(Saturday night performance; there’s one show left, 8 p.m. tonight—Sunday the 23^rd—at Lyric Hall)

1. Tony Juliano sounds exactly like Tony Bennett. Oh, he’s lip-synching. And he looks exactly like a knife-wielding maniac. Oh, he’s acting.
2. “It’s not easy to tape an egg to your forehead.”’Coney Island Chris. Or to smash it with a sledgehammer while resting on a bed of nails. Something should let Coney Island Chris do an entire show in town by himself.
3. “They just stopped making this particular size of horseshoe. Can you believe that?”—Chris “Wonder” Schoeck. What will this ingratiating bend now. As he said himself, “no strong man show is complete without bending a horseshoe.” Schoeck has a lovely matter-of-fact patter, like a nice guy you’d meet in a bar. Just don’t con in a card game; he rips decks of cards in half—and quarters—for fun.
4. Marlow’s accompanist really wasn’t the famed I.P. Daily, author of Yellow River. He’s Chris Kibbe. His put-down banter with the red-wigged former Vegas lounge entertainer played like an old Sonny & Cher variety show.
5. The cartoons Don Herzfeldt made in the late 1990s have aged extremely well into the current age of bad taste. “Bobby’s Balloon” had them dying in the aisles as infants dropped from the heavens.
6. If Nicholas Ridiculous happens to go insane and gets suspended from an aerial hoop in an old-fashioned straitjacket, he’ll hardly be inconvenienced.
7. New Haven looks pretty cool in cartoon form, as rendered in KR47’s Shaun of the Dead-esque Zombie Apocalypse. According to the cartoon, there are zombie whores to be had in the New Haven vicinity.
8. Amazing Amy has a new email address. After a completely silent contortionist routine which she says derives from the “astounding power of yoga,” Amy suddenly got amazingly loquacious, kind of killing the full-cast curtain call.
9. The fire-eating, fire-juggling and fire-hula-hooping finale was so casual and low-key you felt you were part of a private club in which people could hang around and be themselves, even if that meant open flames and painful pranks. Even the cartoons, most of which you can easily find online and enjoy in the privacy of your home, felt better when shared with an crowd of fellow sickniks.

10. There was much more to marvel at. Hopefully enough to hold the faithful for another year.

The Universoul Circus is in town through the weekend. My daughter Mabel went yesterday morning on a field trip with her fourth grade class.

Here’s her report:

They were giving elephant rides for money; I’m not sure if it was for two dollars or ten dollars. I couldn’t hear.

Right before anything, a guy came out in a clown costume. He wanted to get us to stamp our feet. He had a giant tie and a big nose. Whenever he clapped, powder came out. He was really funny.

Two clowns came out. One guy was trying to throw a hat on a pole while the other guy was holding a pole. They finally got it on, but then they couldn’t get it down. They tried and they tore it and it fell down the pole. The guy took a bow with a torn hat.

What was another thing? Yes, yes, yes! There were girls on bicycles. First there was a girl in the middle with a spotlight on her, and she was wearing a pink leotard. She started getting on her bicycle. Then everyone went out and started getting on her bicycles. Two of them were on the bicycles and they put their heads down. There was another girl who did leapfrog over them. They tried it twice and only one time it worked.

Another thing that happened was that they did tightrope walkers. First, a man just walked across with a big pole. Then he did it with a person on top of him. Then a guy went across on a bicycle, Instead of having handlebars, he held a big pole. Then he did it with a person on top of him. Then he walked across again, except this time he had two people on top of him. When it was the end of their act, they came down but instead of walking down a ladder they came down a rope in crazy ways, their feet going around. One slid down like a fireman.

There was a man and he put his hands in what were almost like bracelets of ribbon. He twisted them together and he did somersaults in the air. They were bringing him up on a wire. And he did somersaults and twists and different things in the air and it was really cool.

Three people had like eighteen dogs or something. They made them do tricks and put them through hoops. Two of them were dancing in blue and pink dresses. They made them jump over hurdles. Two dogs did it, and one knocked them all over. They tried to get one dog to do it, but she ran around and ran around and they tried to catch her and she never did it. They pulled a slide in that they made them go down. A few of them slid and then jumped off, but a lot of them slid headfirst. The dog that wouldn’t do the hurdles went up the stairs to the slide and went right back down. They chased her but she went right back down. She wouldn’t do anything!

