A day or so after dropping in on The Boys Next Door I received a call from Brent Davis, the executive director for Germantown Community Theater, which is never a bad thing. GCT has a longstanding reputation for cleaning up potty-mouthed plays and he wanted to know if I was surprised to hear a few F-bombs dropped at the Sunday matinee. I wasn't, especially—- and being entirely in agreement with Penn and Teller on the subject of profanity—- I wasn't really interested in talking about the things we do to appease the pinch-faced philistines who've been known to hold our theaters hostage with their purse strings.

Germantown is full of grownups too. And sometimes even the philistines in the crowd like to be treated like adults. But now I'm wandering far off course.

The Boys Next Door isn't a very good play. Or, maybe it's better to say that the show's situationally-linked vignettes are, in almost every case, more satisfying than the whole pizza pie. It is, however, a great vehicle for actors and GCT's production boasts some noteworthy performances by John Richard Reed, Marc Gill, Jeff White, Jason Gerhard, Joseph Johnson, Marler Stone, Emily Peckham, Tamara Wright, and James Dale Green.

The show revolves around Jack who's either a burned out social worker or a directionless slacker who can't stick with a job for more then eight months. He watches over a group home where several intellectually challenged men reside. The show walks a fine line between education and exploitation, with lots of uncomfortable laughter and some nicely managed but still too-obvious tugs at the heartstrings along the way.

I spent two very rewarding years working to create original plays for a group of young adults with a spectacular inventory of special needs. We worked together, ate pizza together, played games, sang and everybody danced, even if they were in a wheelchair. And they all shared their lives with me, telling stories about everything from their day to day struggles with para-transit to romantic fantasies inspired by Disney cartoons to awkwardly candid, and hilariously self-aware accounts of stolen moments and sexual misadventure. There was a lot of comedy and a lot of tragedy and although a lot of these wonderful people would require help for the rest of their lives, there was a lot of personal growth and against-the-odds victories seemed to happen every day. Based on that experience I can say with some authority that Tom Griffin's characters are very real. But they are also incomplete. The exploitation and traumas he hints at are ultimately as superficial as Jack's great epiphany: "I change, but they never do." Or something like that.

The Boys Next Door closes Sunday and fans who value good acting over good writing (cussing not withstanding) may want to give it a spin.

Tamara Wright and Jason Gerhard make a lovely couple and their dances are more inspiring than a vintage clip of Fred and Ginger.

Marler Stone, who pulled double duty as an actor and director, has done better work on both sides of the footlights. His thoughtful use of original music gives the production a cinematic feel and flow. It helps to give the play's weak narrative a little muscle.

For more information: This.

• Cheapskates wouldn't even shell out the cash for a whole mask.

Hetherington: " As long as I have been here I have never known a production of our to sell out the entire run a few weeks before it opened. We had an enormous line which snakes down the hall and the phones rang constantly. They still are, but all the seats are now sold. Everyone is working at full speed ahead to get this production ready for the Centennial Celebration and I am pleased and exhausted to say that it is really kicking my butt."

Readers know I'm no great fan of this show. In fact, this grumptacular review is the first thing I ever wrote for The Memphis Flyer. But this is fantastic news for the U of M.

Now, let the scalping commence!

• Joe Montelione works with the dancers of New Ballet Ensemble

Has any art work ever seemed to contradict its creator as much as Igor Stavinsky's bracing Histoire du Soldat, which is getting a rare production this week courtesy of New Ballet Ensemble and the CODA program at Rhodes College?

Stravinsky opinion: music expresses only itself. "I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, not a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, [or] a phenomenon of nature," he said. Obviously the game-changing composer didn't mean that music couldn't be expressive in any way, only that it is "supra-personal, and super-real, and as such beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions. He rejected the "ad absurdum" notion that passages of music might have specific transcendant meanings or that "exact sets of correlatives" exist between a composer's feelings and the music he creates.

