Five actresses set fire to Midland's "The Dixie Swim Club"

Debbie Lake, left, and Denyse Clayton

review and photographs by janet i. martineau

High school days. Career changes. Medical issues. Marriages… multiple ones. Children. Grandchildren. Aging. Breast lifts and implants. Martinis … multiple ones. Petty squabbles. Not so petty squabbles. Hurricanes. Health food. Homemade biscuits…

In two wonderful hours, the five actresses in the Midland Center for the Arts production of "The Dixie Swim Club" will tug at you in every which way in a PG-13 script that delivers the goods on nostalgia, friendship, and life's twists and turns. The show opens tonight (May 9).

The premise of the script is five southern high school friends who were on a swim team together have, each year sense graduation, gathered for an August weekend at a beach cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

In its four scenes we spend time with them at ages 44, 49, 54 and 77.

They are:

-- Sheree, played by Debbie Lake of Saginaw – a health food fanatic and over organizer.

-- Dinah, played by Susie Polito of Midland  – a high-powered lawyer who never saw the need to be a mother.

-- Lexi, played by Denyse Clayton of Midland – a multi-married woman so so in love, with herself.

From left, Polito, Winans-Bagnall, Lake and Clayton

-- Jeri, played by Trina Winans-Bagnall of Midland – a nun without much sense of fashion.

--  Vernadette, played by Jeanne Gilbert of Bay City –  best described as a hypochondriac with out-of-control children.

If you know anything about community theater in Midland, or for that matter mid-Michigan, these are five of the most talented actresses we have. And from the get-go they do not disappoint in this ensemble piece extraordinaire.

Every voice inflection, every body movement, every word out of their mouth is pure character. No one delivers better than the others. Their characters ARE long-time friends and everything that entails. 

And in the final scene, which we will not discuss in this review nor which are we showing in the pictures published with this review (but will publist at the end of the run), they elevate their performances into the stratosphere. 

But, then, everything else about this show is perfect as well.

The script by Jesse Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten is insightful, funny, poignant, filled with solid one-liners, serves up great arguments, is “clean.” 

What we enjoyed the most is whenever one or more of the women is out of sight, she is fair gossip game for the rest gathered on the front porch, which is where all the action takes place. Loving and concerned gossip, of course. Well, sometimes.

Director Adam Gardner's impact is all over the production. Nice tableaus and movement. Swift pacing. Detail, detail, detail. An evenhanded direction of five powerful actresses.

And the set and costuming are a riot of color. Greenish cabin with the orange glow of the sky in the background. Four costuming changes for each woman and in one case more. A wonderfully angled set with several levels.

Even the between-scenes action is fun as the set decorations are changed. A screen is lowered and projected are old-time slides of women's swim teams as well as clever  pictures taken of the cast  indicating the progression of their character's lives.

In watching the show, this reviewer felt the cast members were so into their characters and the whole atmosphere so real that more than once she just so badly wanted to join in on the conversation.

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In a word, Pit & Balcony's "Spring Awakening" is stupendous

Seated center is lead Ben Hendricks and at right with hand up is Nolan Good

review and photographs by janet i. Martineau

Where, oh, where to start with a review of Pit and Balcony Community Theater's production of the musical  "Spring Awakening," opening tonight (May 9).

There are so many avenues to pursue with it. So many.

So we will take the easy way and quote from director Tommy Wedge, who writes in his program notes, "This is not your average musical. It is so much more."

Indeed it is, and we applaud Pit for having the courage to stage this controversial show because the end result is stupendous, just stupendous.

The minimal yet stylistic set…the inventive and eye-pleasing choreography (also by Wedge)…the energetic acting and singing…the costuming and lighting… all just soar and are impossible to describe in words. This truly is one of the most visual shows Pit has staged.

And then there is its topic. In "Spring Awakening," which won eight Tony awards including best musical, 1891 meets 2007. 

Maggie Dehart, left, and Meagan Eager

Its script was written in 1891 by a German and deals with sexual oppression. Erotic fantasies, date rape, child abuse, homosexuality, suicide, abortion,  masturbation .... all there.

No wonder, back then, the play was banned and censored in Germany, New York, England. It is hard to believe it was written in another century because it is still edgy today.