There were two people on motorcycles or something. They went around in a giant metal ball. You could see through it. One person did it, then another, then four did it together. It was really kind of scary because I knew they knew what they were doing, but if they made a wrong turn everyone would have messed up.

Right before the second half, they threw out giant beach balls into the audience and everyone tried to be able to bounce one. I was watching excitedly with my hands in the hair. My teacher says she got hit by someone behind he who was trying to hit the ball.

At the intermission they were having elephant rides again. During the whole time, they were selling popcorn and cotton candy and flags and glow things.

The second half started with a man on big poles and two giant swings made out of metal. There were three giant cushions in the middle if they fell. They would run up on the giant things and would hold them up so one of them would get on the swings. He would do a somersault on the swing and go to the next one. That was pretty cool too.

They had tigers. It was really kind of scary. One of the kids in my class said he was glad they were in a cage. He didn’t know they were trained. I was scared too. One of the tigers didn’t do as much as the others.

I didn’t like seeing them whip animals to get them to do tricks. My teacher said she didn’t like it either, and said she’d rather see the animals in the wild than in a circus.

When we had to go, they were doing, they were doing an act where there were three girls who had to twist their arms and legs around their bodies where people can’t usually twist their arms and legs. Everyone really liked that part, but we had to leave because our bus was waiting.

I’m not sure if I saw the whole circus or not.

Thanks, Mabel. Sorry you had to go back to school. Fourth grade sucks sometimes.

Remaining Universoul Circus performances are today (Saturday Oct. 22) at 4 & 7 p.m. and Sunday the 23rd at 12:30, 3:30 & 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 to $28.50 (free for children under 1; big deal).The company’s tent is on Route 34 between Sherman Parkway and Ella T. Grasso Blvd.

Metaphors and symbolisms abound in Play With Matches, but don't worry—that's not the scary part. Photo by Dana Astmann.

Play With Matches

Through Nov. 6 at 446A Blake St. in the Westville section of New Haven. Conceived and created by A Broken Umbrella Theatre. Directed by Ian Alderman. Written by Jason Patrick Wells. Set Design/properties: Jen McClure. Set Design: Brandon Fuller. Lighting Design: Jason Patrick Wells. Costume Design: Jacy Barber. Composer/pianist: Dana Astmann. Sound Design/Composer: Dave Baker. Projection Design: Nadir Balan. Production Manager: Ryan Gardner. Production Stage Manager: Charlie Alexander. Production Assistant Stage Manager: Grace O’Brien. Assistant Stage Manager: Luis Ayala. Historian: Colin Caplan. Producers: Ian Alderman, Rachel Alderman, Ryan Gardner, Jes Mack.

You really feel in good hands with A Broken Umbrella Theatre.

Not safe hands, mind you. In Play With Matches, hands glow in the dark. Hands steal, and point menacingly, and pound angrily on doors with evil intent. It’s a Halloween show, torn from local newspaper headlines of the 1880s, 1930s and 1960s. A key figure is Ebenezer Beecher, a quirky old coot who played with matches to the extent that he produced Diamond Safety Matches at a factory right here in town.

I found every aspect of this show unexpectedly impressive, raising the standards for what small local theater companies can accomplish. When you hear that a troupe is staging something in a deserted factory building, of course you expect musty, dusty rooms and dirt-covered floors. But this space is part of a clean, renovated building already occupied by a couple of non-profit businesses. There was plenty of cleaning up to do, the Broken Umbrella folks attest, but they went for a scrubbed, spotless look rather than earthy. They erected scaffolding, catwalks and a sound booth. There are more lighting units than I could count, plus a professional projection machine. The set is a pitch-perfect mix not just of all the eras represented in the play, but of the script’s haunting mash-up of traditional drama and Theater of the Absurd.

Even the scene before you enter the space is a well-designed enticement. In lieu of a lobby, the box office table and extensive exhibits touting A Broken Umbrella, the Westville arts scene in general and the historical background of the play are arranged in tented areas in the parking lot outside the theater entrance.
Play With Matches
Through Nov. 6 at 446A Blake St. in the Westville section of New Haven. Conceived and created by A Broken Umbrella Theatre. Directed by Ian Alderman. Written by Jason Patrick Wells. Set Design/properties: Jen McClure. Set Design: Brandon Fuller. Lighting Design: Jason Patrick Wells. Costume Design: Jacy Barber. Composer/pianist: Dana Astmann. Sound Design/Composer: Dave Baker. Projection Design: Nadir Balan. Production Manager: Ryan Gardner. Production Stage Manager: Charlie Alexander. Production Assistant Stage Manager: Grace O’Brien. Assistant Stage Manager: Luis Ayala. Historian: Colin Caplan. Producers: Ian Alderman, Rachel Alderman, Ryan Gardner, Jes Mack.