In Histoire du Soldat a blue-collar Faust redux that unites dance, musical composition, and a spoken narrative, Stravinsky's atmospheric score sets the pace and mood for the story of a soldier who trades his violin to the Devil in exchange for an enchanted book— an infernal Napoleon Hill paperback if you will— that contains all the glittering secrets of wealth accumulation. Music becomes an environment. Time signatures change like weather. Marching rhythm's struggle against melodic bursts that explode in the air. The conductor's baton becomes a machete hacking its way through humid jungles of sound.

• The Devil takes a run

In his program notes conductor Joe Montelione writes:

[Histoire du Soldat] can be enjoyed and re-enjoyed on many levels — for its tunes, its bright instrumental color, its cunning formal structures, and its curiously moving drama. They all work together. The piece gets under its listener’s skin. On the simplest level, the fiddle represents the Soldier’s soul and the percussion the machinations of the Devil. In the final number, the violin (representing the soldier) and percussion (representing the devil) start out together. At the chilling close, the violin fades out, as the percussion grows more intense."

That's a lot of expression.

"Stravinsky writes in his score that this piece is to be played, to be read and to be danced," Montelione wrote in an email. "I wanted our production of this piece to involve those three elements; but never one overshadowing the other, but rather working in a synergistic approach to creating a new style of concert performance. So, this concert is not just an orchestral concert, or just a dance piece nor just a theatrical work."

The challenge for the dancers, according to New Ballet Ensemble's founding director Katie Smythe is to "reflect the script without being literal in our movements, to illuminate the musical score while remaining somewhat abstract and not overpowering theatrical and musical performance with dance. To build a harmonious and contiguous story for the audience so that they may be transported without distraction."

Stravinsky broke music into its linguistic parts and reassembled it like the French New Wave would do with cinema nearly half-a-century later. After the 1959 premiere of Hiroshima Mon Amor Jean-Luc Godard described his film as "Stravinsky + Faulkner." Histoire du Soldat is music on the verge of becoming literature. And even more than that. Catch it while you can.

L’HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT
January 28, 2012
8:00pm
Christian Brothers University Theater

This sounds intriguing

The 7-Shot Symphony mixes seven classic myths from around the world (Norse, West African, Greek, and Mesopotamian cultures) and sets them against the backdrop of America's Old West. The characters Odin and Gilgamesh, for example, are the sheriff and mayor of the frontier land and Orpheus is a cowboy whose fiancee, Eurydice, is a mail-order bride from the "old country."

I heard nothing but good things about this show from a friend who saw it when it premiered in Minneapolis.

6:00 p.m. tomorrow. Wednesday, January 25. Hardie Auditorium, Rhodes College.

• Opera Memphis's Die Fledermaus

It's been said— usually by tipsy revelers — that Champagne coupes were originally modeled from life-casts of Marie Antoinette's breasts. That's complete bunk of course but a cocktail party's success isn't measured as much by the potency of its potables as it is by the effervescence of the conversations they unlock. Surely this trivial anti-fact, trotted out with a fresh round of drinks, has fulfilled its lurid purpose and facilitated more than a few private fittings. It's the same intoxicating combination of hooch and sexual tomfoolery that makes Johann Strauss's comic opera Die Fledermaus such a guilty pleasure. Well, that and a relentlessly perfect score with all the fizz and flavor of a freshly popped bottle of 1928 Krug

Nothing exceeds like excess and Die Fledermaus is a textbook example of abundant pointlessness. It's a sprawling, stumbling, slurring, fondling bourgeois fantasy about booze, fraternity pranks, sexual indiscretions (all badly managed), and even more booze. And jail. And weird disguises, and things of that nature. Opera Memphis's production under the direction of Ned Canty, the company's new head honcho, is a giddy, gimmick-laden good time. It's easy on they eyes and candy for the ears.

