August: Osage County

In a collaboration between Utah Repertory Theater Company and Silver Summit Theatre Company, Tracy Letts' monumental and Pulitzer Prize-winning work August: Osage County makes it's Utah debut in the new Sugar Space arts center, located in downtown Salt Lake City. As many will remember, the play was turned into an film with Academy Award-nominated performances by Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.

August: Osage County is a remarkable work. It highlights the contemporary American family dealing with tragedy, as they all do in different ways. As the narrative unfolds, inner demons inside the family begin to surface, revealing the darkness the members of the family experience. In this dark comedy, the protagonist, Violet, experiences the harsh realities of narcotic addiction and the pain she is causing to her alcoholic husband, and her daughters who are all dealing with serious problems of their own. With a powerful female perspective, the play addresses issues of mothers and daughters, women and their husbands, and cultural differences. As the daughters passionately avoid intimacy, they fear being alone, tapping into a dissociation complex that plagues contemporary American life while using aggression and criticism as a means to cope and reconnect, and as a defense mechanism. Letts taps into some very difficult and real problems in American life.

The collaboration between these two theater companies is something to be seen indeed. Heading up the cast is Teresa Sanderson as Violet. Having recently portrayed Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Pinnacle Acting Company, Sanderson eases into this role with fresh perspective that could have easily been just another rendition of Martha. She adds both comedy and pity to this complex and impressive character. The entire cast is strong and I wish I could mention each by name. The three daughters: Ivy, Barbara, and Karen (played by
Michele Rideout, April Fossen, and Melanie Nelson, respectively) are incredibly impressive. All with distinct personalities, they all take their time to shine. With Rideout's tragically beautiful vulnerability, she has a presence that can break your heart. Nelson's character taps into the utter denial of disappointment. She has such depth in her performance that could easily be portrayed two-dimensionally. April Fossen as Barbara really pulls out all the stops. Fossen uses a full range of emotions as her tortured character is revealed layer by layer.

All the performances in August: Osage County are remarkably strong, from the mentioned major characters to the comparatively minor roles. Tamara Howell as the housekeeper, Johnna Monevata, gave a performance that was both complex and beautiful. She had an aura of mystery, perfect for the role, yet a elegance as she took the abuse from Violet with class and sophistication.

Director Mark Fossen must be commended for one of the best performances of a play I've seen in Utah this year. Impeccably casted, and well-directed in what could potentially be a very awkward venue, the show is absolutely wonderful. The only downfall of this production is positively terrible set. With bizarre black walls inside the house, unnecessary additions like poorly designed windows and a bizarre floor pattern meant to look like hardwood floors, the only redeeming factor is maintaining the original multi-story design. This being the only flaw, it is sometimes difficult to ignore the terrible set, but the remarkable acting happening on stage is definitely enough to forgive these shortcomings. I hope to see more collaborations like this bringing together the strongest and most talented artists in Utah to present another monumental work. August: Osage County runs through Sunday, August 31st.

Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - Tuacahn Center for the Arts

Set among the striking red rock natural amphitheater, Tuacahn Center for the Arts is well-known throughout the states and further for some spectacular productions. With this spectacular backdrop and considering the local patronage, "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" is an obvious choice to bring to their stage.

"Joseph" first hit the Broadway stage in 1982 and has since been incredibly popular throughout the country and world, reaching its height of popularity in the '90's when Donny Osmond took the lead role, eventually leading to a motion picture release in 1999, where the cast included Osmond, Maria Friedman, Richard Attenborough, and Joan Collins.

The show is an excellent example of accessible musical theater. Taking its premise from the familiar bible story, and without denying the religious roots, it doesn't fully commit to religion either, making it delightful for anyone to watch. It is geared toward children, with the addition of a narrator to move the story along and provide a fun link between the story and the live audience. Fancifully, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice, explore many different styles of music and keep the pace regular and quick. Succinctly said, this is a difficult show to not enjoy.

Lisa Hopkins Seegmiller

Leading the cast at Tuacahn was Tony award-winner Lisa Hopkins Seegmiller. With her Julliard-trained operatic background, Seegmiller is an incredible singer and easily sang through the score with ample style and ad lib of a seasoned professional. Despite this incredible talent, Seegmiller's portrayal of the narrator was lacking, in that it seemed to be the "Seegmiller show." She was so focused on stealing attention, she lacked personality and empathy, interacting little with the audience or the other characters, making her character inhuman and one-dimensional. Again though, her vocal skills are extremely outstanding and she could easily fill that canyon with her sound! James Royce Edwards as Joseph had a lyric and cool voice, though struggled to compete with the rest of the production in memorability, despite his ridiculous wig. Todd Dubail as the Pharaoh was easily the most likable and entertaining in the cast. Dubail and Seegmiller had delightful chemistry in the brief time they were on stage together, a dynamic that would have added so much if experienced between more characters and the narrator.

Criticism must be handed to director Derryl Yeager. Even at a preview night, the whole production felt too controlled and, yes, directed. When the children were on stage, their movements were all carefully choreographed, removing the idea of an extemporaneous experience of telling the story to children. This over-direction of the children and the rest of the cast gave it a very artificial feel.  The commitment to the various styles was understandable, but seemed to over-explain the jokes and therefore dilute them. The uniformity of the costumes (designed by Janet Swenson) also removed the individuality of the characters (and children) as they committed to the different styles of music, again, diluting the charm by overemphasis. Some costumes were simply bizarre such as loin-clothes cladding the prisoners and Egyptians looked like they belonged better at a "toga night" at a gay night club rather than on stage for a family-friendly show. With some serious costume "misses," there were some slam-dunks: the narrators suit for the second half was stylish and stunning, and perfect for her personality and character.

The set consisted of primarily a commanding pyramid at center stage in which images were projected. These projections were more effective when it was only a simple color change, and the animations were difficult to see with the other lighting on stage, and forgettable even when they were visible begging the question "with all this beautiful desert landscape, why hide it for a show that takes place in the desert?"

Unfortunately, Tuacahn has a reputation of excellence, but in reality, the productions come across as kind of amateurish. They seem to be more interested in "what can we do?" when they should think "what SHOULD we do?" with their productions. With a very talented cast, the directing is bizarre and inconsistent and sometimes disrespectful whether the character of Jacob is portraying some kind of offensive Jewish stereotype (not in the source material), or they are giving the clowning-about and silly augmentations to the source material to the only brother who is African-American like a minstrel show. At one point, the brothers create a trash-band for no reason at all (not even on stage . . . off to the side of the stage) that could have been interesting, if the audience wasn't asking "why?" They pack the show with odd cultural references that are not a part of the source material (one of which, donning the gangster Ishmaelites in "Duck Dynasty" gear, was actually quite clever). The final song of the first act, "Go, Go, Go Joseph!" is an adorable 1960s number, and the costumes and choreography at Tuacahn were positively delightful. However, the director felt a need to add a bunch of completely irrelevant references to "Laugh In," more than doubling the number in length with pointless vignettes that had absolutely nothing to do with the plot and were too obscure for most of the audience to appreciate even in its "randomness." Most ashamedly, was a pause in between scenes where a girl (who looked completely dead inside) walked a camel across the stage while over a loudspeaker someone quoted a Geico commercial about today being "hump" day, on a FRIDAY, nonetheless. These bizarre additions to the material were nothing short of insulting causing this reviewer to walk actually angry at the experience rather than just slightly disappointed.


This show works best when it's geared toward children, when the narrator talks to the kids and tells the story as it comes alive before their eyes. It does not work at all in the way Tuacahn presented it, in where there is a complete disconnect from the audience and turned into a "look at me, look at me, look at me!" show.