Georgiana and Kitty
If “it is a truth universally acknowledged” that all things come in threes, then the final installment of Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s triptych of life after Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Georgiana and Kitty, Christmas at Pemberley, is proof enough. If you’re familiar with the first two Pemberley plays, Miss Bennet and The Wickhams (animated in past seasons with splendid aplomb by Main Street Theater), this addition will be as warm and cozy as a counterpane comforter or a glass of mulled brandy. Everything’s pretty much in the same place in Regency England as we’ve left it.
The family Bennet gathers for Christmas at Elizabeth and Darcy’s regal manor, where the mores and formalities of the period are challenged by the wisps of modernity swirling in the cool country wind. The five Bennet sisters and their husbands, suitors, or soon-to-be suitors, or once-and-done suitors, or a former husband now banished and disgraced, will coalesce into a loving, forgiving family. No matter the predicaments that befall them, the five female Bennet siblings stand together, tall and strong. Society will most definitely battle them, belittle them, and leave them a bit frayed and frazzled, but, by the end, their sisterly camaraderie will conquer any slights. While all this may not be most accurate, historically, Gunderson and Melcon’s sly plotting and dialogue makes for fine theater.
In the authors’ favor, of course, are the characters we’ve grown to admire from the previous plays (and from their classic, familiar Austen antecedents). We know them well, except for Jane, the eldest daughter (Yemi Otulana). Poor Jane is window dressing. Otulana is very attractive window dressing, for certain, but her character is only wallpaper here and in prior versions. Perhaps G&M just couldn’t find any interesting angles to this character with the “kindest heart in the house,” who even Austen didn’t treat with any dimension. But the other sisters are firecrackers. Elizabeth (Laura Kaldis) is sensible, modern, crafty, a lady; Mary (a most sly Chaney Moore) is bookish with a wicked wit; young Kitty (an all-dewy Clara Marsh) blossoms into a secretive go-getter; and Lydia (Alexandra Szeto-Joe), the flighty impulsive one, becomes even more so. As played and directed by Robin Robinson, she scampers, pouts, scurries, and flutters. You want to throw a net over her to calm down this future Derbyshire Valley girl.
But there’s a new visitor on the estate, the sister of Elizabeth’s husband Darcy and Kitty’s best friend, Georgiana (Lindsay Ehrhardt). I could write an ode on Ms. Ehrhardt, who was so memorable as the stuffy and priggish Anne de Bough, the childhood fianceé of Darcy, who precipitates much of the light sturm and drang in Miss Bennet. Can Ehrhardt make a false move or be any more alive and true on stage? No, I think not. She’s fierce and committed in this role, which fits her most becomingly like one of Donna Southern Schmidt’s delicious Empire gowns. Georgiana knows her worth in the world, and
she’s going to prove it. Clearly and precisely, Ehrhardt is here to show us how.
The men are on equal display, too. Darcy (solid and masculine Spencer Plachy), naturally, is master of the house, so he thinks, until he gets his comeuppance as his innate pride and prejudice crumble under the determination and righteousness of Georgiana. Shy and gawky Henry Grey (Patrick Fretwell) is Georgiana’s unrequited love, but his inheritance and station are threatened by his own wayward relatives, so the couples’ future is scuttled as Act I ends. Fretwell plays gawky beautifully, and, later, as love re-blooms, you can see it rekindle and glow throughout his body. Henry’s best friend Thomas O’Brien (Ian Lewis) knows his way around the world, and Lewis, with his merry Irish accent, makes the most of him.
Awash with a gentle feminism, these characters confront the world in their own way, and we quickly become invested in their troubles and root for their resolutions. Gunderson and Melcon exude freshness throughout. This third part is the best of the series, clean and clear. The wit is knife-sharp, almost out-Wildeing Wilde with prickly bon mots and snarky observations. After Lydia is commanded to sit down, she snaps, “Nothing ever happens when you’re sitting.” After all the deceptions have been swept away and peace reigns, Elizabeth’s quips, “No good marriage can survive with too much honesty.” Maybe the best is Georgiana’s response to Henry who questions her intentions. Throughout the play, she is a musical prodigy, a brilliant pianist and secret composer. Music is her life. It contains all her feelings and emotions. She says everything through her music. Henry wants to be reassured of her love. With a lovely tone of comic exasperation she declares, “How many concertos must I write?”