You really feel in good hands with A Broken Umbrella Theatre.

Not safe hands, mind you. In Play With Matches, hands glow in the dark. Hands steal, and point menacingly, and pound angrily on doors with evil intent. It’s a Halloween show, torn from local newspaper headlines of the 1880s, 1930s and 1960s. A key figure is Ebenezer Beecher, a quirky old coot who played with matches to the extent that he produced Diamond Safety Matches at a factory right here in town.

I found every aspect of this show unexpectedly impressive, raising the standards for what small local theater companies can accomplish. When you hear that a troupe is staging something in a deserted factory building, of course you expect musty, dusty rooms and dirt-covered floors. But this space is part of a clean, renovated building already occupied by a couple of non-profit businesses. There was plenty of cleaning up to do, the Broken Umbrella folks attest, but they went for a scrubbed, spotless look rather than earthy. They erected scaffolding, catwalks and a sound booth. There are more lighting units than I could count, plus a professional projection machine. The set is a pitch-perfect mix not just of all the eras represented in the play, but of the script’s haunting mash-up of traditional drama and Theater of the Absurd.

Even the scene before you enter the space is a well-designed enticement. In lieu of a lobby, the box office table and extensive exhibits touting A Broken Umbrella, the Westville arts scene in general and the historical background of the play are arranged in tented areas in the parking lot outside the theater entrance.

How well do they use this space? Well, it’s got a huge garage door, and they slam it. It’s got a wall that circles around the old factory chimney, and they use that usually shaping to good advantage. The story concerns hidden documents, and the set is loaded with trap doors, secret passages and other structural surprises. When the action flashes forward from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s, it’s represented by a freakin’ Volkswagen being driven onstage.

Such a sturdily built and evocative atmosphere allows you to drift comfortably into the play and concentrate on the plot. It does require some careful attention—the changing moods and the conversations which drift across different decades can get hard to piece together. But it’s much more engrossing than a more traditional, linear ghost story would be. Playwright Jason Patrick Wells embodies these characters—many of them pulled from New Haven history books—with grand ambitions that they profess in inspiring monologues. As disappointments mount and darkness descends, the mood changes from idealistic to disenchanted, and then to just plain enchanted. Play With Matches ends up being about much more than the stubborn and graceless match-manufacturer Ebenezer Beecher. It’s about inspiration and collaboration and the creative process. It’s about lighting sparks which ignite flames throughout generations. It’s about hope at times of destruction and confusion.

This frenetic and fanciful work also happily has a light side, with a comical corps of construction workers lugging a gigantic boulder shaped like a dog. Other comic relief is provided by a hippie (Lou Mangini). Some of the mystery shenanigans resemble the denouement of an episode of Scooby-Doo.

The variety of styles at work makes the acting unavoidably uneven, but it’s still astounding how much Play With Matches aspires to do in its brisk 90 minutes, and how much of that it accomplishes. Ebenezer Beecher’s character is fully fleshed out (until he becomes a ghost that is; Ryan Gardner gives him an air of exasperation that makes him both funny and scary), but so is that of his daughter Helena (Jes Mack, modulating a role which lesser talents might turn into aimless fretting and shrieking) and his brother L. Wheeler Beecher. This spat-happy family is intruded upon by a future generation of idealists, a road-tripping duo from Ohio named Buddy and Brandt. They too are given human as well as humorous qualities; as Brandt, Ruben Ortiz treads a fine line between straight man (to Lou Mangini goofy flower child Buddy) and transformed, bright-eyed innovator.

Not that there isn’t a clichéd curly-mustached villain or two. This is still the A Broken Umbrella troupe which unleashed Vaudevillain last Halloween and delights as much in theatrical artifice as is modernism and realism.

Don’t want to tip their hand any more—there are scares and surprise aplenty. Greatest thrill for me was seeing such a new company clicking on all cylinders. Play With Matches scores with solid preparation, elegant presentation, awesome amibience, ambitious scripting and audacious acting. Best of all, this is a community-minded endeavor through and through. These are Westville’s own ghosts, scared up by of New Haven’s most enterprising theater companies.

Lift your lighters high in their honor.

