Theatre Critic Jim Santella reviews Sophie: Last of the Red Hot Mamas, You Never Can Tell and Transference now on stage at area theaters.By Jim Santella
Buffalo, NY – Sophie: Last of the Red Hot Mamas by Jack Fournier & Kathy Halenda is presented by MusicalFare, 4380 Main Street, 839-8540, through December 5th.
Plot: This dynamic revue takes the audience on a musical tour through American show biz during the burlesque and vaudeville eras of the early 20th century. Sophie: The Last of the Red Hot Mamas is your risqu? guide. The stout beloved performer had a tongue as quick as a rattlesnake and a wit twice as deadly. The tour includes snippets of her life starting with here immigration from Russia to her success as a cabaret and stage performer. Like most revues, this one is long on music and short on script except for Sophie?s bawdy banter. Personally, I think the one-woman show thrives on such a construction. The audience is treated to a night club-like performance by Sophie complete with wall to wall double entendres and her lust for life vocals.
Pros & Cons: Kelli Bocock-Natale owns the role with a flexible belting voice that does justice to the larger-than-life Sophie Tucker style. For 90 minutes she performs without a safety net. She has Sophie?s wise-cracking, energetic style down pat even when putting on a grueling, back to back Saturday matinee and evening performances. The actress also brings an arsenal of stage movement choreographed by John Fredo and directed by Lisa Ludwig to her portrayal. Philip Farugia is the music director and plays Ted Shapiro, Sophie?s accompanist.
Sophie thrived in a show-biz world that demanded that the brassy, full-size performer have skin as tough as a rhinoceros. She was a Siegfeld headliner a decade before women were given the right to vote. Whatever she wanted, she went out and got it. For those unfamiliar with the dynamic Sophie T, imagine a heftier version of Bette Midler or Mae West.
The most impressive part Bocock-Natale?s performance is her ability to get lost in the role and wrap her arms, charms and leering delivery around her audience.
Most of the songs are familiar and an opening week audience laughed, shrieked and tittered at the sexual innuendos delivered with a toss of hips, fan and boa.
Like many immigrant performers of her era, sentimentality, patriotism and motherhood figured prominently in her act.
Summary: Check your old tied ethics at the door when you go to enjoy this entertaining piece of Americana. Four out of five stars!
You Never Can Tell by G.B. Shaw is presented by the Irish Classical Theatre Co. 625 Main Street, 853 4282, through November 28th.
Plot: Shaw?s energetic comedy of manners strides the worlds of pure entertainment, incisive wit and social relevance. The Clandons return to England after an absence of 18-years. The three children have no idea who their father is.
The twins Philip (Michael Providence) and Dolly (Katie Anne McDermott) behave like a blowtorch in a fireworks factory. Theirs is a world of incendiary chaos and anarchy.
Gloria (Kristen Tripp Kelley) is the determined and independent eldest daughter. Like her mother (Barbara Link LaRou), she considers marriage an outdated institution. However, the fluttering of Gloria?s heart betrays her when she meets Valentine (Christian Brandjies), a five shilling dentist with an ability to successfully harness humility, freewheeling science, philosophy and poetry in his assault upon her affection.
The ladle that stirs this comic stew is the discovery that Valentine?s crotchety landlord, Mr. Crampdon (Neil Garvey) is the missing patriarch. Father, daughter and suitor embark upon a voyage of self-discovery that examines the subjects of emotional love, paternal responsibility and, the family as a social unit.
Pros & Cons: Excellent acting, a more than witty and worthy script and precise and spot on directing by Derek Campbell make You Never Can Tell a pure delight.
Christian Brandjies? Valentine is by turns facile, funny and engaging. His wooing scene with Gloria is a comedic slap and tickle.
Katie Anne McDermott as the effervescent Dolly has the zest and eye-rolling theatricality of a young Bette Davis. Paired with Michael Providence, the pair are twin towers of low comic mayhem. Shaw?s 100-yeare old jokes are as current as tomorrow?s headlines.
Summary: William the wise waiter (Vincent O?Neill) provides the final word on the subject of raising children when he quotes Shakespeare: You Never Can Tell. Four-and-a-half out of five stars!
Transference by Wayne Peter Liebman is presented by Alleyway Theatre, One Curtain Up Alley, 852-2600, through November 21.
Plot: Based on the shared relationship between Sigmund Freud (Donn Youngstrom), Carl Gustav Jung (Ray Boucher) and a brilliant 18 year old Russian patient of theirs, Sabina Spielrein (Susana Breese), Transference is a dramatic realization based on correspondence between the three. It is a "Steamy Psychoanalytical Triangle" that vacillates between brilliance and ennui.
Pros & Cons: In a free-wheeling theatrical discourse, the audience is transported to the repressive society of the 19th century. Freud and Jung?s early explorations into psychoanalytic theory is stimulated by Sabina, a teen-age girl suffering with a hysterical neurosis.
Ms. Breese embodies Sabina?s aggressive neurotic pain with the intensity of an exploding nova. Passion, restraint and jealousy bind the three lives together.
As Jung?s first patient, Sabina not only recovers with the aid of his therapy but inspires him to develop his theory of the collective subconscious.
The two fall in love but Jung is a married man, repressed and conflicted, a trait that Boucher carries off like a snake shedding its skin. His approach-avoidance scenes with Breese are some of the most dramatic and tense of the play.
A magnificent confrontation/separation scene during act two between Freud and Jung ? teacher and student ? serves as the psychological and dramatic denouement. It?s powerful and revealing.
Summary: Not your Pysch 101 Monarch Notes outline but a heady encounter with icons who trip over their feet of clay. Three-and-a-half out of five stars!