By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Your theater writer has spent a lot of time with family this week. Not my own, though. Three area troupes are staging dramas centered on families and their discontents.
Black Swamp Players revisit ‘Nora’ over the years
In “Nora: A Doll’s House,” being staged by the Black Swamp Players, there’s plenty of discontent. Spinning off from Henrik Ibsen’s “The Doll’s House,” we are introduced to three versions of our much put upon heroine Nora, who first made her stage appearance in 1879. Nora 3 (Tiffany Scarola) is awaiting the arrival of the new year at Christmas 1918. The Great War has ended, and she is looking forward to peacetime. Nora 2 (Elizabeth Coronado) is a pill-popping wife in 1968. Nora 1 (Samantha Heater) lives in 2018.
Stef Smith’s “Nora: A Doll’s House,” directed by Health Diehl, is on stage at the theater at 115 E. Oak St., BG,
Friday, Sept. 15, and Saturday, Sept. 16, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 17 at 2 p.m. continuing, Sept. 22 and 23 at 8 p.m. and Sept. 24 at 2 p.m. Click for tickets.
These three Noras may be separated by half-centuries, but they share the same problems: a stern unsympathetic husband, who is on the brink of a promotion that should secure the family’s finances, three children who are out of sight and unheard save for one uncredited off-stage squeak, and a secret debt. All got into debt when each of their husbands, all named Thomas and all played Trevor Walsh was incapacitated and unable to work to support the family.
Saving the house and family was the best thing she had done Nora 1 tells her friend Christine 1 (Elizabeth Coronado).
The three actresses who portray Nora also portray the friend-in-need Christine at different periods. Sound confusing. It’s not, except when the swirl of dialogue, often poetic, sometimes didactic, intentionally blurs the chronology.”
Thomas and the two other male characters are consistent throughout. Daniel (Kyle Walsh) is almost a ghost drifting in and out bearing the burden of his secret love for Nora and his diagnosis of terminal cancer.
Nathan (Ryan Walsh) is an embittered bank employee with his own shady past who Thomas intends to fire once he is in his new position. Nathan knows about Nora’s financial misdeed and is using it to blackmail her.
While their stories are parallel through the ages, their fates differ, such that if their lives after the curtain call would have very different trajectories.
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Lakeside Theater stages heartfelt ‘I Remember Mama’
While Ibsen’s original Nora and her family lived in Norway, “I Remember Mama” centers around an extended family of Norwegians living in San Francisco. This sentimental look at the life of the Hansons, living in the beginning of the 20th century, is being brought to the Maumee Indoor Theater’s small stage by the Lakeside Theatre Company. Showtimes are Sept. 14-16, and Sept. 20-22 at 7:30 p.m. with 2:30 p.m. matinees Sunday, Sept. 17, Friday, Sept. 22, and Sunday, Sept. 24. Click for tickets. (All admission proceeds from the Sept. 22 , performance at 7:30 p.m. will be donated to: Mom’s House Toledo https://momshousetoledo.org.)
The troupe frames the performance as being presented by a theatrical society or as described one their leader, “Our merry troupe of women.”
The cast features 10 actresses, most playing two or more characters.
Katrin (Karen Noble), the daughter of the Hanson family with literary ambitions serves as our guide. First, we meet her immediate family, then the aunts, and then the feared Uncle Chris (Mary Aufman), the reluctant patriarch of this sometimes unruly bunch.
The narrative focuses on the everyday trials of the family, which is strapped for cash, relying on the pittance they manage to set aside in the little bank.
And there’s never enough to buy Mama (Maria Kelly) that warm winter coat, she’d like, and certainly needs.
But there are always other expenses, such as the cost of sending the eldest, a son Nels (Melissa Shaffer). He’s an earnest good-hearted son, who aspires to become a doctor. The youngest Dagmar (Mary Boyer) is bursting with curiosity and love for animals.
Boyer, who also directs, takes on the greatest range of roles. Dagmar is a delightful, bright-eyed child, then later in the play Boyer plays Jessie, Uncle Chris’s mistress.
The father (Marge Sudheimer) is a carpenter, who works long and hard for his wages, and when he goes on strike, they have nothing coming in.
Christine (Vicki Scribner) is “the stubborn one,” who butts head with her sister.
Then there are the three aunts – the meddlesome Jenny (Karen Wiggins) and Sigrid (Carol Ann Erford) and the mousey Trina (Aimee Reed) – who hover about. It is Mama that Trina turns to tell that she wants to marry the undertaker Mr. Thorkelson (Scribner). Trina’s fear is that the other two sisters will mock her. He is not a very attractive prospect. Her fears are justified. They then push her to ask Uncle Chris for a dowry as parents provide daughters in the old country. That’s something he refuses to do.
To help make ends meet, the Hansons have taken in a boarder, the flamboyant Mr. Hyde (Aufman) who entertains them in the evening by reading classic literature in a high dramatic style, an inspiration to the writer-to-be Katrin. He’s little help though otherwise given he’s yet to pay them after three months.
All these seemingly mundane details add up to a vivid portrait of the family, and the resourceful, self-sacrificing mother at the center of it.
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Actor Collaborative finds dark comedy n ’14 Funerals’
In “14 Funerals” we only hear about Sienna’s mother second hand, and it seems the best thing she did for her daughter (Aja D. Reynolds) was to take her away from Blissfield, Indiana, and raise her in Chicago.
The play, written by area playwright Eric Pfeffinger and directed by Jennifer Nagy Lake, will be performed in the studio theatre at Owens Community College Center for Fine and Performing Arts on Friday, Sept. 15 and Saturday, Sept. 16 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 17 at 3 p.m. Tickets can be purchased in advance at www.act419.org or at the door beginning one hour before curtain.
Sienna comes from a large family, the Flockwoods, who love to be together and love illegal fireworks. So, on a random Tuesday night, an errant Roman candle causes an explosion that kills them all.
Now Sienna, the last surviving relative who knew none of them, has been summoned to Blissfield to handle the funeral arrangements, including writing 14 eulogies.
She’s informed of and assisted in this by the chirpy Millie (Hali Malecki) the daughter of the funeral director. As Sienna arrives, she catches Millie singing a cheery advertising jingle she’s composed for the funeral parlor. She has her own family issues – her father doesn’t take her seriously.
They settle into an uneasy partnership with Millie providing what details are known about the deceased, and Sienna, who is a professional writer, crafting the perfunctory and sometimes off-topic eulogies.
The Flockwoods were an odd lot, colorful town characters. One is known for little more that wearing a t-shirt with an inappropriate saying on it. Another woman was known for “polishing mud” into keepsakes that resembled “shiny shot puts.” There was, also, a teacher, much beloved by others.
And there was a cousin with whom Millie has a dark cast.
Millie and Sienna also bicker over the merits of small-town Blissfield as opposed to Chicago, where Sienna has a tenuous existence. She hopes that maybe in the end there’s possibly some inheritance. That’s what keeps her there, she says. But she also unearths connections to the deceased she had long buried.
Seeing these three plays back-to-back-to-back, gave me a little more appreciation for another kind of family, the area theatrical family. I’ve seen many, if not most, of these actors in other productions, and seeing them in new productions is like encountering a friend and learning something new about them. And of course, it’s always good to welcome new arrivals.
