Reviews
HOLIDAY SHOW AT THE SWING CLUB
Broad Street Review | The Philadelphia City Paper | The Philadelphia Inquirer
Broad Street Review (Holiday Show)
What can the '40s teach us? Plenty
BY JIM RUTTER
At the opening curtain, Holiday Show At the Swing Club seems like an exercise without a point, other than nostalgia. New York City’s “Swing Club” on New Year’s Eve, 1943 is the setting. A fairly conservative selection of songs from the period includes not only Gershwin and Porter but also the Andrews Sisters, Irving Berlin and even "As Time Goes By"— tunes most people love and no one hates. It’s a lineup too predictably calculated to sell tickets during the Christmas season.
To be sure, the production itself is first-rate. With the help of some exciting swing and flashy tap choreography (by Joe Cicala), and pianist Sam Heifetz’s superb orchestrations (including a delightfully tucked-away Gershwin parody that amplifies the composer’s self-reference in “By Strauss”), director Matt Decker’s production sets the stage for an evening of exciting performances. Ryanne Nicole Studivant charmed on “Don’t Get Around Much Any More,” and Erin Reilly’s smash rendering of "I’ll Be Seeing You" was upstaged only by Rachel Camp’s tap number and her near-seductive transformation of the child’s-play song “A Tisket, A Tasket.” The talented band—especially Josh Anderson’s trumpet solos—by themselves justified the entire evening.
Yet at first I couldn’t help wondering, "So what?” Several current bands and performance acts—from Bryan Setzer to the Brooklyn-based World Inferno— either incorporate or duplicate this theme in an evening’s concert, and they seem far more genuine than a theater group performing a scripted “new work.” From Ted Powell’s half debonair, half sleazy bandleader to the borrowed Henny Youngman jokes, Horizon’s show struck me as a theatrical affectation. Mostly, the production suffered from the lack of a set that would make this show truly appear like a 1940’s nightclub; at the very least, why not put some décor on the walls that conveys the festive New Year’s Eve atmosphere that would be found in a posh ’40s New York night club?
Going off to battle, then and now
Nevertheless, about midway through the show, Horizon’s concept began to take hold and cast its own particular spell. And whether the show’s artistic directors and co-writers (Reilly and Decker) made this choice consciously or not, they presented a bold contrast between a war-consumed America that flourished into a state of virtue, and our own war-mired times that now stagnate in an age of pessimism, rancor and despair.
A mere performance piece by a contemporary band couldn’t have achieved this without the acting, skits and narrative that displayed the hope, optimism and yes, patriotism of those times. At the show’s pivotal moment, the band leader Jimmy Goodshaw (Powell) announces that he’s shipping off to fight in Europe, and the Dec. 31st show will be his last on stage at the Swing Club. While many of us today might pay grudging admiration (if that) to a similarly proud soldier, here the band members stood to salute his bravery, recreating an earnestness little seen amidst the yellow ribbons and conflicting messages today.
Dark times, hopeful songs
Moreover, the joyous sense of life captured perfectly by the acting and this well-researched script recreated an era when Americans winked at divorce and adultery, while at the same time showing the righteous innocence of a young cocktail waitress who could faithfully believe that one kiss on New Year’s Eve could for years sustain a feeing and romance disrupted by the distance and tragedy of war.
The contrast between the Depression and World War II eras and our current war of choice acquires even greater force from the realization that all of these hopeful, joyful old songs were written and recorded into smash hits during some of our country’s darkest hours. How many singers or songwriters today are writing songs aimed at restoring a similar faith in America?
Must we (and every society) always look back to rekindle our spirit? More important, how did the decade of our nation’s greatest optimism slouch into the decade of the post-war playwrights (like Miller and Williams) who preached only disenfranchisement and despair? And why did the intelligentsia and audiences of the time heed the message we still hear today?
Somewhere in the songs of Porter, Gershwin and Berlin lies an inspirational message that united the elements of friendship, optimism, and a faith for the future. On the cusp of the New Year, Theatre Horizon lives up to its name with an earnest and energetic production that just might show the way toward our own era’s redemption.
The Philadelphia City Paper(Holiday Show)
The Last Hurrah: The bleak setting of Holiday Show at the Swing Club works in its favor.
by Mark Cofta
Published: December 18, 2007
THE SEEMINGLY AWKWARD SETTING OF THEATRE HORIZON'S MUSICAL REVUE HOLIDAY SHOW AT THE
SWING CLUB on New Year's Eve 1943 — certainly a bleak time in American history — actually makes good
sense. After all, the season's core values, whatever our faiths and traditions, are togetherness and
hopefulness.
