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Reviewed April 21
Running time 1:45 - one intermission
General admission seating
Good clean foolishness with few inhibitions
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Storyline: Four short plays are staged as if they were the productions of a very amateur church group known as St. Sepulchre's Players. One is a very British whodunit, one an opera, one a clash of different classes and one a Shakespearean amalgamation. None are performed without a glitch as set pieces fall, lines are forgotten and the orchestra fails to show up on time (with the exception of the triangle player).

Obviously, the one joke is the amateurishness of the personnel involved and their lack of resources - fiscal or artistic. But they are a game bunch and they keep on keeping on in the face of any adversity. That joke is even carried over into the program handed out to the audience. It includes a welcoming message ("welcome friends, to the 25th production here at St. Sepulchre's Church Hall") and short biographies of the "coarse" players including the church's Vicar who uses the opportunity to invite audience members to attend services next Sunday when he will preach one of his favorite sermons: "Go to the Ant, thou Sluggard, Consider her ways and be wise." 

It takes a certain skill for professionals to try to convince the audience of their total lack of skills, but the key here is each professional is playing an amateur playing a part and that gives each a "hook" on which to hang a performance. As a result, some of the funny peculiarities of a particular parishioner/volunteer carry over from one short play to the next. Luke Albao uses a certain air of superiority that works very well when he's the conductor wielding a baton to lead a missing orchestra as well as when he's playing the deposed Duke in the Shakespeare rip off. Dino Coppa brings an Inspector Clouseau-like bluster and pretension to both the role of the detective in the Agatha Christie spoof and the cuckold in the faux-opera.

As you might expect, sight gags abound.  Probably the most effective one involves a dining room table so poorly constructed by the stage crew that legs keep falling off of it as the family gathered for a meal begin to argue more and more violently. That, and Laurie Gilkenson's tremendous triangle playing are gags to be enjoyed during a short evening filled with bits that work best before a full audience ready and willing to sit back and enjoy itself. The production uses the remnants of the set from the H Street Playhouse's last show, Theater Alliance's The Spitfire Grill, with its tree stump still downstage center. Too bad they didn't come up with a gag to use it.

Written by Michael Green. Directed by Laurie Gilkenson and Jeff Hindman. Design: Tom Donohue (set for previous production) Belén Pifel (properties) Andrea Cottin and Hannah Hessel (lights) Brian Butters (photography). Cast: Luke Albao, Dino Coppa, Sally Cusenza, Jemar Dupree, Laurie Gilkenson, Rion Issaacs, Mike Kozemchak, Nadim Nadir, Belén Pifel.

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Reviewed July 2
Running time: 2:15 - one intermission
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Storyline: Cole Porter’s 1934 musical comedy is set at sea as the SS American sails out of Manhattan with our hero as a stowaway in order to be with the girl he loves who is sailing to England to fulfill her mother's dream - she's to marry an English Lord. A runaway gangster, who is embarrassed to be only public enemy #13, helps the hero impersonate public enemy #1 who has missed the boat. In this way, our hero hopes to avoid being discovered as a stowaway and locked in the brig where he can't woo his sweetheart. Everyone on board falls under the spell of this "celebrity" except for one - the girl he loves.

The show itself has an interesting history, one of those Broadway legends of a show saved at the last minute. When it began rehearsals in 1934 it was a light musical comedy about a ship wreck with a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse (Oh, Kay!, Very Good Eddy). Before it opened however, the passenger liner S.S. Morro Castle caught fire and sank off the coast of New Jersey with the loss over 100 lives. This was no time for jokes about a ship wreck. Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse (young men who went on to write such big hits as The Sound of Music) were called in to re-write and came up with this confection. The score included songs that went on to be standards such as "I Get a Kick Out of You," "All Through the Night,"  the title tune  and "You're the Top" for which there were no fewer than seven refrains written to accommodate all the encores required night after night.

Renegade uses a 1963 script prepared for an off-Broadway revival that starred Hal Linden. This version interpolates a few lesser known Porter songs like "Heaven Hop" and "Let's Misbehave" (both from 1928's Paris) and "Friendship" (from 1939's Du Barry Was a Lady). This script is easier to handle in the confines of the Warehouse Theater, has less dance music and calls for a smaller cast. Director Laurie Gilkensen, assisted by four credited choreographers, can't quite make the cast seem to fill the available space even in the small Warehouse and the entrances, exits and transitions all seem tentative. Tentative too is the sound of the four-person combo let by music director Michael DiGiacinto which features Lisa Fiorilli tripling on alto, tenor sax and clarinet.

