Tag Archives: Jacob Lovick

Another America

Another America

★★★

Park Theatre

Another America

Another America

Park Theatre

Reviewed – 7th April 2022

★★★

 

“For all its initial bounce, though, this show is slow to catch fire”

 

Another America by Bill Rosenfield, manages to combine two American obsessions — sport, and road trips. Inspired by Dan Austin’s film, True Fans, Rosenfield’s stage version presents us with three characters, all male, all about to take what they hope will be a life changing trip across America. The plan is to cycle from Los Angeles, on the west coast where they live, to Springfield, Massachusetts, on the east coast, to visit the Basketball Hall of Fame. Dan, the instigator of this madcap idea, is a basketball fanatic. He somehow talks his reluctant brother Jared, and his best friend Clint, into coming with him. Even the team’s failure to raise money to sponsor their trip does not derail Dan’s enthusiasm. He is sure they will manage somehow. And manage they do, though their efforts are hardly inspiring. They are constantly being rescued by the kindness of strangers on basketball courts — and in Subway sandwich shops. Which is not an uncommon American experience, if truth be told.

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”365″ gal_title=”Another America”]

Another America begins on an encouraging note. Donning the naïve enthusiasm of a kind that endears all Americans to each other — and to the world for that matter — actors Jacob Lovick (Clint), Rosanna Suppa (Jared) and Marco Young (Dan) are on stage to welcome the audience from the moment they enter the studio space at the Park Theatre. This informal presentation serves the production well as the actors shift between a variety of roles, and locations. Director Joseph Winters keeps the action bouncing along on a makeshift set, much like the basketball that accompanies our fans on their road trip. Occasionally, the audience gets directly involved. The backstage crew, even when invited, are shrewd enough to decline the offer to participate.

For all its initial bounce, though, this show is slow to catch fire. Another America is a better subject for film than the theatre, for the simple reason that, unless you’ve actually been to middle America, it’s a difficult place to imagine. It’s far easier to film this vast nothingness — if your audience is ready to settle in for long periods of riding across land so flat that you can see the curvature of the earth. Looking at you, North and South Dakota. Indiana, Missouri and Pennsylvania may not be quite as prostrate, but they’re still states in “flyover country” which makes their geographical expanse hugely challenging to convey on stage. The energetic charm of the actors is not enough to paint the pictures of emptiness in words that film, unfairly, can.

For the most part, however, Across America hangs on a series of depressing encounters with people left behind and disenfranchised by an illusory American Dream. Playwright Rosenfield accurately captures the bewildered resentment of these folks. But the first half of the Another America is spent wondering why, despite some of the spectacular scenery that the cyclists travel through, most of the action is located on basketball courts, near double wide trailers, farms on the brink of foreclosure, and Subway sandwich shops in the middle of nowhere. Ironically, a detour to Las Vegas results, not in a lost 24 hours of excess, which is kind of experience we have been led to expect from any encounter in the Nevada desert, but with the team getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Fair enough. But this hardly makes for good drama.

Right from the start, we know there is going to be a certain amount of rite of passage material in this picaresque tale. A good example is Dan’s reckless tossing of their trip mascot, a basketball, into the Mississippi River, in a moment of existential despair. He then jumps in after it. And his brother jumps in to rescue him, and the ball. Why rescue the ball? It’s not just that it’s a basketball. It is also covered with well meaning advice from all the people who have bailed them out, at one point or another during their trip. It turns out that meeting these people is more important than even reaching the Basketball Hall of Fame, which can only offer them a free soda as acknowledgement of their epic journey. Not surprisingly, the people they meet, with little to offer, and nothing left to lose, turn out to be more generous than corporate sponsors and money making tourist attractions. It’s a sobering conclusion to what might, under different circumstances, and in a different time, be a more uplifting tale.

Another America provides a glimpse into American life that is sadly recognizable, and rather downbeat. For audiences looking for something other than gritty dramas about big city life, this may appeal. But this story is as much a myth buster about road trips and sports fanatics, as it is an inspiring tale about go-getting heroes, despite the delightful energy of its young cast.

 

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by  Piers Foley

 


Another America

Park Theatre until 30th April

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
When Darkness Falls | ★★★ | August 2021
Flushed | ★★★★ | October 2021
Abigail’s Party | ★★★★ | November 2021
Little Women | ★★★★ | November 2021
Cratchit | ★★★ | December 2021
Julie Madly Deeply | ★★★★ | December 2021

 

Click here to see our most recent reviews

 

Butterfly Powder: A Very Modern Play
★★★★★

Rosemary Branch Theatre

Butterfly Powder: A Very Modern Play

Butterfly Powder: A Very Modern Play

Rosemary Branch Theatre

Reviewed – 10th April 2019

★★★★

 

“a triumph of silliness”

 

Subtitled ‘A Very Modern Play’, Jack Robertson’s farcical whodunnit is a drawing room comedy with stock characters and familiar devices. A snobbish married couple, a maid with an accent, a posh neighbour with a multi-barrelled name, a murder, a detective, a plot where dramatic chords and power cuts announce repetitive slayings…in theory this is a tired idea for a sketch turned into two hours of torture. In practice, it is a triumph of silliness, starting with casting of the central characters.

Alice Marshall is magnificent as the maliciously haughty Mrs Fox and Jack J Fairley plays the subservient husband with fawning finesse. Together they bicker unhurriedly through surreal arguments such as whether goldfish have teeth and whether ‘letter box’ is an apt description for a rectangular gap in a door. As Rhoda, Grace Hussey-Burd is bright and bird-like as she wrangles feather duster and endless trays of tea. But just as the cliché of the Foxes is elevated by good jokes and timing, the character of Rhoda is elevated by her parodic version of ‘foreigner’ English, with modified words and chaotic grammar delivered deftly as if from a food-blender, effortless and on the edge of recognisability. Hannah Fretwell has limited possibilities as Mrs Pleasingdale-Boshington-Worrell but brought the best out of a neurotic widow who exists only to suffer Mrs Fox’s put downs and Mr Fox’s proper nouns. Eventually, a semblance of plot arrives with Billy Coward (Ken Thomson), a young man purporting to be a reporter, believing Mr Fox to be his father and falling for the maid. These tender storylines are casually swept aside as a murder is announced. The spotlight shifts to Detective Spectrum, who tries to persuade each character in turn that he or she is the killer, only to be wracked by doubts when they either reply in the negative or are themselves dispatched. Ben Lydon’s confidently comic performance as Spectrum is a microcosm of the show in that it is both delightful and inconsequential.

In the main, Butterfly Powder is an unoriginal idea executed supremely well. Director Jacob Lovick has a well-chosen, talented ensemble working smoothly, supported by stylistically spot-on design and sound from Jason Salsbury and Patrick Neil Doyle. However, one scene suggests greater things to come from Jack Robertson, ‘a writer you’ve never heard of’, according to the blurb. In the scene, Clampton, a morbid cameo brilliantly played by Chazz Redhead, has been summoned to the upcoming murder scene, and unloads his misgivings to a silent, soup-eating soul, who turns out to be played by the author himself. Staged in a darkened, purgatorial ante-room with the sound of a lapping shoreline in background it’s a poignant, funny, Stoppard-like theatrical idea, that would be good to see more of.

 

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

 

Rosemary Branch Theatre

Butterfly Powder: A Very Modern Play

Rosemary Branch Theatre until 13th April

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Graceful | ★★★ | August 2018

 

Click here to see more of our latest reviews on thespyinthestalls.com