Fast-forward to 2007 when to the play's words was layered on an un-oppressed contemporary rock/alternative music score with song titles like "My Junk," "The Bitch of Living"  and "Totally Fucked." More edginess.

Added to that we see and are asked to buy into a cast dressed in 1890s costuming, dealing with life as it was lived back then with their words, suddenly from  suit jackets pulling out microphones and singing the daylights out of a contemporary world song.

Nothing about this show should work. But it all does. And please don't be frightened by it.

Sitting there, taking it all in, and despite being nearly 70 years old, we flashed back continually to our own youth and sexual insecurities and repressive 1950s society. 

Suddenly we got to thinking, oh we weren't so different after all. We also got to thinking, oh if kids today see this show maybe they won't feel so different either. We got to thinking, oh this is truly what good art does.

Besides, it may call itself a rock musical but the music also is lush and memorable. And beautifully played by the seven-member orchestra.

Ben Hendricks and Meagan Eager are outstanding as the two leads, a young couple drawn to each other in a tragic way. No matter what they sing they nail it.

Nolan Good as Ben's distraught friend raises hair on the neck when he does an intense  meltdown song sequence.

Danessa Hellus and Carly Peil in the song "The Dark I Know Well," about family incest, punch us in the gut.

Ensemble work also propels this production, in particular in the songs "Totally Fucked," "Those You've Known"  and "The Song of Purple Summer."

And all of them, the entire cast, thanks to Wedge's strong directing hand, deliver acting performances that are just as strong as their singing skills.

Whatta show.

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CNN's Candy Crowley takes Horizons Town Talk audience on a tour of U.S. political scene

CNN political correspondent Candy Crowley signs autographs after her Horizons Town Talk

Making points during her speech

Story and photos by Janet I. Martineau 

When, several times, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney  appeared to charge towards her, presidential debate moderator Candy Crowley didn't think anything of it back there in October 2012.

"I raised two sons," CNN senior political correspondent Crowley told her Horizons Town Talk audience on Tuesday. 

"I  thought at the time, 'I get this, they are prowling around in that establishing territory type thing men do.' I didn't think anything of it. I just thought they were roaming.

"It was way cool; the most fun I've ever had. I never felt the heat that somehow came across on TV."

What she did feel was pressure, she said.

"I had spent the whole day at a town hall gathering  getting questions to ask the two candidates, and I was aware during the debate of how much time we didn't have and how many people's questions were not getting asked.

"I had a producer talking in my ear piece always. We were aware of the fact that Obama talked slower in answering a question than Romney, and that we had to balance their time being heard vs. answering the questions."

And, of course, during the event she challenged Romney on one of his answers, an event that led to much criticism...and support.

"It was what it was," she said. "After the event I'd walk on a plane and people would applaud. I would walk in a coffee house and people would come up to me and challenge what I did. 

"We knew before the debate half the country would hate what we did and the other half would like it; we just didn't know which."



Crowley, 65, has been with CNN  since 1987. Currently she hosts its weekly Sunday show "State of the Union." Earlier  she worked for the Associated Press and NBC and has, at this point, covered nine presidential campaigns as well as many other political races.

Before discussing her career on the Washington DC scene, however, Crowley paid homage to Michigan, "which is home to me, where my soul belongs."

She was born in Kalamazoo, her grandfather worked in a South Haven canning factory, she recalled childhood summers up north, using flashlights to find night crawlers. The family still has property in the Sleeping Bear Bay Area, where she vacations ...  singing Saginaw songs as she passes on her way driving there.

In her hour-long talk, Crowley admitted that yes the U.S. Congress is frustrating. But she also laid the blame on those of us seated before her, the voters of United States.

We like to congregate with people like us, she said, hence redistricting every six years to "assure" one party or the other seats in the Congress. In the last election, she said,  245 of the House members were elected by 60% or more of the vote. "So they feel no need to compromise."

Voters in the midterm Congressional elections use their anger at whomever is president at the time, she said, sweeping his party out "in droves." And in particular lately sweeping out anybody who is a moderate "whose survival rested in reaching across the aisle. The center in Congress has shrunk and almost disappeared.

"It's who we vote for that has helped lead to this dysfunction," the award-winning journalist told her audience.

