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Both plays strike strong personal chords - PARADE because it is in part
about my own family and BALLYHOO because the home in which it is set
would be - at least theoretically - maybe a ten minute walk from my
grandmother's house at 99 Peachtree Battle Avenue - and I have to admit
to being overwhelmed with both nostalgia and homesickness as I immersed
myself in Towne Center's absolutely charming production of LAST NIGHT
OF BALLYHOO.
Please click to enlarge.
Towne Centre, which is located in Brentwood, has got to be the
Nashville theatre scene's best kept secret and I can't quite figure out
why. It's a wonderful space - maybe the sweetest little theatre in
towne - and for Melissa Williams' right on production of BALLYHOO, the
audience practically walks right in to what could easily serve as a
museum exhibit for a Buckhead parlor. Just checking out the furniture
on Pete Hiett's marvelous set is worth a road trip down Franklin Pike,
but what these actors deliver on that set would make it worth while if
you had to drive to Kentucky. W. Preston Crook is flat out brilliant in
his understated performance as Adolf Freitag, the prototypical Buckhead
patriarch drowning in a sea of females, and. as his sister Boo
(Beulah), Jan Parrish Hendon is fierce in the role of an Atlanta widow
with all the attitude and social radar of an Atlanta junior leaguer -
if only she wasn't, you know, Jewish.
But just how "Jewish" are these people? The litmus test shows up at the
door in the character of one Joe Farkas - a fine turn by Jon Castro - a
nice Brooklyn boy who attends not one but two Seder dinners every year.
Joe falls in love with Adolf's niece, Sunny (can't say enough about
Lindsay Carter in this role) and just to put the issues in perspective,
Sunny doesn't know what the Seder is. Welcome to Atlanta.
Meanwhile, Sunny's cousin, Lala, is having delusions of Scarlett O'Hara
(the play is set on the eve of the premiere of GONE WITH THE WIND)
while decorating the Christmas tree - whose ornaments include several
stars of David. Lala is undoubtedly the most enigmatic character in
this story and the gazelle like Jami Winfrey is just cutting her teeth
on the role, so I'm going back in four weeks to see where she goes with
it.
Vicki Songer's delightful Reba is a titillating fusion of Aunt
PityPat, Fannie Brice and Birdie from LITTLE FOXES and there is much
about Uhry's mythical Southern world that echos back to that other
wonderful Southern Jewish playwright, Lillian Hellman.
Rounding out the ensemble is a pip of a young actor named Taylor Sokoll
as "Peachy" Weil - another nice Jewish boy, but this time from
Louisiana and one of "the best Southern Families" - well, if you're
Jewish, that is.
And they all look spectacular in Natalie Stone's superb period costumes
- especially Lala's hysterical ball gown which is bound to provoke
memories of Carol Burnet's killer line - " I just saw it in the window
and had to have it." (For those of you who remember.)
As an immediate male relative of any number of former presidents of the
Atlanta Junior League, LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO and the world of Jewish
debutantes is about the funniest satire I have ever seen on the world
that I grew up in. Some of Boo's special brand of "Buckhead sarcasm"
made me feel like I was in some kind of family therapy group session,
but for anyone who is NOT from Atlanta, just know in advance that
Atlanta and her particular brand of Southern culture are among the
weirder contributions to civilization and no one captures that better
than Uhry and his masterful depiction of the conflicted gestalt of
Southern Jewish society.
That conflict has roots which, in stark contrast to BALLYHOO, will hit
the stage in The Boiler Room's almost Brechtian production of director
Sondra Morton's take on PARADE, Urhy's collaboration with composer
Jason Robert Brown about the trial and lynching of Leo Frank, in which
you can see my grandfather sing, dance and prosecute Leo Frank. Opens
October 5th.
What's Atlanta all about? Find out. Come to Nashville and go to the
Theatre.
www.townecentretheatre.com,
www.boilerroomtheatre.com
Jaz Dorsey
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