Ted Powell, as crooner Jimmy Goodshaw, leads this "countdown to our best year yet, 1944," and hopefully (though I have my doubts about whether young people know their history well enough), everyone gets the irony. (If not, time to bone up on World War II.)
The context adds a bittersweet tone to the 16 songs and two medleys packed into Holiday Show's dynamic 90
minutes by director Matthew Decker. "Life's in a spin," as Jimmy sings in "Duke's Place," and the lively
arrangements of musical director/pianist Samuel Heifetz and his talented band give war-weary 1943 a jumpin'
send-off.
Erin Reilly leads the young cast as June, Jimmy's partner, performing "Why Don't You Do Right?" and a jaunty
version of the too-often maudlin "I'll Be Seeing You" with professional polish. The cast's other standout,
cute-as-a-button Rachel Camp, plays the budding ingenue role (for which all of this young cast seem qualified): As the waitress-turned-star, she taps merrily through "Tea for Two" and makes the insipid "A Tisket, A Tasket"
surprisingly hot. Don't hold Ryane Nicole Studivant's youth against her, however. She belts out "The Man I Love," and harmonizes beautifully with Reilly and Camp on "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" (with trumpeter Josh Anderson) and leads a fun swing medley.
Powell and Franco Vuono (who sings Heifetz's punchy arrangement of "Night and Day") struggle, though: Lacking
smooth crooner stage presence, they pose like prom dates in their black tuxedoes. In the swing dance finale,
choreographer Joe Cicala and Camp and Reilly's exuberance can't hide their stiffness. Powell's at his best trading one-liners with drummer Mike Reilly, who as Mikey Sticks steps forward to share some vintage groaners.
Decker and company interviewed members of the Kennett Square Senior Center for historical insights, no doubt
finding inspiration for their show's optimism as well as its liberal martini-swilling and cigarette smoking (which,
amazingly in the Centre Theatre's intimate space, never reaches the audience).
Times have certainly changed, but this show's Swing Era music — performed live and loud, the way it oughta be —heats up a cold December evening just fine.
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Holiday Show)
Uncomplicated show drawn from simpler times.
By Wendy Rosenfield
It’s New Year’s Eve, and bandleader Jimmy Goodshaw (Ted Powell) declares that with many of our beloved boys overseas, “1943 has been a tough year for us all.” So begins Holiday Show at the Swing Club, Theater Horizon’s newest production, which keeps the cold outside, baby, and warmth in the room.
Horizon co-artistic directors Matthew Decker and Erin Reilly interviewed residents at Kennett Square’s Senior Center to get a feel for the time, and came away with a deep respect for its unflagging optimism. Though the show lacks plot or dialogue beyond the onstage banter between our host Goodshaw and his jumpin’, jivin’ supporting cast and band, its premise — Goodshaw’s final appearance with the gang before he trades in his tux for fatigues and ships off to join those servicemen — offers enough suppressed emotion to suffuse the performances with a sense of purpose.
With Powell’s velvet croon, bedroom eyes, and good-natured grin, he leads the troupe like a pro, transporting us from the troubles of the day. Reilly’s consummate chanteuse June Cassidy and Ryane Nicole Studilvant’s classy Toni Day combine midtown cool with uptown heat, while Rachel Camp’s ingenue Grace Taylor can both hoof it and belt it like crazy….
The musical revue includes standards (“Stardust”), novelty favorites (“A Tisket a Tasket”) and songbook classics (“Night and Day”), sung with flair by the cast, and backed by a winning five-piece combo featuring wisecracking drummer Mike Reilly. Decker’s direction is affectionate and Joe Cicala’s choreography brings enough beginner swing to get the point across. However, Jessica Herwick’s costumes, while mostly charming, allow a pair of decidedly modern shoes to slip onto the set, and Dan Soule’s set itself is desperately in need of some festive shimmer.
There is also the issue of whether or not the playwrights intended parallels between life during wartime then and now. Though it’s certainly tempting to connect the dots, Reilly’s final comments — that in the new year Goodshaw might find himself amid troops laying down their weapons in peace and returning home — have an anachronistic tone. Such sentiments might be appreciated now, but post-Pearl Harbor and in the face of Nazi aggression, the crowd hoped not just for peace, but also for victory against an indisputable and well-defined enemy. Ah, the good old days.
WORKING
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The many ways that 'work defines us': A musical about labor gets a local touch in Theatre Horizon's
production
By Gene D'Alessandro
The workers of Upper Merion have united. Not for a work stoppage, but for a show.