A glass case outside the theater, containing historical documents and matchbooks relevant to the goings-on in the play. Photo by Christopher Arnott.

How well do they use this space? Well, it’s got a huge garage door, and they slam it. It’s got a wall that circles around the old factory chimney, and they use that usually shaping to good advantage. The story concerns hidden documents, and the set is loaded with trap doors, secret passages and other structural surprises. When the action flashes forward from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s, it’s represented by a freakin’ Volkswagen being driven onstage.

Such a sturdily built and evocative atmosphere allows you to drift comfortably into the play and concentrate on the plot. It does require some careful attention—the changing moods and the conversations which drift across different decades can get hard to piece together. But it’s much more engrossing than a more traditional, linear ghost story would be. Playwright Jason Patrick Wells embodies these characters—many of them pulled from New Haven history books—with grand ambitions that they profess in inspiring monologues. As disappointments mount and darkness descends, the mood changes from idealistic to disenchanted, and then to just plain enchanted. Play With Matches ends up being about much more than the stubborn and graceless match-manufacturer Ebenezer Beecher. It’s about inspiration and collaboration and the creative process. It’s about lighting sparks which ignite flames throughout generations. It’s about hope at times of destruction and confusion.

This frenetic and fanciful work also happily has a light side, with a comical corps of construction workers lugging a gigantic boulder shaped like a dog. Other comic relief is provided by a hippie (Lou Mangini). Some of the mystery shenanigans resemble the denouement of an episode of Scooby-Doo.

The variety of styles at work makes the acting unavoidably uneven, but it’s still astounding how much Play With Matches aspires to do in its brisk 90 minutes, and how much of that it accomplishes. Ebenezer Beecher’s character is fully fleshed out (until he becomes a ghost that is; Ryan Gardner gives him an air of exasperation that makes him both funny and scary), but so is that of his daughter Helena (Jes Mack, modulating a role which lesser talents might turn into aimless fretting and shrieking) and his brother L. Wheeler Beecher. This spat-happy family is intruded upon by a future generation of idealists, a road-tripping duo from Ohio named Buddy and Brandt. They too are given human as well as humorous qualities; as Brandt, Ruben Ortiz treads a fine line between straight man (to Lou Mangini goofy flower child Buddy) and transformed, bright-eyed innovator.

Not that there isn’t a clichéd curly-mustached villain or two. This is still the A Broken Umbrella troupe which unleashed Vaudevillain last Halloween and delights as much in theatrical artifice as is modernism and realism.

Don’t want to tip their hand any more—there are scares and surprise aplenty. Greatest thrill for me was seeing such a new company clicking on all cylinders. Play With Matches scores with solid preparation, elegant presentation, awesome amibience, ambitious scripting and audacious acting. Best of all, this is a community-minded endeavor  through and through. These are Westville’s own ghosts, scared up by of New Haven’s  most enterprising theater companies.

Lift your lighters high for Play With Matches.

Creation 2011

Through Oct. 22 at the Yale Cabaret. Written and performed by Inka Gudjonsdottir, Rosa Gudjonsdottir, Ilya Khodosh, Sarah Krasnow, Daniel Putnam and Annew Seiverath. Directed by Sarah Krasnow. Featuring songs by Howard Ashman & Alan Menken, Joe Darion & Mitch Leigh, Martin Charnin & Charles Strouse, Henri Contet  & Norbert Glanzberg.Accompaniment by Jenny Schmidt. Dramaturg: Lauren Dubowski. Set & Lights: Edward Morris. Projections: Michael Bergmann. Sound: Junghoon Pi. Producer: Whitney Dibo.

A self-aware five-person mutual musing on time, space, mortality, maturity and musical theater, Creation 2011 at first seems offputtingly vague. The title is in line with what new works are generically labeled at the Festival d’Avignon, and the program cites a 2010 Avignon creation, Massimo Furlan’s 1973, about watching the Eurovision Song Competition on TV as a child, as inspiration.

Yet Creation 2011 disarmingly,charmingly and confidently builds into a focused, provocative and quietly daring piece of self-exploration.

A succession of Yale School of Drama students (most of whom happen to be in the dramaturgy program) share memories of childhood obsessions with certain songs. They sing them boldly and to the best of their abilities, but the quality of the performances is secondary to the needs of the singers to put these songs in the context of their impassioned, impetuous youth.

After the late Saturday performance, Sarah Krasnow kindly let me snap iPhone photos of her in poses from her Little Mermaid routine.