And adding to the problem, she said, is the pure economics of living in Washington DC. House members face reelection every two years, she said. At one time they moved their families to Washington DC and stayed there most weekends. But with the rising cost of living in that town, most of them leave their families back home and go back there every  weekend and increasingly for extended recesses.

"This results is them not knowing each other except when they are on the floor and yelling at each other; instead of attending their children's baseball games  together.  If they stayed in DC they would connect with each other and not demonize each other."

She recalled the bonding and bill-passing legacy of senators Dick Lugar, an Indiana Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, whose families knew each other because they lived in DC. Their children even bought back to back homes in Virginia, "so it became a bipartisan playground. That just doesn't happen anymore. They learned to trust each other by being with each other, and if you can't trust each other then compromise won't get done."

These days it is often a nightmare to book her Sunday show, she said,  "because invited guests tell me, 'I won't sit there with so and so.' That's not good. It's a failure to understand. That kind of thinking does not work in the world of business."

In frustration, she says, more and more centrist congressional members are not running for office again, including four from Michigan (Sen. Carl Levin, Reps. Dave Camp, Mike Rogers and John Dingell). "With those four who are retiring, Michigan will lose 139 years of experience."

She also challenged the rise of the 24  hour news cycle which speeds everything up,  with news organizations more interested in getting the short, snappy sound bite first at the expense of researched detail.

"It leads to snap judgments. It sets up sides immediately. We don't think before we speak." 

Instead, she is a proponent of longer interviews, so viewers can get to know the personalities rather than the flat characters of the people she talks to. "That way people learn to disagree yes but at least respect the place where this person is coming from when they have found out how they came to that place."

Crowley advised her listeners to never watch just one network or read just one newspaper, "ones that reflect your own opinions. Get beyond your comfort levels." She is saddened that the most strident and one-sided networks get the highest ratings.

Not wanting to leave her audience in a downer mood, she said after 30 years of covering Washington DC, "the parts are better than the whole. Most of your congressmen want to do what is right, they try to do a good job, they love their country.

"The people you send to Congress by and large are good people."

Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra soars amid "The Planets"

Review by Janet I. Martineau

It's not every day a laptop computer is held aloft by a percussion section musician taking a bow at a symphony concert.

But, then, it's not every day a symphony orchestra goes techno.

Such was the case at the delightful Saturday night Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra concert, subtitled "The Final Frontier."

As the  title might suggest all the selections on the evening's program dealt with exploration and/or outerspace.

The techno piece, titled "Mothership" and by composer/DJ Mason Bates, imagines the orchestra as a mothership that is docked by several visiting soloists.

An apt description, that, because it was commissioned for one of the neatest ventures in music history -- theYouTube Symphony Orchestra. Musicians from all over the world auditioned via YouTube, a panel picked finalists, YouTube fans voted from those finalists, and then the winners all assembled to perform "Mothership," and other pieces, in Sydney, Australia. Technology meets classical music.

Something like 101 musicians from 30 countries. And, of course, it was broadcast live over YouTube. It was the most-watched live music concert on the Internet and the most frequently viewed concert in the history of the video-sharing website.

So that Saginaw was privileged to hear this composition literally live was a treat in and of itself. But that it was so utterly charming and fun, with its electronic beeps, bleeps, bloops, blurps and burps, was even more delightful. And it did indeed sound otherworldly.

But it was not the superstar of the evening.

As a long time concertgoer I think I have heard Holst's "The Planets"  performed at least four times. But never ever like I heard it Saturday night.

I have no idea how maesto Brett Mitchell did it, but he made our orchestra sound like twice as many players were sitting up there on the stage, delivered every nuance you could possibly find in the piece, and generally raised  hair on the back the neck.  The colors in this performance were as brilliant as the sun.

The seven-movement please visits the seven companion planets in our solar system,  from a thundering and bombastic Mars to a quiet and gentle Neptune with its contingent of eerie female wordless  voices floating in from offstage.

In the subtitles of each piece Holst visits war, peace, a winged messenger, jollity, old age, magic, and the mystic. Indeed all that is there and more. Lots of little solo interludes from various musicians. All out attack when they combine. Always has been a  marvelous piece of music, and on Saturday night even more so. It is still reverberating in my mind.


The evening also included Jabert's visit to "The infinate Spaces" and a couple of John Williams pieces, including… obviously…the theme from "Star Wars" as an encore.