More precisely, it's a musical theater production about that most universal of activities: labor. For its summer offering, Theatre Horizon of King of Prussia will stage Working - a musical about Americans
and their jobs - at the Upper Merion Area Middle School theater. Previews will begin Wednesday, at 7:30 p.m.;
the show will close July 27.
"Work defines us; it's so much more to us than just a paycheck," said Erin Reilly, co-artistic director at
Theatre Horizon. "The main point of the show is to give voice to the unsung heroes in the community, those
who are not heard - the checkout girl, the cleaning lady, for example." Since its inception four years ago, Theatre Horizon has tried to give voice to its audience base, the Montgomery County community. For December's Holiday Show at the Swing Club, the Upper Merion troupe interviewed seniors who had sung and danced in the 1940s. The interviewees' transcripts were used to authenticate the period musical about the World War II era.
For Working, the troupe's ambitious artistic directors - Matthew Decker and Reilly - have developed a
"reimagined" version of the show – a musical that originally lasted only 25 performances on Broadway in 1978,
but was nominated for six Tony Awards. "It didn't quite jell as an emotional journey for an audience to go on," said Reilly, speaking of the original book score created by Broadway great Stephen Schwartz. Working, though, has remained a fixture in regional and community theaters.
Based on Studs Terkel's 1974 collection of oral histories - Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day
and How They Feel About What They Do - the piece was adapted for the stage by Schwartz in 1978. Terkel documented the lives of more than 100 workers around the country. Schwartz and colleague Nina Faso captured a wide range of jobs and careers - from firefighter to call girl. They also employed poignant, snappy monologues alongside songs by multiple composers. The Upper Merion reimagination features interviews with nearly two dozen Montgomery County workers: teachers, stylists, valets, custodians, masons, and government employees.
Decker, Reilly and theater administrator Mia Rotondo videotaped the interviews and wove them into the
soundscape of the show.
Audiences will see the workers' interviews interspersed with the plot and the musical numbers. "It's important to hear those people whose stories we haven't heard," Reilly said. "It affords us compassion and insight. That is the mission of the play."
Theatre Horizon also has pared the cast to a sextet. That means six actors perform more than 30 roles. "It's a show that's going to relate to our community in 2008," Rotondo said.
ONCE ON THIS ISLAND
The Philadelphia City Paper | The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Once on this Island)
Heaven Sent
Mark Cofta - Published: July 10, 2007
Plucky young Theatre Horizon resists classification. Past summer productions in the shopping-heavy/theater-thin King of Prussia area have ranged from a raucous outdoor Grease to an in-your-face version of The Laramie Project. This year's mainstage production is a professional, polished rendition of the Caribbean romantic fable Once on this Island.
Based on Rosa Guy's novel My Love, My Love, Lyn Ahrens (book & lyrics) and composer Stephen Flaherty's 1990 musical might seem a light, sunny choice, but its 100 minutes actually share an emotionally powerful, universally meaningful Romeo-and-Juliet story about class and race in Haiti.
Ade Laoye plays TiMoune, an orphan "chosen by the gods" to survive a deadly storm. She's raised happily by an elderly couple (Ryane Nicole Studivant and Jerrell Henderson), but grows restless, "waiting for life to begin." It arrives the moment Daniel (Justin Damm), a rich young man from town who drives past TiMoune's peasant village, catches her eye. When he crashes in a storm, she's there to save him  with a little help from the gods of Earth (Chanta Layton), Love (Rachel Camp), Water (Walter Tucker) and, reluctantly, Death (Justin Jain), who won't concede Daniel without something dear in return.
Laoye fills TiMoune with wide-eyed wonder, and her spirited moves and robust voice lead this talented young cast through the challenges of the show's continuous singing and dancing.
Director Matthew Decker makes the comfy new Upper Merion Middle School auditorium feel intimate, with a tropically framed raked thrust stage (by designer Dan Soule). Musical director Peter Hilliard's offstage combo provides constant accompaniment, with percussion assistance from the cast. Kristin Snyder's bright costumes and Andrew Cowles' colorful lighting also enliven the island setting.
What makes Once on this Island soar, however, is its storytelling framework. The ensemble (also including Emmanuel Carrera and Janet McWilliams) performs multiple roles  poor peasants and rich townies, of course, but also trees, frogs, even a car  but all are, first and last, a family of villagers sharing a comforting tale with a young girl (India Mayo) frightened by a storm. Through multiple layers, what might be merely delightful song-and-dance becomes a musical history lesson with a profound, but not preachy, moral. "Our lives," they reveal, "become the stories that we weave."