Sarah Krasnow sings first, a routine she memorized from The Little Mermaid so completely than she can elaborate on the cartoon heroine’s every hand gesture.

Ilya Khodosh brashly barrels through “I, Don Quixote” from Man of La Manch, then explains how as a boy he responded to the character’s “willful descent into madness.”

Anne Seiwerath’s episode in this exercise, which she sums up dishearteningly as “looking back at something you thought was great when you were young,” begins with a critical examination of a small clay dish made in summer camp, but ends in a recital of one of the more heartstring-tugging ballads from Annie.

A sort of Peter Pan psychologist figure played by Daniel Putnam is on hand to promote an open dialogue about the singers’ needs, and their differing perceptions as children and young adults.

I won’t give away all the elements, but suffice to say this is a cohesive, well-thought-through bit of theater. It doesn’t repeat itself even when it seems like it does. Each new person clutching the microphone on the small stage adds a fresh insight to the growing monologue. The performance style has a purposefully stilted quality, a staginess that comes off more real than if the players (who wrote and developed the show as an ensemble) had gone for a more naturalistic approach.

Though such a sentiment isn’t actually articulated in Creation 2011, it reminded me of the many children and teens I’ve known who’ve had positive experiences in high school or community theater shows, then when exposed to a professional or film version of the show, invariably boast that “ours was better.” Creation 2011 speaks to a higher power than art, a spiritual need to express oneself through unmistakably grand drama.

I consider Creation 2011 to be unusually brave for a Yale Cabaret piece. So many works at that student-run space are intent on leaving childhood behind. It is a place largely reserved for those who think they’ve glimpsed the future of theater and seek to share those insights. Creation 2011 is a fond, vulnerable, fragile look back. It’s a meaningful, intellectual and refreshingly childlike endeavor. It’s easy to sing its praises.

A stuffed dog on a pedestal, representing Sandy from Annie. Admittedly lousy photo by Christopher Arnott.

Amazing Amy. She's at Forgot to Laugh Oct. 22 & 23, and she'll be back (get it?) for a "Kid's Table" edition of Tony Juliano's venerable Sideshow & Animation revue in November.

“It’s not a big stage, but we really don’t have a lot of big stage things.

“Contortionists don’t take up a lot of room.”

Such simple truths spring effortlessly from the mouth of Tony “Baloney” Juliano, who’s marking his fifth annual Forgot to Laugh Sideshow and Animation Festival with yet another change of venue.

Juliano rents the venues, books and pays the bizarre assortment of acts, finds the animations and edits them onto a DVD (including a special $5 souvenir “Smelly Shorts” DVD which will be on sale in the  Lyric Hall lobby), figures out the sound and lighting requirements, enlists technical help, then promotes and emcees the shows.

Sometimes he even remembers to laugh.

What’s Tony’s rationale, his credo, his inspiration, for developing such an unusual program—one which has perversely become a popular annual tradition?

“Sometimes it’s just what I feel like doing and stuff.”

The show certainly fits in with the cartoonish, parodic, popcult paintings which remain Tony Juliano’s main calling as an artist. He’s lampooned fine art, folklore, and famous movies. He’s even done a huge mural mocking the Zallinger Dinosaur timeline painting at Yale’s Peabody Museum.

The new digs for the live performance side of Tony Juliano’s multi-faceted farcical personality is Lyric Hall in Westville, seemingly perfect for Forgot to Laught since the joint was originally built around 1912 as a silent movie house, and has already been used several times for film screenings and vaudeville-style events. There’ve even already been circus and sideshow performers there, but nothing like this.

Lyric Hall only fits about 60, and Forgot to Laugh regularly has attracted audiences of one or two hundred. But the intimate, ornate place seemed ideal, so Tony decided the do four performances instead of one. “It’s the same length as before. Each show is still two hours–though I probably shouldn’t put it that way because we always go over.” Performances are Oct. 22 at 2 & 8 p.m. and Oct. 23 at 1 & 5 p.m. (Doors open half an hour before curtain time.) Tickets are $12.

