[NEohioPAL]PARADE INFORMATIVE AT CASSIDY/KABUL A LONG SIT AT DOBAMA

[Roy Berko]

PARADE ENLIGHTENS AT CASSIDY/DOBAMA’S HOMEBODY/KABUL A
LONG SIT

--THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS--

Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association)

Lorain County Times--Westlaker Times--Lakewood News
Times--Olmsted-Fairview Times	

PARADE ENLIGHTENS AT CASSIDY

Cassidy Theatre is noted as a community theatre which
tends to play it safe.  It produces the likes of Neil
Simon comedies and pleasant Broadway hit musicals. 
That’s what its generally conservative audience wants,
and the audience is composed of local taxpayers who
financially support the theatre.  But every once in a
while the theatre goes out on a wing.   They are doing
that now with the musical PARADE.  They are, in fact,
one of the first nonprofessional theatres in the
country to tackle this controversial piece.  The show
has two major blocks to success.   The production
requires a huge cast, in Cassidy’s case, over 35
bodies.  The players must be talented enough to both
act and sing their way through a script that requires
high drama and good voices.   Secondly, the story is
very serious, not normally the basis for audience
enjoyment.

In 1913, Leo Frank, a Brooklyn-born Jew living in
Georgia, was put on trial for the murder of
13-year-old Mary Phagan, a factory worker under his
employ.  Though innocent, he is guilty in the eyes of
everyone around him who.  They don’t like that he is
Jewish, a northerner, and rich.  His only defenders
are a governor with a conscience, and his assimilated
Southern wife who finds the strength and love to
become his champion.

PARADE tells the story pretty accurately, even
including actual words spoken by the real-life
characters.  Its goal is to educate people about the
tragedy of prejudice.  It is successful in doing this.
 As one critic said, "I left the theatre shaking,
horrified at what I'd just seen, moved to tears. Real
life dramas are hard enough, but stories this tragic
are just shattering." The show won two Tony Awards.

Cassidy is fortunate that its former artistic director
David Jecman has returned to take on the production. 
Jecman has a clear sense of purpose for the staging. 
He also knows the limits of his amateur cast and has
not sugar-coated the material.  Don Irven portrays Leo
Frank with well-measured compassion.   Maggie Wirfel
gives a polished performance as Frank’s wife.  Jecman,
in contrast to most directors, has paid much attention
to the supporting players and the effort shows.  The
highlight of the show is the well-honed trial segment.

Is the production perfect?  No, the choreography is
weak, some of the acting is very amateurish, several
performers over act, and the required southern drawls
come and go.   But this is a community theatre and an
amateur production that has undertaken the staging of
a tough show.

In spite of Jecman and the cast’s work, and the high
quality of the script, some audience members vocally
indicated they didn’t "enjoy" the production.  This,
of course, was not the university reaction, it is
ironic that in the area of Cuyahoga county which has
had much publicity regarding its lack of openness to
minorities, some people would reject their being
educated to the horrors of prejudice.  People like the
woman who vocally complained as she marched down the
aisle at intermission, "I didn’t come to the theatre
to see stuff like this," ought to realize that not all
life’s experiences are meant to be "enjoyed!" 

This is a show worth seeing!

PARADE will be performed at the Cassidy Theatre, 6200
Pearl Road, Parma Heights through September 29.  
Tickets may be obtained by calling 440-842-4600. 

	DOBAMA’S HOMEBODY/KABUL IS A LONG SIT

Tony Kushner is noted as being a political playwright.
 He has charted German social democratic impotence in
A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY.  In SLAVS, he probes the
death of the Soviet Union.  In his most acclaimed
work, the two-part, nine-hour epic ANGELS IN AMERICA,
he examines personal suffering and betrayal in the
worlds of disease, homophobia, and reactionary
politics.  In all of his plays he uses lots and lots
and lots of words. 

At the beginning of PERESTROIKA (part two of ANGELS IN
AMERICA) a character asks, "The great question before
us is: will the past release us?"   He continues to
probe that question in his rambling new play
HOMEBODY/KABUL, which is getting its midwestern debut
at Dobama Theatre.  Ironically, Kushner wrote the play
before 9/11/2001.  This makes the work, which is set
in Afghanistan, rather remarkable and a little eerie. 
 He talks about places and topics that most Americans
weren’t even aware of before that fateful date.  

Our journey starts with an hour-long monologue in
which Homebody, a middle-aged British matron, offers
glimpses of the pain of a loveless marriage as she
conjures a stream-of-consciousness vision of an
ancient land and culture, a place of "strangeness and
beauty." A place from which history dawns and is the
burial sight of Cain, the killing brother of Bibical
history.
 
Homebody leaves home to visit Afghanistan and
disappears.  What happened to her is the mystery that
her husband, an uncommunicative communications expert,
and her daughter, a neurotic, alienated young woman,
strive to discover during the next two acts.  Was she
killed by a mob offended by her apparent flouting of
Muslim female propriety?  Is she still alive?  Has she
taken the veil and married a Muslim doctor?  As is his
habit, Kushner layers his narrative with fascinating
historical facts and observations, in this case,
Western and Afghan culture.  

Some scenes are powerful such as when a rejected
Afghan wife rages at the West's complicity in bringing
the Taliban to power.  Some are seemingly meaningless
bits of information.  In reality, the play could have
ended with the conclusion of the first act and been
satisfying.  

In spite of some brilliant dialogue and philosophical
importance, Kushner does not heed the adage, "The mind
can absorb what the seat can endure." The major topic
at both intermissions on opening night was the
interminable length of the show.  

Dobama’s production is well staged.  Nan Wray is
nothing short of brilliant as Homebody.  Robert
Hawkes, is properly emotionally challenged as the very
linear husband.  Scott Platte is effective in his role
as an undefined diplomat.  Bernadette Clemens is often
too strident as the daughter.  Jean Zarzour gives a
special dimension to the Muslim doctor’s shunned wife.
 

Director Joel Hammer should have been aware that
modern-day audiences, even the intellectual ones who
attend Dobama productions, are not going to cotton to
a  play that clocks in at 3 hours, 45 minutes.  If
Kushner wouldn’t cut the script, Hammer should have.  
Sections could have been red penciled without
destroying the message, probably enhancing the
meaning.

HOMEBODY/KABUL plays at Dobama Theatre, 1846 Coventry
Road, Cleveland Heights through October 6.  For
tickets call 216-932-6838.


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