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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » There are a couple of theater choices this weekend.
One is a complicated mystery at Curtain Call Theatre in Latham, the other a dramatic musical at Cohoes Music Hall. What the two have in common is that each demands intense concentration from the audience.
Indeed, if ever a show deserved to be termed a “tragic musical,” it’s “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grille.” It’s a heavy piece of theater that is a disturbing but beautiful examination of a very sad life.
It’s also a work you will not forget. This is especially true when the 90-minute show, produced by Playhouse Stage Company, is given such a haunting performance by Gina- Simone Pemberton. Her portrayal of Billie Holiday at Cohoes Music Hall is as touching as it is sad. The overused phrase of “inhabiting a character” is the only accurate description of her portrayal.
When you leave the theater, you truly believe you shared an hour and a half with a ghost.
“Lady Day …” is a fictional recreation of a concert given by Billie Holiday at a seedy Philadelphia nightclub weeks before she died of cirrhosis of the liver. For most of the performance she stands alone on a runway in the midst of this intimate performance space.
Even her accompanist Jimmy Powers – her protective husband – is in the background, on stage. Brandon Jones not only offers fine accompaniment on the piano, but he gives a wonderfully understated performance. His Jimmy becomes a mostly silent, but concerned witness to Holiday’s descent to doom.
It is immediately clear that though it is presented in real time, this is a memory play. Indeed, the work is equally divided between Pemberton’s phenomenal interpretation of 14 of Holiday’s songs and a lot of exposition that reveals the tragedy of her life.
The songs usually support the points made through the monologues, but it means they rarely change the mood of the play as they usually accent the tragedy of Holiday’s life.
Director Michael Loporto makes the wise decision to avoid histrionics throughout the show. He encourages an honest telling of an honest story. That choice makes what could be a bleak exploitive story a revealing biography of a tortured woman. It plays through March 15.
As for the Curtain Call Theatre production of “Switzerland,” one might say it’s common to call a puzzling mystery a head scratcher. That is for certain
For the mystery, playing at Curtain Call Theatre in Latham through March 14.
The play centers about famed mystery writer Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith was one of the most successful mystery writers of the 20th Century. One of her earlier works was “Strangers on a Train,” which Alfred Hitchcock made into a classic film.
More contemporary audiences also know her work from film. She created Tom Ripley, a cold. calculating psychopathic murder who is so charming, he has the reader rooting for him to get away with his crimes. Several popular films were made of the series.
“Switzerland” gives us an elderly Highsmith, who expecting to die in a relatively short time. She is visited by Edward Ridgeway, a young representative from her publishing house. They want a final Ripley book; she wants to be left alone.
The switches in dominance between the two characters play out like a very smart cat and mouse game. The problem is there is very little drama in “Switzerland.” Like most twocharacter plays, the performers are forced to deliver long chunks of exposition. This makes an already talky and deliberate play, with a constantly changing sense of power dynamics, seem, well, head scratching. The final section is so esoteric, you can leave the theater befuddled.
To his credit, director Aaron Holbritter finds a tension in the play that really isn’t in the script. I am not usually a fan of pauses, but Holbritter uses them to great effect.
Barbara Richards offers an uncertain portrayal of a cranky, bitter woman who has retreated from the world and maybe reality. However, with this approach Richards does not signal the woman’s genuine nastiness. Lacking this harshness there is little fear that she might be dangerous to herself or others.
Thankfully Ian LaChance picks up the slack making Ridgeway an enigmatic figure who might or might not be the man he seems. He is as charming and as scheming a person as is Tom Ripley. Indeed, if he were he born in a different time period, he might have been the model for Hightower’s most famous creation.
“Switzerland” continues Thursdays through Sundays at Curtain Call Theater in Latham through March 14. For tickets and schedule information call (518) 877-7529 or go tocurtaincalltheatre.com
“Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar continues at the Cohoes Music Hall through March 15. For tickets and schedule information call (518) 4340776 or go to playhousestagecompany.com