Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Guthrie Theater – Theater Review

At the Guthrie Theater – Directed by Lisa Peterson – Runs through 26 Feb 2012

It’s been a while since I got down to the Guthrie – I’ve been distracted by the lovely Cowles Center on the other side of down town, as well as some traveling Broadway crews. But Cat looked like a good way to fill in one of the gaps in my theatrical education. It’s an uneven production, with some stellar performances and a few weak spots, but worth the trip.

Emily Swallow as Maggie the Cat is stellar, and that’s fortunate. Not only does she have 90% of the lines in the first act, she plays against an oddly passive Brick (Peter Christian Hansen). Without this powerful Maggie, the energy would have drained from the room. Brick is supposed to be disconnected, uncooperative, and hostile; that’s just how he rolls. But this Brick crosses the line from obstacle to object. His presence on the stage at times is so passive he seems like set dressing. Even with his limited lines in this section of the play, I wanted Brick to be a bigger, more imposing, more noticeable guy. I needed him to be more brittle, more on the edge, and to have a lot more energy around him.This issue is far less noticeable in the second act, where Brick’s emotional climax was deftly handled. But I didn’t have a foundation upon which to appreciate it.

Big Daddy, played by David Anthony Brinkley, is perfect in his role of an old plantation boss on his way out. His climactic scenes with Brick are a highlight of the play. This is an actor who walks on stage with his character fully formed and understood without saying a word. Also notable was Melissa Hart as the long-suffering wife of Big Daddy, and a woman who has created a fantasy version of her husband. Her comic timing was excellent in a role that can easily become cartoonish, but in this case, succeeded.

Another feature of this production is the handling of the “No-Necked Monsters” who are the five children of Brick’s sneaky brother, Gooper. These young actors appeared to be having an absolutely fabulous time, as about every ten minutes they get to run screaming through the Guthrie, often shooting cap guns and otherwise causing mayhem. (I must admit some jealousy there. There’s been one or two theatrical productions over the years where I might have liked to do that, too.) The children’s costumes are bright and far too pretty, as if they are living dolls, and they sing horrifying inspirational tunes and say inappropriate things. This contingent was used to exactly the right degree, and did not overwhelm the production. Instead they created a comic thread that ran nicely throughout.

One sound note: we were in the 5th row, orchestra, and I had a hard time hearing Brick several times in the first act. This might have contributed to my perception of his energy. Didn’t have that issue with any of the other actors.

Other Resources
Star Tribune Review (This article may require subscription)
TC Daily Planet Review
Brainerd Dispatch Review
Twin Cities.com Review
Citypages – The Dressing Room Blog – Feature piece
Star Tribune feature piece
How Was the Show blog – Review

Wind Cave National Park – The Black Hills Travelogue

The Black Hills have numerous caves, but the two biggest and most impressive are in the Northern Word Travelogue national parks. I’ve already written about the fascinating Jewel Cave National Monument here, so it’s time to take a look at the more popular of the two, Wind Cave National Park.

Don’t miss the rest of the Black Hills Travelogue, here.

The first thing to know about Wind Cave National Park is that there’s just as much of interest above ground as below. Unlike Jewel Cave, which is a postage stamp surrounded by National Forest land, Wind Cave has over 28,000 acres of prime Bison and Prairie Dog habitat and plenty of wide pullouts for visitors to stop and enjoy the wildlife. The vistas here are rare: natural prairie barely exists in America anymore, and here you can look for miles and see landscapes similar to those encountered by Native Americans before the arrival of European settlers.

Prairie at Wind Cave National Park

The Prairie Dog viewing in this park was the best we saw in the Black Hills, and second only to the viewing opportunities at Devil’s Tower N.M. in Wyoming. So if you’ve got chubby, chirping rodents on the brain, head to Wind Cave.

But most people go here to see what’s underground. And this is where our experience was a bit more mixed. Wind Cave has a plethora of tours – at times as many as 5 – and the selection is a bit confusing. We only had time for one, and so we chose the most popular, the “Garden of Eden” tour. We met the tour at the expansive visitors center:

Visitor's Center at Wind Cave National Park

Parking was tight, but manageable, though we were there during “shoulder season.” Parking could be an issue in the high season. We met our guide under a canopy close to the entrance out back. The tour was huge – at least 30 people, far too large (their limit is 40!). When I did tours of Oregon Caves National Monument as a guide there, we limited ourselves to 12. Sure, Oregon Caves is more hazardous than this relatively unchallenging route, but the smaller group gives the visitor a much better overall experience. There is a definite feeling of a cattle call at Wind Cave.

Visitors enter the cave through a door in the rock and quickly descend down a long, straight slope with stairs and low ceilings. It’s far more closed in than Jewel Cave, so claustrophobes beware. Our guide stopped to show us this cave’s “signature formation” – the speliothem for which the cave is internationally renowned. It’s called “Boxwork” because it looks like a grid of old mail slots. At Oregon Caves we had a couple of small examples of this, but at Wind Cave, the boxwork is everywhere.

Boxwork at Wind Cave National Monument

What you’re looking are the echoes of cracks in the rock. Water oozes through the cracks and builds up formations in the same shape.

Boxwork at Wind Cave National Monument

Once we’d seen the boxwork, it was a long slog to the end of the route, which for this tour is a low room with few features where the guide gave us the end of her canned lecture.

