to be seen,” she said, adding that the experience reinforced her commitment to NHTP.

“I have a personal passion for the organization because it does really smart theater, and it tells really smart stories,” she said. “The foundation of their work is starting a conversation [and] that’s what I’m here for. They want to bring the tough stuff out and get people talking about it, because that’s where community starts. That’s where we find our humanness, in the conversation.”

Faithless
When: Fridays, 7:30 p.m., Saturdays, 4 p.m. and Sundays, 2:30 p.m. through March 9
Where: New Hampshire Theatre Project, 959 Islington St., Portsmouth
Tickets: $28 and up at portsmouthnhtickets.com

Featured photo: Jim Sears, Stephanie Lazenby, Michelle Levine, and Matt Recine. Courtesy photo.

Lend Me A Tenor playwright’s latest hits Concord

The old adage “Be careful what you wish for” guides The Gods of Comedy, the latest production from Community Players of Concord. The 2019 Ken Ludwig play makes its New Hampshire debut on Feb. 14 at Concord City Auditorium. It looks at what happens when a pair of deities are beseeched from the heavens and actually arrive.

The story begins when two professors, Ralph and Daphne, find a rare manuscript while on a holiday in Greece, only to see it inadvertently destroyed when they return to their Ivy League university. This prompts a cry for on-high assistance that miraculously produces Dionysus, the god of misrule and partying, and Thalia, who’s the muse of comedy.

It’s classics weekend at the college, so the gods are sidetracked by costumed students and campus partying, while the frazzled professors try to solve the problem of the lost work, a Euripides play. Meanwhile, additional gods of varying demeanor manage to make things more complicated.

“It’s part fantasy and classic literature — there’s a lot of Shakespeare references, which I really appreciate,” Elizabeth Lent, the play’s director, said by phone recently. “There are ancient Greek references as well, but also a lot of silliness, as they get into a lot of interesting antics and situations.”

This is the Players’ fifth play by Ludwig, well-known for his 1986 Tony winner, Lend Me a Tenor. Lent has directed two of them, 2004’s Shakespeare In Hollywood and Ludwig’s 2017 revival of Murder on the Orient Express. She’s pleased to present a relatively fresh work with up to date elements.

“I really do like the fact that it’s contemporary,” Lent, who’s been with Concord Community Players since the early 1980s, said. “I’ve been directing for a very long time and have directed lots of old stuff. I was really interested in trying something new, and Ludwig appeals to me.”

The cast includes Emily Thompson playing Daphne, John Julian, Alex Hutton, Kal Hachi and Suzanne Watts as Dionysus and Thalia, along with Heather Carmichael, Dana Sackos, Griffin Stuart, Seth Bunke and, making her Players debut, Jeri Lynn Owen. Set designer is Craig Walker, costumes are by Suzanne Potoma and Gay Bean, and lighting by Steven Meier.

Lent had the play cast the night auditions were finished.

“The chemistry is so good with these folks,” she said. “They’re all very talented and dedicated. Everyone comes to every rehearsal, even the tiniest little roles. They all like each other, which is really kind of wonderful, and they’re having such a good time. It’s so joyful to watch them work.”

Among the hijinks occurring is one of the gods inhabiting two of the other characters.

“They get possessed, and these two actresses that are making the transformation are hilariously funny doing it,” Lent said. More importantly, everything ends on a happy note. “For me, it’s exciting to watch these folks just having such a blast with it.”

Lots of laughs, a cast enjoying themselves and an upbeat finale is just what’s needed at this particular moment in time, and The Gods of Comedy is poised to provide all that.

“When the gods come down, they’re given a mission; this woman, Daphne Ring, needs an adventure and a happy ending, and they deliver,” Lent said, who described the play as “a clever mashup of the best kinds of knockabout comedy across the ages” in a press release. “We’d love to see everybody in the audience. Because it’s so new, it’s very exciting for us to be performing it.”

The Gods of Comedy
When: Friday, Feb. 14, and Saturday, Feb 15, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Feb. 16, 2 p.m.
Where: Concord City Auditorium, 2 Prince St., Concord
Tickets: $20 ($18 under 18 and 65+) at communityplayersofconcord.org

Featured photo: L to R – Kal Hachi, Emily Thompson and Suzanne Watts. Photo by Michael Von Redlich.

