S TA G E
ACTION JACKSON
Beyond the Schoolhouse Rock frontier rides Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.
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CYNTHIA LEVIN
MACK LETHAL
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Andrew Jackson (Shea Coffman) takes a timeout with his wife, Rachel (Katie Karel). Brecht and Weill took as their template an early 18th-century work called The Beggar’s Opera. In their version, every street pauper needs a pimp. Spiked with the music of 1920s Berlin, the story takes place in early 19thcentury England, around the time of Queen Victoria’s coronation. At the center of this corrupt society is the notorious London criminal
D E BO R A H HIRS CH
Captain MacHeath. He has no morals but lots of ambition, and — as portrayed here by the talented Kansas City actor and singer Seth Golay — no shortage of appeal. In conflict with MacHeath is J.J. Peachum, the beggars’ boss. He readies his charges to set up along the new queen’s parade route and to look down-and-out with bogus sores, limps and disabilities. “If suffering is real,” Peachum says, “no one believes it.” (Veteran Kansas City actor Jim Korinke shows off his musical side in an adept performance.) Peachum’s alcoholic wife (a fine Sarah Young) unwittingly hooks up her daughter, Polly, with MacHeath. Among other things, Mack is known for his many “marriages,” and so he elopes with Polly in a questionable ceremony. (Breanna Pine brings a beautiful voice and a charming vulnerability to a Polly who can’t quite mask her hardness.) Peachum solicits police help but gets mixed results from Chief Jackie “Tiger” Brown (expertly portrayed by the show’s director, Ric Averill), an old army buddy of MacHeath’s. Also central is Jenny, the brothel’s madame (the strong Kitty Steffens) and an old flame of MacHeath’s. The show is big. Averill marshals 18 cast members playing more than 30 characters — beggars, thieves, prostitutes, police, a reverend and “businessmen” — plus the 12-member Free State Liberation Orchestra (conducted by Carlos Espinosa), playing 20 instruments and accompanying 24 songs. It’s also thematically rich and musically rewarding. Its three hours never drag (there are two intermissions) but instead keep us engaged with an underlying — and relevant — social commentary.
E-mail deborah.hirsch@pitch.com
A L S O P L AY I N G : T H E L A DY F R O M T H E S E A
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enrik Ibsen had a thing for trapped women, and in 19th-century Norway, the limits of social station left many women feeling trapped. Ibsen’s access to the female psyche still feels insightful today. His 1889 play, The Lady From the Sea, remains a layered, absorbing work about relationships and yearning, one that zeroes in on an entirely different sort of woman’s right to choose. This UMKC Theatre production, directed by acting professor Theodore Swetz, features graduate-level acting, production and design students, all of whom do good work — from the beautiful sets and lighting to the period costumes and the professional performances. (Some appeared recently in the Shakespeare Festival and the Fringe Festival.) The show began previews last week and opens Wednesday, October 24, for a run through Sunday, October 28, in the Spencer Theatre (4949 Cherry, 816-235-6222, umkctheatre.org).
Courtney Salvage as Ellida
B R I A N PA U L E T T E
hink politics are lie-filled, money-driven and negative now? Go back a couple of centuries and 38 presidents and ask Andrew Jackson — or, anyway, the rock-star version of Old Hickory portrayed in the Unicorn Theatre’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Those wealthy New England Congress fucks would rather tax us and play polo all day than defend the frontier, this Jackson complains in “I’m Not That Guy.” The brisk, sharp Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson doesn’t offer the defi nitive explanation of how its subject becomes that guy — soldier, president, shaper of the young United States. But it makes a vigorous case for the rock musical (something KC has seen a lot of lately), and it won me over from its first number. Directed by Cynthia Levin, this Unicorn Theatre and UMKC Theatre coproduction of the Tony Award nominee is a comic-book, SNL version of history, squeezed through a Twitter feed. Alex Timbers’ book and Michael Friedman’s music and lyrics put a satirical spin on the man and his American era, and the issues under hot debate then — states’ rights, federal power, the rich versus the common citizen, “foreigners” — don’t sound like a past that’s past. In tight, pop-idol jeans, Shea Coffman is the iconoclastic Jackson: slaveholder and rated in the performance, and cast members sometimes ruthless solder, then politician Vi Tran, Matthew Rapport, Sam Wright and and, ultimately, the seventh president. He was Jacob Aaron Cullum sometimes play as well. a candidate — AJ! AJ! AJ! — people “wanted The talented Katie Karel is the longto have a beer with.” And despite the onesuffering Rachel, the love of Jackson’s life. act, 90-minute show’s breakneck pace and They meet when he’s recuperating from a abbreviated length, Coffwound, and their lustful man manages to give this bloodletting is a funny, if obBloody Bloody figure — “who put the ‘man’ vious, metaphor for his life. Andrew Jackson in ‘Manifest Destiny’ ” and Hu morou s a n ac h ro Through November 4 at the “made Jefferson look like nisms pervade the show Unicorn Theatre, 3828 Main, a pussy,” the script says — — an Oval Office telephone, 816-531-7529, feelings, even some depth. video games, groupies and unicorntheatre.org That in-your-face tone hangers-on. But that’s part fits a Jackson who grew up of why this off beat musiThe Threepenny Opera humble to become a hotcal works as well as it does Through October 28 at the tempered and duel-prone — it’s a maverick about a Lawrence Arts Center, 940 man who often ignored maverick. New Hampshire, Lawrence, 785-843-2787, orders and the rule of law. So if you’re tired of curlawrenceartscenter.org But this show isn’t all anrent political discourse, ger and punk. It depicts a there’s something tempocomplicated political figure rarily curative about watchdestined to have a major impact on this couning a commander in chief ride the presidential try’s course and character. It’s irreverent, desk like a skateboard and drop some musical but its bite is leavened by style and humor, f-bombs. thanks in part to Christina Burton’s spirited choreography. (And it’s not all irreverence. I can still hear Chioma Anyanwu’s voice in “Ten Little Indians,” a touching number that points to Jackson’s devastating policy toward Native Americans.) f you prefer your musical satire driven by The show and its capable cast of 12 use an anti-hero, then you know “The Ballad the entire stage, anchored by facades of a log of Mack the Knife.” The song opens German cabin and the White House (rendered askew, dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt distorted as in a dream, by set designer Weill’s most durable collaboration, The ThreeMatthew Mott). A four-piece band, led by penny Opera, the still-vital 1928 work now Cody Wyoming (with music direction by onstage at the Lawrence Arts Center in a wellJeremy Watson), sits upstage and is incorpoexecuted, enjoyable production.
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