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<P
style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal align=center><B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">CPT’s
‘Antebellum,’ a brilliant concept that is gone with the wind<?xml:namespace
prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
/><o:p></o:p></SPAN></B></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Bob
Abelman<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">News-Herald,
Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times,<o:p></o:p></SPAN></I></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The
Morning Journal, Geauga Times Courier<o:p></o:p></SPAN></I></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Member,
American Theatre Critics Association <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></I></P>
<P style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"
class=MsoNormal align=center><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">This
review will appear in the <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Times
</I>papers </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">on
3/01/12<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Early
in Robert O’Hara’s “Antebellum,” a southern belle attempts to explain the epic
novel she is reading. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>She fails
miserably. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Unable to adequately
relay all the romance, Civil War upheaval, and assorted side-stories packed into
the pages of “Gone with the Wind,” she is also oblivious to the social
injustices that existed during the confederate South’s antebellum era.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">The
play itself, currently being staged by Cleveland Public Theatre, also defies
simple description but places the theme of social injustice on the front burner.
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">“Antebellum”
takes place in Atlanta in 1939 with the city’s world premiere of the film “Gone
with the Wind” as its backdrop.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Sarah and Ariel Roca, a young Jewish couple with long-established roots
in the South, prepare themselves for the evening’s festivities by dressing in
the period costuming reflected in the film.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They are as indifferent to the
antebellum ties of their wardrobe as they are to the Jim Crowe laws of their
time.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">“Antebellum”
also takes place in Berlin in 1936, as the fledgling Nazi movement gathers
momentum.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Here we meet Oksar von
Schleicher, a commandant of the Third Reich, whose favorite prisoner—a gay black
cabaret singer named Gabriel—is used for scientific experimentation as well as
the satisfaction of the commandant’s needs and desires.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">The
play bridges these parallel worlds and their respective forms of discrimination
and inhumanity by offering an intriguing pretense.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>With seamless ease, thanks to Beth
Wood’s astute direction, the Roca’s historic plantation house becomes the study
of Oksar’s detention center and back again, as characters from both timelines
ebb and flow in and out of existence.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Gabriel becomes the link that not only connects these two worlds but, as
the play progresses, is the conduit for these worlds converging.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>No, colliding.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is good
stuff.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Another
intriguing pretence, but one not nearly as successful, is that “Gone with the
Wind” is more than mere window-dressing for this play.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">The
playwright embraces the old southern sing-song speak and flowery verbiage of the
film’s characters to inform the style of presentation and language of his own.
This allows Sarah (played magnificently and, with the aid of Melanie Boeman’s
costuming, with great humor by Laurel Hoffman) to resemble Scarlett O’Hara in
both form and phrasing.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It gives
Ariel (played brilliantly by Mark Rabant) Rhett Butler’s silver tongue and, when
called for, Ashley Wilkes’ self-deprecating tone.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Unfortunately,
the playwright does not have at his disposal Margaret Mitchell’s
Pulitzer-winning words, Victor Fleming’s Academy Award winning eye for editing,
or David O’ Selznick’s access to Cinemascope.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What is accomplished in one sentence on
film—a “fiddle-de-dee” or an “I don’t give a damn”—takes him volumes to
accomplish in this play.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The clever
dialogue that starts the play metastasizes into lengthy monologues as the two
worlds merge into one and discrimination and genocide become the focus of
attention.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The play runs 2 ½ hours
as a result.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">These
weighty, emotion-laden monologues prolong the play’s dramatic tension and test
the audience’s endurance.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>A further
test is being able to hear these monologues, since the cavernous Gordon Square
Theatre sucks sound away from earshot and the staging of the play—stadium
seating on both sides of a narrow piece of flooring representing the plantation
house/detention center —keeps actors with their sides or backs toward the
audience throughout the production. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">By
addressing weighty issues head-on, the characters in this play—who, at their
core, are as simply drawn as those from “Gone with the Wind”—have added layers
of complexity and emotional baggage.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Dana Hart, as Oskar, and Nicholas Sweeney, as Gabriel, manufacture
fascinating, believable characters and deliver absolutely riveting
performances.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Audrey Lovy, who’s
Edna Black Rock has more than her share of complexity and baggage, does
not.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BACKGROUND: white"
class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">The
play concludes as if the playwright painted himself into a corner with no
reasonable way out. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>CPT’s overly
dramatic presentation of this reinforces the impression that “Antebellum” is
based on a brilliant concept that is sustained for most of the evening but, in
the end, is gone with the wind.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><o:p> </o:p></SPAN></I></P>
<P style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">“Antebellum”
</SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">continues through
March 10 at Cleveland Public Theatre’s Gordon Square Theatre, 6415 Detroit
Avenue. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For tickets, which range
from $10 to $25, call 216-631-2727</SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><FONT
face=Calibri> </FONT></SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">or visit <A
href=""><FONT color=#0033cc>www.cptonline.org</FONT></A><B>.</B></SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>