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Once on this Island)
Haitian Folktales' Rhythms Grace Stage
by Wendy Rosenfeld
About 10 years ago, I saw a production of Lynn Ahrens’ and Stephen Flaherty’s Once on This Island and thought, “With the right cast, this would be a great show.” Theatre Horizon’s production of the musical, directed with obvious affection by Matthew Decker, is that show.
You may know Ahrens as the reason an entire generation can recite the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Her songs on the 1970s and ‘80s Saturday-morning staple Schoolhouse Rock are as catchy, hummable and charming as they are instructive. It should come as no surprise to her fans that this music al work with Flaherty (others include Ragtime and Seussical) is as buoyant as the Caribbean culture that inspired it. Once on This Island is based
on a Haitian folktale about Ti Moune, which translates as a “little orphan girl,” found clinging to a tree after a flood and, as her new parents believe, saved by the gods for some special purpose. Mixed with a helping of Romeo and Juliet, a dash of Madame Butterfly, and a bit of Little Mermaid, the story is a classical stew of romantic tragedy. Yet, its homegrown ingredients sprout from the tainted soil of race and colonialism. Though families will certainly enjoy the tale, very young children might be frightened b the menacing appearance of Pape Ge, God of Death.
An Afro-Caribbean story is incomplete without the rhythms and dance central to the culture, and in this respect Joe Cicala’s choreography and Peter Hilliard’s music al direction succeed. Aside from an unseen instrumental quartet, the forms of percussion are present onstage, particularly during the celebrator y “TiMoune’s Dance.”
Ade Laoye as TiMoune and the rest of the ensemble bring an ebullience to their roles that keeps the audience thoroughly engaged and rooting for her and her peasant family to claim their place beside the wealthy Beauxhomme clan. Their voices, lovely as a chorus, are occasionally less successful in some of the solos, but carry the play’s emotions beautifully, as when Rachel Camp as Erzulie, the Goddess of Love, sings the “The Human Heart.”
Andrew Cowles’ lighting casts unflattering shadows on the actors’ faces when they are downstage, but upstage, Dan Soule’s set, speckled with the colorful detritus of a fishing village, is aglow with the warmth of a Haitian sun. The only things missing are the warm ocean breezes.
THE VIOLET HOUR
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Hour Discontent
by Mark Cofta
THEATRE HORIZON CONTINUES TO GROW IN KING OF PRUSSIA WITH ANOTHER POLISHED, PROFESSIONAL production at Upper Merion High School. Don't let the location fool you — Horizon shapes an intimate, 60-seat theater on the auditorium stage, employing first-rate designers and an accomplished cast to present the area premiere of The Violet Hour.
Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, Three Days Of Rain) challenges us with a play that initially pastiches Oscar Wilde, but later aspires to tragic proportions. The Violet Hour begins in a hopeful 1919, with John Pace Seavering (Erik Ransom) venturing into publishing with demonstrative assistant Gidger (Mike Dees). For contrived reasons, he can only publish one book. He could choose The Violet Hour, written by his best friend, Denis (Jered McLenigan), whose frenetic wit and aristocratic ambitions suggest F. Scott Fitzgerald. If Denis doesn't prove his worth by being published, he will lose rich fiancee Rosamund (Erin Reilly) to an arranged marriage.
The other choice is a memoir by Jesse Brewster (Karen Vicks), an exceptional black singer who's achieved fame in Europe but must conduct her Stateside affair with John in secret. Will he choose friendship or romance?
This rickety premise slips to a deeper, albeit similarly unexplained, level when Gidger discovers a bizarre device (in both sellnses of the word) offstage spewing pages (I imagined a manic photocopier) from future books that, coincidentally, all concern these characters. It's hard to follow — and even harder to swallow.
Director Kathryn C. Nocero tries to help, but the leap from Wildean quips to philosophical quandaries about fate is too difficult — through a flimsy trick that even a science fiction fan like me can't accept — for this production. The play's success rests on young Ransom, a likable actor who struggles to realize the depths of John's terrible dilemma.
The Violet Hour nevertheless entertains, with superbly stylized, yet sincere, performances from Reilly and Vicks
(resplendent in period dresses by Millie Hiibel) and McLenigan's moving portrait of a promising writer whom fame and love will destroy. Dees' Gidger seems modulated for the high school auditorium, not the intimate space framed by Dirk Durossette's elegantly simple office set, but provides an effective spark. This first glimpse of The Violet Hour provides the play's many laughs, but not the nightmarish chills its deeper themes require.