Canty comes to Opera by way of the theater. His background is Shakespeare. Comedy is his specialty and he's promised Memphis audiences to go out of his way to find the best singers who are also the best actors. So far, so good. As promised, the new director suits the action to the word and isn't afraid of a little burlesque. For Die Fledermaus he's populated the stage at Germantown Performing Arts Center with a charismatic cast of singers who collectively transform Strauss's comedy into a three-and-a-half hour Carol Burnett sketch complete with near crack-ups.

Elizabeth Reiter shows off her facility with high notes and low comedy as Adele, the socially-climbing chambermaid. She may be the brightest spot in an already well-lit room. Caroline Worra and Dominic Armstrong are also perfectly paired as the promiscuous Eisensteins, a husband and wife whose middle class values are always at odds with their sexual appetites.

In 2011 Opera Memphis launched a campaign to convince Justin Timberlake to make a guest apperance as Frosh, the drunken jailer. That didn't work out, but Canty's second choice is no less inspired: Ann Marie Hall. The local actor's comic gifts are well chronicled and she channels Harpo Marx, Foster Brooks, and every bumbling cop who ever stepped in front of Mack Sennett's movie camera. Timberlake would have been a coups but alone Hall's gags are worth the price of admission. The rest is so much chocolate gravy.

Canty has said he'll never apologize for opera. He wants to find interesting ways to approach and celebrate the form's excess and absurdity, funny wigs and all. Mission accomplished on that score too. There may not be any circus elephants stunt-copulating to entertain Prince Orlofsky's guests, but it's easy to watch the party onstage and believe that might actually be happening in the wings.

Lushly-imagined but relatively simple scenic elements pack a lot of brush strokes into a few deft gestures. A giant funhouse mirror sits down right, sharing space with obscenely large reproductions of voluptuous Renaissance nudes and an over-the-top frolic between nymphs and centaurs set into what absolutely has to be the hugest gilded frame in town. It's all too much and that's just right.

Still, one can easily over-indulge on sweets and sometimes Canty's production threatens to pop its buttons. It could have been streamlined by cutting a superfluous, show-stealing guest appearance by the Stax Academy singers who nail an a capella medley of gospel and soul that climaxes with a hot do-wop interpretation of Isaac Hayes's "Theme from Shaft." It's a sugary pallate clenser between desert courses and jarringly incongruous. But the kids are so good it's tempting to call for an encore.

Canty introduced the second act by announcing a contest. All of the party guests, he said, were dressed as characters from famous operas and ten free tickets would be donated to Memphis City Schools for every letter Opera Memphis received correctly identifying ten of them. Game on, right? I immediately recognized Otello from Otello, Rigoletto from Rigoletto, Cio-Cio San from Madame Butterfly, and Escamillo the Toreador from Carmen. Carmen was there too. Salome was easy because she carried John the Baptist's head on a plate. And who could miss Brunhilde? But was that Siegfried with her? Was the guy in the three-cornered hat Don Giovani or just some other guy in a three-cornered hat? And will I get credit for guessing Falstaff even if I'm wrong because that big guy with the beard is undeniably Falstaffian? There I was, a compulsive trivia geek gawking at a pair of women in short terry cloth robes, trying desperately to remember whether or not Phillip Glass had ever set an opera at the Playboy mansion, with absolutely no idea what was transpiring in Die Fledermaus.

Oh well, it's not like it's hard to catch back up with the plot.

Program notes recall Canty's first encounter with Die Fledermaus, working on a production directed by the famously catty Match Game regular Charles Nelson Reilly. "Charles taught me three important things," he says.

1. A prop in comedy must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
2. One should always have a backup toupee in your car in case of a surprise photo shoot.
3. Opera has a capacity to delight an audience like no other art form.

I don't know if #3 is true or not but Canty is obviously a believer and with Die Fledermaus he, his cast, Maestro Stephen Osgood, and the musicians of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra make an awfully strong case. Any cork and collar popping is fully justified.