"Les Miserables" hits home run at Midland Center for Arts

Review by Janet I. Martineau

Alrighty Midland Center for the Arts... bravo, bravo, bravo on your barricade for the musical "Les Miserables," which opened Friday night. It was as clever as heck, and we just didn't see it coming.

Mum is the word though. Not going to say anymore about it because seeing it in action is part of the fun – maybe all of the fun. Very impressive.

Bravo, too, on the staging of Javert's death plunge. Hope the actor in that role is OK. It looked a little too real. The massive set was appealing to the eye with its various levels, especially the trap doors leading underground.  And the gunfire was rip-snorting loud and flash-filled.

But enough about the detail-rich look of this show because director Carol Rumba has hit a home run when it comes to the cast ... all 58 of them, ranging in age from 4 to 72. Imagine overseeing and corralling something of that breadth, the majority of them amateurs.

Things did get off to a slightly sluggish beginning Friday night, but it just kept building and building like a steam engine heading down the track until you realized somewhere along the way you were witnessing one of best musicals ever at the Midland Center for the Arts.

There is no way a review can do justice to all 58 people in the cast. Suffice it to say that yes there standouts, and I will discuss them, but this is an ensemble piece bar none with a chorus to die for.

From start to finish Rumba  created various attractive tableaus with her cast members, and they stayed in character solidly in them; sometimes in the shadows when the action was taking place and was lit on another part of the stage. And the chorus dynamics just rocked the place.

Ten members in particular caught our attention: Dominic Zoeller as the hero Jean Valjean, True Rogers the thug Javert, John Saint Jones as the bishop, Laura Brigham as the dying Fantine, Madeline Day as the ignored Eponine, Celeste Lang as the lovely   Cosette, Tony Serra as the student leader Enjolras, Matt Fox as the love struck Marius, Jamie Miller as the tiny revolutionary warrior Gavroche, and Ruth Pasek as Little Cosette.

Zoeller nicely captured the aging process, starting as a young man and ending as a feeble old man. Day knows how to totally sell a song emotionally and dramatically. And all 10 of them delivered goosebumpy singing and heart-tugging acting.

Behind the scenes, kudos to scenic designers Evan Lewis and Kristen O'Connor for the whole look of the show, not just the barricade; costume coordinator Laurelei Horton for the wealth of costuming, dressy and slummy; lighting designer Matt Kidwell, for those moody shadows, and Jim Hohmeyer and his glorious orchestra.

Some of the set changes were a little clumsy and noisy, but that was but a small glitch in the three-hour show that delivered in abundance.

Pit and Balcony's "A Raisin in the Sun" a play not to miss on every level

From left, Elise Williams, Marcia Reeves and Sandra Crosby Robinson

review and photographs by janet i. martineau

It is difficult to know where to begin in reviewing Pit and Balcony Community Theatre's production of Lorraine Hansberry's ground-breaking "A Raisin in the Sun."

And a minefield too since comments can be misconstrued, because it is the story of a poor 1950s BLACK family living in Chicago, written by a BLACK woman, and this reviewer is WHITE.

Difficult where to begin because everything about it is so excellent ....its deeply human storyline, its direction, its cast, its attention to detail in the set, costumes and props, its Americanness. So where to start, all those things being equal.

And a minefield....well, guess I will plunge in there first. This is a play that, to white folk who have never seen it, might open some eyes and touch some hearts about the African-American experience while at the same time screaming out that we really are all kindred spirits in life.

I attended the final dress rehearsal with a dozen or so people from the First Ward Community Center, which serves our black population. They were of all ages. And as the play progressed, it was touching to realize this story was clicking with them on all cylinders. They were glued to it. Their responses to certain moments were telling.

Yet, were not my responses the same, as a person who was a youngster in the period it depicts. Was I too not glued to it. Was it not clicking on all cylinders with me, my family having struggled with some of the same issues.

Raheem Saltmarshall and Bryson Willis

Hansberry wrote a gem back there in 1959, one which remains as relevant as ever; maybe even more so in our troubled time of job losses, low paying jobs and increasing poverty. 

And a gem which also so eloquently captures American black history at a pivotal period. (We are being as vague as possible about the storyline because watching it unfold is part of its impact.)

