Triangle Review, March 30, 2017 Issue, Part 3

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THE TRIANGLE REVIEW: Edited by Robert W. McDowell	A FREE Weekly Arts Newsletter March 30, 2017 Issue
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR PART 3 (April 4, 2017)

IN TODAY'S ISSUE (Part 3)

PART 3A -- McDOWELL THEATER PREVIEW: Something Rotten! (Durham Performing Arts Center's SunTrust Broadway Series).

IN TODAY'S ISSUE (Part 4)

PART 4A -- McDOWELL THEATER PREVIEW: My Fair Lady (PlayMakers Repertory Company in the Paul Green Theatre at UNC-Chapel Hill).

PART 4B -- PREVIEWS/REVIEWS: TBA.

NOTE: Please note that Triangle Arts and Entertainment (http://triangleartsandentertainment.org/) is Triangle Review's Internet partner. A dynamic regional website that covers art, theater, dance, music, and much, much more, Triangle Arts and Entertainment will reprint Triangle Review previews and reviews -- in their entirety -- in eye-pleasing magazine-style web page layouts, complete with photos and other graphics. -- R.W.M.

PART 3A: TRIANGLE THEATER PREVIEW BY ROBERT W. McDOWELL

Durham Performing Arts Center Preview

The "Alternate Facts" of Something Rotten! Will Have
DPAC Audiences Rolling in the Aisles on April 4-9

Adam Pascal plays a "rock-star" version of William Shakespeare (photo © Joan Marcus)

The "alternative facts" of the Tony Award®-nominated 2015 original musical comedy Something Rotten! will have the audience rolling in the aisles on April 4-9 at the Durham Performing Arts Center. This smashing Broadway musical features a book by best-selling British comedy-sketch writer, novelist, and nonfiction author John O'Farrell and music and lyrics by Baton Rouge, LA-born songwriting brothers Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick -- who all earned 2015 Tony and Drama Desk award nominations for their efforts.

Something Rotten!, which is set in South London in the Year of Our Lord 1595, made its Broadway debut on April 22, 2015 at the St. James Theatre, where it played for 708 performances before closing on Jan. 1, 2017. It earned ten 2015 Tony Award nominations, including nominations for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score Written for the Theatre, and Best Choreography and Best Direction of a Musical (both by Casey Nicholaw). Christian Borle won the 2015 Tony for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for his flamboyant performance as a plot-pilfering Elizabethan "rock-star" version of the Immortal Bard, William Shakespeare, whose meteoric rise to the pinnacle of the 16th century London theatrical scene eclipses the efforts of a fictional pair of struggling playwrights named Nick and Nigel Bottom (played by Rob McClure and Josh Grisetti, respectively).

Messrs. McClure and Grisetti and Adam Pascal, who plays Shakespeare on this show's National Tour, all three are reprising roles that they played in the musical's Broadway production. Their co-stars include Maggie Lakis as Nick Bottom's proto-feminist wife Bea; Blake Hammond as the second-rate soothsayer Thomas Nostradamus (nephew of the famous French seer Nostradamus; Autumn Hulbert as a lovely Puritan lass named Portia, with whom Nigel is smitten; Scott Cote as Portia's father Brother Jeremiah; Joel Newsome as Lord Clapham, who finances the theatrical endeavors of the Brothers Bottom; Jeff Brooks as Shylock, a Jewish moneylender who loves the theater and wants to bankroll Nick and Nigel's next production, but is forbidden to do so by the anti-Semitic laws of Tudor England; and Nick Rashad Burroughs as the Minstrel who narrates the show.

The show's Ensemble includes Lucy Anders, Kyle Nicholas Anderson, Daniel Beeman, assistant dance captain Mandie Black, Pierce Cassedy, Drew Franklin, Juliane Godfrey, Leah Hofmann, Kristie Kerwin, Ralph Meitzler, Patrick John Moran, Con O'Shea-Creal, and Tonya Thompson. Swings include Kate Bailey, dance captain Brandon Bieber, Ian Campayno, and Eric Coles.

Rob McClure (left) and Jeff Brooks star as Nick Bottom and Shylock (photo © Jeremy Daniel)

These days, they are recycling so much in the movies and on television and on stage, says Jeff Brooks, who plays Shylock. He notes, "Something Rotten! is a new story that the Kirkpatrick brothers wrote, and worked on for 15 or 20 years. It's new music and a new story and something not recycled."

When the curtain rises, Brooks says, "Shakespeare is a 'rock star' in Tudor England, sucking up all the energy.... Nick and Nigel Bottom are trying to be successful playwrights, and Nick goes to a soothsayer [named Thomas Nostradamus] who sees the future not quite as well as his famous uncle.... He sees the future in some sort of refracted light.... He sees the future as 'musicals'!"