For ticket information and details, here's the link.

Holy cow, what a weekend. There's so much going on, I hardly know where to start. Okay, how about we start with vibrators?

•In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play). A fun and funny piece from Sarah Ruhl. You can read my review of the Circuit Playhouse production here. And trust me, if you go to see this this weekend you'll also want to make reservations for...

• The Club: Women play men in this musical revue showcasing songs from the turn of the 20th Century. At TheatreWorks.

• Next to Normal at Playhouse on the Square: I caught a preview performance of Next to Normal last night. It felt like this musical about mental illness and raw emotions might still be growing, that some of the actors were still keeping an arm's length between them and the characters they are playing. With material this full of pain it's easy to understand why there might be some trouble giving over to it but I suspect that the stellar cast featuring David Foster and Leigh Bray Nichols as Dan and Diane Goodman, will tighten up quickly.

Kelsey Hopkins and Corbin WIlliams are especially good as the Goodman's gifted but increasingly drug-dependent daughter and Henry the sweet stoner who swears he'll stand by her.

This isn't a light entertainment. Don't expect big production numbers. Do expect to be sucked down a rabbit hole into a dark place where every pinpoint of light feels like a ray of hope.

• Prison Stories: Prison Stories is an ongoing project conducted by master storyteller Elaine Blanchard. Blanchard meets regularly with women in prison and helps them tell their stories. The results are often surprising and say a lot, not only about the penal system, but about the community in which it exists. Prison Stories runs this Friday and Saturday night only at . TheatreSOUTH in the basement of First Congregational Church. 8:00 p.m. Suggested donation $20.

A staged reading from an earlier installment of Prison Stories

•Die Fledermaus: Johann Strauss's popular comedy marks Opera Memphis's new General Director Ned Canty's directoral debut. A preview performance broadcast over WKNO radio suggests that this one could be a lot of fun.

• 'Night Mother: A one-night benefit for the New Moon Theatre Company: This scrappy little indie has been doing some exceptional work lately. This would be a perfectly good time to check out a revival of one of their recent productions a toss them a buck or two so they can keep dusting off classics, and reviving unique historical experiments.

•The Boys Next Door: I haven't seen this show about the intellectually-challenged residents of a group home in more than 20-years and am looking forward to the GCT revival. That's really all I have to say about that.

• Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill closes at the Hattiloo.

And opening next weekend...

• The Importance of Being Ernest: I always think I'm tired of this classic and frequently revived show. And then I see it again. And I laugh all over again. Theatre Memphis's revival under the direction of Jerry Chipman with Jude Knight in the role of Lady Bracknell promises to deliver the goods. In a handbag. Ordinary. With wooden handles.

• Robert Mannis
• Jordan Nichols

I left Memphis, my adopted home, for Minneapolis in 2006. I was sad to leave, but excited to move to a city full of theatre. Since living in Minneapolis, I have seen world class theatre from Tony Award winning companies that reside here, theatre that had moved me and made me grow. Last week I was lucky enough to see Memphis' own Jordan Nichols in the Touring Broadway 25th Anniversary of Les Miserables performing at Minneapolis' Orpheum Theatre. Witnessing this amazing prodution I was filled with emotions and reminded of one of the reasons Memphis became my adopted home - the talent is adundant there. Jordan was spectacular, the show was beautiful and moving, I laughed; I cried. I didn't want it to end.

I was also reminded that I didn't need to leave Memphis for world class theatre. It exists right there! Memphis should be proud of its theatre and the professionals that live and breathe theatre in Memphis. And Memphis should be extremely proud of its son, Jordan Nichols, his talent is endless.

Thanks Mykel!

This show could be good.

Sarah Ruhl's play about the early history of vibrating sex toys— when doctors used them to treat hysteria — opens at The Circuit Playhouse tonight. I especially like this publicity photo.

• Andrea Rouch

I made a short video of Joyce Cobb as Billie Holiday in

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill