The Commercial Appeal - Go Memphis
Hot Foot Honeys tap variety of dance styles at Buckman
The spotlight is on tap dancing this weekend as the Hot Foot Honeys, a professional tap dance company, present “Honeys on Tap!” at the Buckman Performing Arts Center.
The show will feature tap as well as hip-hop, spoken word, aerial-tap fusion, breakdance, contemporary and belly dance/tahitian, and if that’s not a variety, I don’t know what is.
Marianne Bell, the company’s artistic director, has pulled together performers and organizations from various disciplines and communities for the collaborative production. They include Stephen Prince Tate, Inner City South, Knowledge Nick, Amber Lea, 901 Breakers and Cyara White.
Bell, who works as an assistant district attorney with the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office, has a longtime interest in dance, which she studied in college and while attending Cornell Law School. In the past 14 years, she’s choreographed for and performed with Metal Velvet Dance Project, Breeding Ground Dance Collective, Project: Motion, Voices of the South, Bridging Souls Productions and Inner City South.
She founded Hot Foot Honeys in 2012 and has brought in dancers with strong performance backgrounds. The 10-member company has performed at several events around the city and mounted two full-length shows. “Honeys on Tap!” will be its first
show at the Buckman.
Honeys on Tap!: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday at Buckman Performing Arts Center, 60 Perkins Ext. Tickets: $20; $15/students/seniors; $12 children 10 and under. Info: hotfoothoneys.com, buckmanartscenter.com and 901-302-5487.
NOHOLDSBARD
If you’ve been told that you should see more Shakespeare, you can take care of that in one “fell swoop” (“Macbeth”). Theatre Memphis is staging “The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)” on its Next Stage, and while you may think it’s “a tale told by an idiot” (“Macbeth”), you might also find that “pleasure and action make the hours seem short.” (“Othello”).
Illustrating that “brevity is the soul of wit” (“Hamlet”), the shortened entirety of Shakespeare is presented by three actors who fulfill the Bard’s declaration that “one man in his time plays many parts” (“As You Like It”).
Shakespeare aficionado Jeff Posson is directing and sought to cast “three open-minded, inherently funny actors.” (That’s not Shakespeare — it’s from Posson). He decided on Joshua Hitt, Meghan Lisi and Kevar Maffit, who, he says, love Shakespeare and know how to deliver a joke.
Posson says this production keeps the essentials of the parody written by Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield, but there will be improvisation, audience participation and pop culture references, which aren’t so much a Shakespearean thing but, as the director puts it, “I believe that he appreciated a good joke, and I hope we’ve crafted a show that would make him laugh.”
It’s generally thought that Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, so a special 11 p.m. April 22 performance will serve as a tribute to the playwright, who has gone to dust these 400 years. “That which we call a nose by any other name would still smell.” (“The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)”).
“The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)”: April 8-24 at Theatre Memphis’ Next Stage, 630 Perkins Ext. Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays plus a performance at 11 p.m. April 22. Tickets: $25; $15 students. Info: theatrememphis. org and 901-682-8323.
Pretty misses
“Pageant” closes Saturday, so your chance to see some amusing nonsense with men wearing women’s clothes is coming to an end. The musical comedy sends up beauty pageants with the twist that all the performers are men competing in a swimsuit competition, wearing evening gowns and butchering talent interviews.
At best, it’s chuckle-funny but not guffaw-inducing as the contestants try womanfully to take the title of Miss Glamouresse, bestowed by the sponsoring Glamouresse cosmetics company.
The idea is that the actors play the female roles straight, as differentiated from a drag show, although the play doesn’t try too hard to stick to that notion if there’s a joke to be made. The problem is that a number of those jokes shouldn’t have been made. Throughout the production, each of the contestants does a demo of a Glamouresse product, and those bits fall flat every time.
It worked better when each actor got to be herself. The talent portion of the competition offered some remarkable performances, such as a truly amusing ventriloquist act and another in which the beauty came in on roller skates, playing the accordion — the sort of moments when you turn to your companion and whisper, “This is really happening, right?”
It’s an uneven enterprise, but emcee Frankie Cavalier, played with pitch-perfect smarm by Brent Davis, restores the equilibrium