Georgiana and Kitty is a comedy of manners, sweet and crisp, tangy and meaningful. It’s quite lovely, really, while its message of sexual equality rings softly in the background. The long-ago world of privilege, musical soirees, of solving problems with a glass of sherry, of divans, needlepoint and riding boots, of unmarried women of a certain status having to find a husband of means because of prehistoric inheritance laws, seems just this side of up-to-date. Few plays blend the antique with the new with such finesse, delicate touch, and laugh-out-loud repartee. It’s a most enjoyable endeavor – and a most enjoyable show.
Georgiana and Kitty, Christmas at Pemberley extended through December 23 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays; and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 22; and 7:30 p.m. Monday, December 18. Main Street Theater, 2540 Times Boulevard. For more information, call 713-524-6706 or visit mainstreettheater.com. $39-$59.
A Motown Christmas
If you’re wondering where all the sequins have gone, look no farther than Ensemble Theatre, where costume designer Krystal Uchem has gobbled them all up and put them on stage. Red, orange, metallic blue, silver all glisten blindingly in her slinky disco dresses or men’s flashy dinner jackets.
Sad to say, even with all this scintillation, The Ensemble Theatre has lost a bit of its holiday glitter. Last year’s eye-opening musical Christmas present, A Motown Christmas, has been re-gifted and wrapped in used paper. Where once this whirligig of phenomenal song and dance merrily pranced and high-stepped into high-octane entertainment, now the show has forgotten to include the batteries. Still filled with some powerful individual performances, the luster is gone. The original creators have overhauled what so brilliantly worked into something that’s a shadow of its former glory. Why did they do this? Why update what was so good the first time? I haven’t a clue. But the result is dispiriting.
The original had no plot to speak of, it didn’t need one. This was a revue of the highest caliber: performers doing what they do best, singing and dancing at the top of their game. No plot necessary. Oh, they hung the numbers upon an excuse of throwing a Christmas party where, until midnight, the friends would sing Motown hits. At midnight, the mood switched to Christmas songs, secular and religious. It made no sense, but who cared? The performances were the best in town, the singers unnaturally talented, the joyous mood utterly infectious. As a holiday showcase it was unbeatable.
Then the tinkering began. Now, the new book by Nate Jacobs concerns two young sisters (Kaitlyn Gibson and Kendall L. Thomas, both stage savvy and very good singers) who get a book on the history of Motown as a Christmas gift. And so begins a Wikipedia romp that consists of some perfunctory information about Motown icons such as Stevie Wonder, The Four Tops, The Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and their influence on music and American culture, while a hit song or two is performed in their particular style. It’s a clunky device without surprise and quickly grows weary. The cast does its damnedest to catch the magic, but the underlying sizzle just isn’t there. Once you have the prestidigitation of Broadway Across America’s touring production of MJ as current reference, with its phenomenal simulacrum of young, teenage, and older Michael Jacksons under the flash of state-of-the-art stagecraft, what could possibly compare?
The Ensemble cast is very good, however, and the liquid smoothness of Jakori Jackson is a perfect fit for the Prince of Motown, Marvin Gaye, in the rip-rousing “Can I Get a Witness?” And Troi Coleman, Brytanni Davis, and Bridgjette Taylor Jackson shimmy up a storm as Martha and the Vandellas in “Jimmy Mack” and “Heatwave.” While the suave quintet of Jakori Jackson, Ramaj Jamar, Donte Miller, Fortune Onwunali, and Talbert Williams, Jr., do The Temptations proud in “Just My Imagination” and “My Girl.” When the girl narrators mention the great singer/songwriter Smokey Robinson, the audience audibly sighs as one. Ramaj Jamal doesn’t disappoint, proven by his silky rendition of “Tears of a Clown.”
Musical director/arranger Horace Alexander Young supplies needed bounce to all the proceedings, and the jazz quartet swings mightily: pianist/conductor Ronald Cole, pianist alternate Philip Hall, bassist Urica Fernandez, and drummers Darren Coleman and Willie C. Smith, Jr.
The artists fare better when they sing as “themselves” during the Christmas section. Gloria Prince sings sweetly in “Little Bright Star,” and Christian D. Simon livens up “My Favorite Things.” Listen in wonder as Bridgjette Jackson works her own gospel magic on “O Holy Night.” It’s a showstopper and worthy of hearty shouts of Hallelujah. When the entire ensemble stamp their feet and clap their hands in a primal rhythm as they triumphantly sing “Little Drummer Boy,” the audience erupts in joyful noise. And there’s not a sound to be heard during the cast’s glorious rendition of Lowry and Greene’s contemporary classic “Mary, Did You Know?” Their sincerity and prowess is a spirit’s rafter-raiser. The show ends on a rollicking high with “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” which segues into “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Jubilation.
The show shines brightest in the second half, where it truly is at one with the season.
A Motown Christmas continues through December 24 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays at Ensemble Theatre, 3535 Main. For more information, call 713-520-0055 or visit ensemblehouston.com. $44-$53.
A Christmas Carol
Premiering last season, the Alley Theatre’s new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ immortal tale, A Christmas Carol, is the most authentically Dickensian of them all.
Written and directed by Alley Artistic Director Rob Melrose, this radiantly theatrical production is a
love letter to the famed Victorian’s most famous work. Arguably, Carol is also his most influential, as it cemented Christmas and its good tidings into our universal consciousness. Dickens single-handedly invented “good will toward men.” With his ghostly little holiday serial, he changed the world – well, the western half of it anyway – as to how we celebrate the festive season. All men are “reclaimed” when they do good to their fellow man. Cheer and charity walk hand in hand.
Dickens shines brightest throughout this version. More of his thick-as-goose-gravy prose is said verbatim than any other production I can remember, although John Steven’s tantalizing one-man adaptation from Country Playhouse years ago came nearly as close. But the Alley has stagecraft wizardry in its arsenal, and it’s used magnificently to tell the tale.
The show is an ensemble piece, smooth as Cratchit and Tiny Tim sledding down Cornhill. The entire team narrates, one taking up the story after a sentence or two and then passing it to another. The round robin effect neatly breaks up the large chunks of text. It’s smooth and efficient. While miniature houses slowly glide down from the flies to give us another setting, and pieces are wheeled offstage, the story continues without pause. (Michael Locher’s picturesque settings are tasty Victorian miniatures.) To lend a holiday tint , musical interludes of traditional carols are interspersed within the scenes, a cappella no less. (The Alley actors are as proficient as singers as they are as actors.) At Fezziwig’s storehouse, during Scrooge’s visitation from the Ghost of Christmas Past (Elizabeth Bunch as the pixie-like apparition who appears everywhere), violinist Brittany Halen fiddles a festive hornpipe and the jig commences. The merriment is infectious.
During Christmas Present, with scene-stealing Shawn Hamilton as its avatar in luxurious dreadlocks and billowing great green gown, miners sing out from an underground shaft that rises just enough to show their heads, or the sailors near a lighthouse high above sing a quick shanty to show their holiday spirit as their miniature boat plows the waves. The visual delights are abundantly sprinkled throughout, like the Empire gowns, lit from within, that accompany Christmas Past, or the animated door knocker, or the pop-up Christmas feast at Fezziwig’s, or the monumental Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in its mysterious shroud with spooky gliding gait, or the delightful puppets of young Scrooge’s imagination. (Puppet designer Afsaneh Aayani has had quite the busy season.)
Chris Hutchison is most ghastly as the tortured ghost of Marley, condemned to haunt the earth witnessing the pleasures he couldn’t allow himself in life. His echoing howls are satisfyingly grisly. Expressive Dylan Godwin is the picture of over-worked Bob Cratchit and deeply devoted father who only has joy to give his family. When he talks of visiting Tiny Tim’s grave during Scrooge’s hallucination of the future, he breaks hearts. But what’s A Christmas Carol without a pinching, covetous, miserly old oyster like Scrooge? How about one played to perfection by David Rainey? He’s a great curmudgeon, full of growls and bluster, who then undergoes a believable reclamation. His smile at the end could melt snow.
As it currently stands, the magic is there for all to celebrate. Cat Tate Starmer’s pinpoint lighting needs no introduction, Raquel Barreto’s costumes cry out Victoriana, Cliff Caruthers’ sound is eerily detailed, and Jim Steinmeyer’s illusions are ready for Penn and Teller.
The entire cast is a picture of good cheer. If they can keep at it for the remainder of the countless shows yet to come, then Dickens will have indeed worked his age-old magic. The Alley’s faithful production is a wondrous present for us all. God bless them, every one.
A Christmas Carol continues through December 30. 7 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays; 1: 30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; also 7 p.m. Tuesday, November 21; 7 p.m. Thursday, November 30; 7 p.m. Wednesday, December 20; 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tuesday, December 26 and 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Wednesday, December 27. Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $27-$83.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