Enter in Linda Bush Rebney's direction of it for Pit....of casting a cast with limited or no acting credits and hitting a home run. Perhaps it stems from her 40 productions as a high school theater and language arts teacher; of talking raw talent and delivering with it.

Whatever it is, go see this play. GO SEE THIS PLAY!

Its 11-member cast is powered by four outstanding performances -- Raheem Saltmarshall and Marcia Reeves as a married couple with Elise Williams as the husband's sister and Sandra Crosby Robinson as his mother. All of them living in the same dwelling in Chicago's south side. With a $10,000 inheritance check looming as a life changer.

These four grab viewers by the throat from their opening scenes and then just keep tightening the squeeze....he angry and tense and unhappy with his plight in life, his wife stoic and gentle and pregnant again, his sister a rebel and headed to college to be a doctor and experimenting with what it means to be of African heritage, and Mom strict and knowing and tired.

Their faces and movements accent their spoken words, consistently (especially Reeves). Their quiet moments are more telling than their explosions. They ARE their characters, and we connect to every one of them because of it.

And the rest of the cast provides strong support: Ahmad Foster and DnZell Teague as two of the sister's suitors, Bryson Willis as the couple's 11-year-old son, Demichael Ezell as the father's business partner, and Michael Curtis as the white neighborhood spokesman sent to try and convince this family not to move in (an occurrence taken from Hansberry's family history).

Which leaves the attention to detail from Suzie Reid's scenic design and set dressing to the props, costume and hair crews. The place reeks of 1950s and a substandard dwelling. 

The cockroach exterminator, kitchen items, sprinkling clothes with a water bottle before ironing them, saddle shoes, hair curlers, radios and record players, cracks in the walls, Afros, pictures taken down from the walls leaving a reminder they were there.


Icing on the cake to a dynamite script and direction of it.


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Midland's "Wait Until Dark" struggles with suspense element

review by janet i. Martineau

Creak...creak...creak.

That's the sound emanating from the Midland Center for the Arts stage floor during performances of the play "Wait Until Dark."

It's part of the action in this suspense drama that finds a blind woman outwitting a trio of bad guys in the darkness of her apartment.

Sadly, that word also applies to the script as well and this production of it.

Dating back to the 1960s, "Wait Until Dark" is today horribly dated with its requirement and suspenseful use of rotary phones, telephone booths and photo darkrooms. It also doesn't help that because of the Audrey Hepburn movie version and the fact that every community theater known to mankind stages it, there is no suspense left unless somehow the director and cast creates a sense of yes, we know what happens next. but our stomachs are churning anyway.

Director Peter Brooks does not do that, unfortunately. Nor does the male trio in his cast. For most of the night the play moves slower than molasses during a polar vortex. Nearly two hours of plodding results in a mere five minutes or so of ACTION.

And, to be honest, the more we see the show  the more holes in its script surface.

That said, there is something to cheer about in this Center Stage Theatre production that concludes its two-weekend run Friday through Sunday (Jan. 24-26) -- the performance of Trena Winans-Bagnall as the blind woman trying to figure out who is good and who is bad and what she needs to do to survive.

Winans-Bagnall has become one of Midland's most durable and dependable actors over the years, be it musical theater or dramatic. And she is terrific in this role. Kept a hawk eye on her, and not once did she give a hint she could see what was before her. She takes one heck of a hard fall at one point, and carefully navigates in the apartment by feeling her way with her hands. Nice performance, with tension provided that transfers to the audience.

Nice job too by Taylor Winslow as the young neighbor who helps the blind woman with everyday chores...and eventually outwitting the bad guys. One minute she is a bratty teen we want to smack and the next an excited kid who really doesn't comprehend the dangers ensuing.

Which leaves us to the guys....Kevin Kendrick as the No. 1 bad guy and Zachary Prout and Chris Krause as his assistants. They are in a nutshell not sinister enough. They are not directed into a performance that chills, that feels dangerous, that makes us queasy even though we know what happens, that permeates the theater.

Fine line because we don't want them over the top either with twirling mustaches. But we need more. Prout also displays a jittery/tremor special effect throughout that we surmise may have meant to display inner rage and danger but comes across more as nervous.

Might have helped too if the play was directed at a faster pace.

And so it goes.