Mammy Bardenheimer

Mammy Bardenheimer

Okay, so we weren’t in step with the Barbenheimer zeitgeist and instead of catching a double bill of Barbie and Oppenheimer we put together  an “almost with it” triple bill that was even better. We saw (misunderstanding) Mammy at Croton Falls’ Schoolhouse Theater, Love’s Labor’s Lost at the Hudson Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, and the new movie Oppenheimer. And we want to tell you all about them.

Run (Don’t Walk) to (misunderstanding Mammy)

The Schoolhouse Theater’s artistic director Owen Thompson and producing director Bram Lewis have a winner on their hands with (misunderstanding) Mammy. Joan Ross Sorkin’s one woman play about Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Academy Award for supporting actress in Gone With the Wind, hits all the right notes with McDaniel’s compelling story. Hattie, who was unable to attend the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta because of Georgia’s Jim Crow laws at the time, never let the racial injustices she experienced get her down. And she kept on smiling, singing and fighting her way into pioneering success in movies radio and nightclubs as a singer and an actress.

Tina Fabrique who has received the Kevin Kline Award for her performance in Ella stars in this production. She has appeared on Broadway in Gospel at Colunus, Ragtime, Bring in the Noise, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, delivers a spirited performance. She is engaging, personable and fun. And the lady can sing. It’s going to cost a lot more and its going to be more inconvenient to see this Off Broadway – so click here to buy your tickets to one of the last four performances this weekend. Tina is directed by Seret Scott, a winner of American Theatre’s prestigious Gordon Davidson Award.

Love’s Labor’s Lost at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is “Bats#@t Bonkers”

Someday, when you’re playing mahjong in Boca you’ll meet someone you never knew from the ABC towns – a great chance to compare notes and make new friends. Until you get the hairy eyeball when you admit you never made it to the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. (Won’t be pretty!) That’s how we started our article when we added HVSF to our Bucket List many years ago.

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival performers have great comedic timing and understand that the spaces between words are important too. They are especially at ease with comedies to the point that they take so many liberties that, at times they can get zany. In this summer’s production of Love’s Labor’s Lost, they have reached new heights. And frankly have lost their minds! In a good way.

So, if you have ever wondered what it would be like to watch Shakespeare on recreational drugs – and by that I don’t mean you but the performers – than click here to get your tickets now! The Bard’s tale about four young noblemen who swear off women to hit the books – until the Princess of France turns up with three friends, is infused with an original pop/rock score from director Amanda Dehnert and Andre Pleuss. HVSF’s website insists the score “gives full voice to the heart-pounding experience of being young and in love” and on LSD. We might add.

And if you like when Shakespearian productions play with time and space you will love this production. Because there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to the costumes. You will see some characters dressed in Elizabethan garb, another in a pink South Beach pimp suit, one wears a black plastic bag diaper, the Princess of France and her friends show up in Dreamgirls jump suits, and some guy who I thought was part of the audience is dressed in suburban leisure wear. And while the princess and her entourage and the French noblemen perform rock songs for each other, the noblemen for some reason are cast as a Russian band called The Muscovites. And are dressed in big gold suits that look like they were stolen from the Morgan State marching band.

But you gotta see it!

Oppenheimer

Okay, so considering the world may be on the brink of thermonuclear war this would be a good time (and perhaps your last chance) to at least learn the history behind the atom bomb. The story of Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, is set against hearings after the war to revoke his security clearance due to his politics before the war and his opposition to developing the hydrogen bomb. Well, you can read more about it elsewhere but this one has sex and communists and big bombs exploding. Plus great performances by Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr.

It jumps around in time a lot and there are a lot of characters and subplots so relax if you can’t follow everything. When it was over my wife said she would like to see it again for that reason. I said, if it wasn’t Sunday I would go to Frank Pep’s for a pizza and come right back for the seven o’clock show. And I had no trouble following the plot. It’s a big movie!