The Next Big Thing in Renaissance theater, Nostradamus tells Nick Bottom, will be a new-fangled play in which "an actor is saying his lines, and out of nowhere he just starts singing...." That's ridiculous, thinks Nick. But Nick soon changes his mind and cranks out Omelette: The Musical -- which piques Shakespeare's curiosity -- and Shylock (secretly) replaces Lord Clapham as Nick and Nigel Bottom's principal investor.

In Tudor England, says Broadway veteran Jeff Brooks, "The only job that they'd let Jews do is moneylending.... Nick Bottom is [already] in hock to Shylock. Pretty quickly, the audience realizes that Shylock is a very happy 'New York Jew,' who wants to be involved in the theater.

"He's a fun character to play." Brooks adds, "Shylock gets more and more involved with the Bottom brothers as their sources of income dry up." But this is a dangerous liaison, Brooks explains, because "they'll hang the Jew and the person that's dealing with them if they catch them in business together.... This sounds like a very heavy plot; but, in fact, it's very funny."

Produced by Kevin McCollum, The Seelig Group, Ashley De Simone, Morris Berchard, Wendy Federman, Barbara H. Freitag, LAMS Productions, Richard Winkler, Timothy Laczynski, Jam Theatricals, John Yonover, and Robert Greenblatt, Something Rotten! is directed and choreographed on tour, as it was on Broadway, by Casey Nicholaw. The show's creative team also includes associate producer Lucas McMahon, associate director Steve Bebout, associate choreographer Eric Giancola, Fayetteville native music director and conductor Brian P. Kennedy, music coordinator John Miller, technical director , scenic designer Scott Pask, lighting designer Jeff Croiter, costume designer Gregg Barnes, hair designer Josh Marquette, sound designer Peter Hylenski, production stage manager Jeff Norman, stage manager Matt Schreiber, and assistant stage manager Brae Singleton. The show also features orchestrations by Larry Hochman, musical arrangements by Glen Kelly, and vocal arrangements by music supervisor Phil Reno.

Josh Grisetti (left) and Rob McClure star as Nigel and Nick Bottom (photo © Joan Marcus)

Born on April 7, 1950 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Jeff Brooks grew up in Portland, OR. "I was in high school and trying to beef up my grades for college admission," he recalls. He figured that drama classes would be an "Easy A." But it was there that he got bitten by the "theater bug."

After attending Portland State University, Brooks moved to New York City in 1975. He made his Broadway debut on March 30, 1978 as "Contract player # 5" in A History of the American Film, a musical revue with book and lyrics by Christopher Durang. He subsequently covered for Nathan Lane as Nathan Detroit in the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls, and made a mini-career out of playing Cogsworth in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, on and off for 11 years. Overall, he says, he's done seven Broadway shows and several national tours.

Brooks is married, with two sons (one 24 years old and the other a senior in high school). He lives in Montclair, NJ, 12 miles from the Lincoln Tunnel into New York City.

When the opportunity to play Shylock came along, Brooks says, "I was semi-retired, going to my son's baseball games and collecting my Social Security and pensions." But realizing that "We've still got a boy to put through college" convinced Brooks, who's Irish-Catholic, to tackle the role of Shylock. "I'm the oldest member of the cast," he quips.

Jeff Brooks says, "The Broadway production of Something Rotten! was sort of bigger and splashier[; but on tour, we have been able to make it more real.] The characters talk to each other ... and it's a little more focused and more real.... The Ensemble seems closer, too. They have stronger individual personalities onstage in the Ensemble."

Jeff Brooks, who will celebrate his 67th birthday while performing Something Rotten! at the Durham Performing Arts Center, also notes that his good friend Rob McClure, who plays playwright Nick Bottom, is performing on tour opposite his real-life wife, Maggie Lakis, who plays Nick's wife Bea.

SECOND OPINION: March 29th Raleigh, NC BroadwayWorld.com Raleigh BWW TV interview with actor Josh Grisetti , conducted by Jeffrey Kare: http://www.broadwayworld.com/raleigh/article/BWW-TV-Josh-Grisetti-of-SOMETHING-ROTTEN-National-Tour-20170329; March 29th Burlington, NC Times-News preview by Rachel Teseneer for "Teens & Twenties": http://teensandtwenties.com/something-rotten-is-coming-to-dpac-next-week/; March 22nd Durham, NC Herald-Sun preview by Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan: http://www.heraldsun.com/entertainment/article140130608.html (Note: You must subscribe to read this article).

EDITOR'S NOTE: Robert W. McDowell has written articles for The News & Observer, The Raleigh Times, Spectator Magazine, CVNC, and Triangle Arts and Entertainment, all based in Raleigh. He edits and publishes two FREE weekly e-mail newsletters. Triangle Review provides comprehensive, in-depth coverage of local performing-arts events. (Start your FREE subscription by e-mailing [email protected] and typing SUBSCRIBE TR in the Subject: line.) McDowell also maintains a FREE list of movie sneak previews. (To subscribe, e-mail [email protected] and type SUBSCRIBE FFL FREE in the Subject: line.)

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