Colby-Sawyer showcases Italian program

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Having a community conversation was Theatre Kapow’s goal when its season began last fall. This continues with Every Brilliant Thing, a play that will spend a weekend at BNH Stage in Concord, then move to Winnipesaukee Playhouse two weeks later for three final performances.

About a child trying to encourage their mother, hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt, with a list of “brilliant things” that are worth living for, it’s technically a one-person play. However, an in-the-round crowd plays a big role, even for a theater company that’s always strived to bring it close to the action.

“Throughout … the audience is relied on quite heavily to make the story actually happen, to get the character through each scene to the next point,” Director Emma Cahoon said by phone recently. This begins when attendees enter the venue; each gets a card with a numbered “thing” written on it to call out when prompted. Bolder souls can choose bigger roles.

Playwright Duncan McMillan, she continued, tells a story about how depression can be contagious without tools to take it on. His message: People can’t go it alone, they need help. To that end, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, Capital Art Therapy and the Jason R. Flood Memorial Fund are all community partners for the production.

“He tells a story about a person discovering how important it is to talk to other people, in a way that requires the audience to be in conversation with the piece the whole time,” she said. “So the function of the storytelling is proving the narrator’s point [that] I could not get through this on my own … I had to turn to other people.”

Though the material can be dark, it radiates hope with happy thoughts of “ice cream, water fights, and knowing someone well enough to get them to check your teeth for broccoli.” There’s also an improv comedy mood; an exchange between the main actor and a volunteer co-star could go anywhere, after all.

In a Jan. 28 blog post, Eric Gutterson, a longtime patron who’s served as test audience for rehearsals, said the play evokes “laughter, sadness, joy, longing, and a sense of togetherness,” adding that it “doesn’t shy away from being real. There are dark tones, but you come up for air early and often with frequent moments of comic relief.”

Matt Cahoon co-founded Theatre Kapow with his wife Carey; Emma is their daughter and this is her second directing role. Matt, who’s also Academic Dean and Theatre Director at the New Hampton School, has taught Every Brilliant Thing to his students. He called the feelings Gutterson described in line with his company’s mission.

“Sometimes contemporary theater can feel like you’re taking your medicine, because you’re having to have these difficult thoughts,” he said by phone. “But there’s also a lot of sugar that goes with that medicine.”

The decision to make conversation a focus of their season was deliberate, in anticipation of a contentious election and its aftermath. Matt thinks Every Brilliant Thing transcends that.

“In a polarized and often isolating world, the play’s format… emphasizes shared vulnerability and collective healing,” he wrote on their website.

“There’s a stripped down, base human aspect to all of us,” he continued in conversation. “With the audience for this show, we’re not Republicans and Democrats, we’re not even men and women or old and young. We’re just humans in the space together … here’s an entry point for every single person who lives and breathes on this planet into this play.”

Though she was 6 when her parents founded the company, Emma Cahoon wasn’t always certain that it was her destiny. During her rebellious middle school years she even planned on being a nurse. Last May, however, she graduated from BU with a BFA in Theatre Arts. She’s in it for the long haul now, and comfortable with that knowledge.

“Everything I said I was going to do that wasn’t theater was, in some ways, theatrical,” she said. “I never imagined myself not in a caretaking or community-based position, and when I got over that period of time, I was like, ‘Yeah, actually, this is what I wanted to do.’ Then I went to school for it, and here we are.”

Every Brilliant Thing

At BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Friday, Feb. 7, and Saturday, Feb. 8, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 9, 2 p.m.

At Winnipesaukee Playhouse, 33 Footlight Circle, Meredith
Friday, Feb. 21, and Saturday, Feb. 22, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 23, 2 p.m.

Tickets: $25 and up at tkapow.com

Starring Peter Josephson on Feb. 7, Feb. 9, Feb. 22, Carey Cahoon on Feb. 8, Feb. 21, Feb. 23.

Content Transparency:
Verbal descriptions of depression, self-harm, suicide and suicidal ideations.
There will be some warm and inclusive audience participation.

Featured photo: Emma Cahoon. Photo by Sarah Coleman.