Three performances among the major roles deserve complimentary mention, each primarily for their comedic acting rather than for their musical contributions. Timothy R. King is a very appealing leading man in the role of the suitor masquerading as a gangster. His impish persona works very well in a 1930s setting. Dino P. Coppa, who was so funny in Renegade's satisfying set of one act plays last March, is just as funny here in the role of Public Enemy #13. Nadim Nader crafts a number of funny moments as the dupe of a Lord that the hero's honey is supposed to marry.

Music and lyrics by Cole Porter. Book by Guy Bolton, P.G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse. Directed by Laurie Gilkenson. Choreographed by Naomi Uyama, Nina Gilkenson, Carsen Labella, and Jordan Burnett. Music direction by Michael DiGiacinto. Design: Laurie Gilkenson and Gala Hispanic Theatre (set design) Nina Gilkenson and Nayomi Uyama (costumes, makeup and hair) Sara Florance and Annie Mosher (lights) Zachery Ziemba Hollwedel (stage manager). Cast: Luke Albao, Dino P. Coppa, Sally Cusenza, Nina Gilkenson, David Gorsline, Kristin W. Hershberger, Bill Hensel, Skye Humphries, Timothy R. King, Carsen LaBella, Rita Lee, Lily Matini, Nadim Nader, Andrew D. Nguyen, Belén Pifel, Sara Strehle, Korin Thompson, Naomi Uyama, Mary Yee.

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Reviewed March 24
Running time 2 hours 10
Performed in the 35 seat space next to the Warehouse

Storylines: (1) God makes a presentation of Her master’s thesis project for which she created the heavens and the earth but has to justify the flaws in her creation of human beings, (2) A married couple are visited by the husband’s high school sweetheart who makes both their lives miserable, (3) a couple trying out pick-up lines in a coffee house can take back lines that don’t work by simply ringing a bell and starting over, (4) Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” is re-imagined with a new twist to every element including switching the glass figurines into glass swizzle sticks.

The crew starts off with Rich Orloff's The Whole Shebang in which Jenny Richter is God, a co-ed graduate student appearing before her thesis review committee composed of Jeff Obermiller as a slightly officious chairman, Jon Townson as a professor who is most taken with God's design for cows and human feet and Julia Frank who is distinctly unimpressed with the human beings with which She has peopled Her planet. Enter exhibit one, a man and wife from Dayton, Ohio in the person of Sally Cusenza and Dino Coppa. Coppa is the find of the evening, slam-dunking zinger after zinger in this and the other parts he plays - and he has a part in each of the four. Laurie Gilkenson directs the piece with the panel of judges angled toward the audience, an awkward arrangement that forces Richter to have her back to her judges as she argues her case.

The one misfire of the evening comes before intermission, Christopher Durang's Wanda's Visit. No one can leave the theater after this production doubting that Durang is a tremendously clever and funny writer. He contributes For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, a completely zany send-up of Tennessee Williams which is given superb performances by Coppa as the mentally, physically and emotionally stunted son of the marvelously over the top Sally Cusenza with strong comic bits from both John Townson and Belen Pifel. But that same cast is unable to find the same level and consistency of humor in the first Durang piece.

The smallest of the four small plays, David Ives' two-character Sure Thing, calls for great timing from its cast and it gets it from Belen Pifel and Dino Coppa who hit a comic rhythm that is nearly musical in its syncopation. The bell on the table, which each can ring to back up a word or sentence or two to start again, rings at a cadence that keeps the tempo of the entire piece upbeat, and yet the characters never seem flustered or harried. By saving this small piece to match up with Southern Belle after intermission, the company clearly saved the best for last.

Written by Christopher Durang, David Ives and Richard Orloff. Directed by Seth Ghitelman and Laurie Gilkenson. Design: Ben Van Dyne (lights, sound). Cast: Dino Coppa, Sally Cusenza, Julia Frank, Jeff Obermiller, Belen Pifel, Jenny Richter, Jon Townson.