And that is my major objection to what’s going on at this cave. The guide was simply awful, and embodied all the major mistakes a tour guide can make: condescending tone; tour content clearly designed for small children with little of interest to adults; inability to answer even basic questions, betraying an underlying lack of knowledge – or care – about the science; and an inability to go off script and adjust to her group. It was like being led around by a computer-automated kindergarten teacher, and I mean no disrespect to kindergarten teachers. That they put this person in what appeared to be a ranger outfit was even more of an insult. I’d rather the Park Service not pretend it has real rangers when in reality it’s just employing part time college kids with no expertise, as was clearly the case here. Put them in another outfit. And don’t call the low-rent staff “rangers.”

Even more amusing (or not), at the beginning of the tour the guide asked us to tell her what other caves we’d been to. I volunteered that I’d worked at Oregon Caves as a guide. She said, “Oh yes, that’s a lava tube cave.” I said no, it’s a karst cave, predominantly marble. She actually disagreed and insisted it was a lava tube cave. I corrected her again and she moved on without acknowledging her mistake. Not only was she generally ignorant of the geology of Wind Cave (dispensing false notions about how long it takes cave formations to form, for example), she was willing to commit to wildly false information just to have something to say.

I really hope the National Park Service eventually recovers from all this endless budget cutting and misguided outsourcing and downgrading, but I’m not optimistic after seeing this.

Logistics: Wind Cave National Park is on the south end of the Black Hills, and borders the southern edge of Custer State Park. It’s easily reached in a day trip from Rapid City, Custer, or Hill City. There is a special cave tour for those with limited mobility, but the Park Service site gives no information on how extensive this tour is, so call ahead to make sure it’s worth your while.

It’s perfectly possible to visit, as we did, both Jewel Cave and Wind Cave on the same day, as both are on the southern end of the hills. You’ll just be doing a lot of stairs.

Parking was limited when we stopped by during the shoulder season and could be an issue during peak times.

Bottom line: if you’re visiting only one cave during your trip to the Black Hills, I recommend Jewel Cave. Though Jewel Cave has fewer formations (except its crazy preponderance of cave popcorn), the formations of interest on the Wind Cave Garden of Eden Tour – the most common tour – were mostly limited to the boxwork. While I nerded out on that fascinating formation, which is at its best in the world in this cave, I know from experience that the average visitor wants either amazing formations to see OR a fantastic guide who can bring the science alive and show them how special the cave is without needing the visual aid of a ten foot column. And this cave just hasn’t made the investment in interpretive staff. I base this not just on our guide, but on conversations I had with 5 other rangers while I was there – only one of them appeared to be experienced and knowledgable, and he wasn’t in the cave.

Jewel Cave, on the other hand, makes up for its lack of large formations with a much more grand, and mysterious, cave environment. And kids will love the cool elevators. The only upside I can see for Wind Cave is a far more developed visitor’s center, so larger families might find it more convenient.

Don’t miss the rest of the Black Hills Travelogue, here.

Les Miserables – Broadway Across America – Theater Review

Les MIserables – Cameron Mackintosh production – Minneapolis at the Orpheum through Dec 18 2011.
I first saw Les Miserables (gasp) 25 years ago, as a birthday present from my parents when I was in junior high school. For a fourteen-year-old girl, Les Miserables is the perfect play: full of emotional depths and peaks, a couple of cute guys, and a feeling that yes, the entire world might end right now, but god, isn’t it BEAUTIFUL?

Fortunately, Les Miserables has enough going on to keep my, er, slightly older self just as engaged 25 years later. This new production is just different enough to feel fresh and modern, and sacrifices none of the good bits.

The “good bits” includes those great solos. J. Mark McVey’s Jean Valjean is a little quiet at first but he delivers where it counts. My personal favorite from the song list is “Bring Him Home,” and a thrill went through the audience after the last impossibly high, gentle note. His performance grows throughout the night until he fully claims the gravity of the role toward the end.

Javert’s (Andrew Varela) smooth baritone delivers throughout, and with this character was one of the more notable differences in the staging of the old vs new. In the original, Javert simply jumps off a bridge, presumably into a soft cushion in a pit. In this version, Javert goes high tech, in an intriguing combination of a massive video wall and flight cables so that he looked as if he were falling horizontally into a black hole. It felt a tiny bit silly, but I liked it anyway. Such is the power of Les Miserables.

And that video wall is used to great effect, more so in the second half of the show. The video wall – showing drawings based on author Victor Hugo’s own sketches – created the illusion of tunnels deep underground. At one point the innkeeper/thief character enters through dark portion of the screen, creating the convincing effect of a mysterious figure emerging from deep underground. These sorts of effects couldn’t have been imagined 25 years ago, and yet they don’t distract or overwhelm the play today. I for one am glad to see the lazy susan has been retired (previous productions had the barricades on a rotating table). Despite the high tech bells and whistles, this set helped focus more on the actors and the story by not creating a giant central focus/distraction.

The major negative of this performance was Fantine (Betsy Morgan), who shouts bitterly at the beginning of “I dreamed a dream.” Her performance seemed rushed; the timing was off in comparison to the rest of the show.

But after 25 years, Les Miserables still pleases the crowd, receiving one of the most spontaneous standing O’s I’ve seen in a while, from 2500 patrons. What is it that makes this play endure when other musicals, like “Cats” have become stale jokes? Hard to say, but I’d pin it on a combination of operatic style, emphasis on crowd-pleasing expansive vocal range, and a popular storyline of redemption against a wider historical backdrop. And one more thing – there’s not a trace of irony in this show. What comedy there is is brief, and largely physical. When you see Les Mis, you’re allowed to be that 14 year old girl again, caught up in the emotional roller coaster, all snark and cynicism having been left outside the theater.