Each  performance has the same line-up. The live performers (not necessarily in this order) are the contortionist Amazing Amy, the Hamden-based Vegas lounge singer Marlow, sideshow variety entertainer Coney Island Chris, aerialist Stacey Kigner, lit-up hula hoopers Lady Blaze and Robin Revolver (who go by the collective handle of Frisky a Go Go), escape artist Nicholas Ridiculous and strongman Chris “Wonder” Schoeck. The animators include the legendary Bill Plympton, whose hilarious taste-impaired cartoons Juliano has screened at previous Forgot to Laughs, plus Lev Yilmaz, KR47, Billy Blob, Eun-Ha Paek, Alex Dron, Signe Baumane, Karl Ackermann, Happy Tree Friends and Corky Quackenbush.

A Bill Plympton image. The prolific and perverse animator's work is a regular attraction at Forgot to Laugh.

The Lyric Hall’s smaller stage has made Juliano decide to forgo some of the exploding and precarious props with which he littered other stages during his own performanaces. “There’s less room for, say, an exploding head. Also, I’m not used to doing four shows. I’m used to doing one big show.

Following the main indoor event, the audience is inviting outside for tricks featuring open flames. “Each theater has different rules for the permits and insurance. We also always have a designated ‘safety person.’

The animators tend not to attend the shows in person, but sometimes they are locally based. “I like to give locals a shot,” Juliano says, “and it’s the same with the animators. KR47 is two guys who do this seven-minute Zombie Apocalypse piece, and I’m even in that.

“Most of the performers are local yokels, but there are some from New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania… I like to rotate some of the more familiar performers and bring new ones in. Like Polly Sonic—she did it for three or four years, so she’s taking a break. Amazing Amy called me a while ago because she wanted to perform, but at the time I already had a contortionist. Now it’s her turn. The strong man, I met through another strong man. Everyone in the show, I’ve seen them all in action before.” (Objectivity sideshow: I played ukulele at Tony’s first Forgot to Laugh event, half a decade ago in Milford.)

Tony’s also fiercely appreciative of his sponsors. And you have to admit, it takes a special sort of sponsor to attach itself to an event which has featured nail-through-head pounding, booger-obsessed cartoons and a host who presented the previous revue nude (except for a Forgot to Laugh logo covering his privates). These brave patrons are Abbott Printing in Hamden, the Alternate Universe comics shop on Chapel Street, Anna Liffey’s pub on Whitney Avenue, ArtSpace & City Wide Open Studios, Business New Haven magazine, The Devil’s Gear Bike Shop, Lyric Hall, Milford Photo (which is providing projection equipment), Studio Zee Tattooing on State Street, the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, the Funaro Insurance Agency (a Nationwide affiliate). Progressive arts lovers all.

The audience for Forgot to Laugh continues to grow (“It’s quite a big fanbase; I get a a lot of compliments”), and Tony Juliano is even pushing it along a bit by targeting the younger generation. He rates his revues for “(im)mature audiences” and has been worried when people have brought children, since some of the material is in indisputably bad taste.

Actually, my kids wouldn't mind this at all.

Rather than beat them out the door, he’s joined them, devising a special “Kids Table” edition of Forgot to Laugh for later this fall. It’ll be a shorter show, with family-friendly performers and animations. A few (the LED hula hoop duo, Amazing Amy) are part of the shows this weekend, with revised material.

As for the timing of this weekend’s event, “Not everyone will be doing a Halloween theme, but some little scares will be in there. There’s some music, some artsy stuff…”

No need to continue. We get the crazy idea.

Dead to rights: Bert Bernardi and Scott Simonelli have adapted Robert San Souci's creepy children's book Cinderella Skeleton for the stage. It plays for two weekends leading up to Halloween, at the Educational Center for the Arts' Arts Hall.

Bert Bernardi, Hoo Hah! He’s the quirky, campy king of children’s theater in Connecticut. Bernardi staged his loose adaptations of fairy tales and holiday legends at Bridgeport’s Downtown Cabaret Theatre for nearly three decades before deciding to investigate other venues in the state, forming Pantochino Productions with his partner Jimmy Johansmeyer.

After 28 years perking up the Park City, Bernardi now wants to conquer New Haven. “It’s a great city for us to look for a permanent home in,” Bernardi said in a phone interview a couple of weeks ago. “We want to stay in the New Haven area. There are a lot of things here like what we do—the children’s museum…”

Bernardi’s first show in town is dead on arrival. That’s on purpose. Cinderella Skeleton—The Musical is based on the popular picture book by prolific kid’s-lit author Robert D. San Souci. It plays in the Arts Hall of the Educational Center for the Arts, at the corner of Orange and Audubon streets in New Haven, for the next two weekends, Oct. 21-23 and 28-30 with performances Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 & 5:30 p.m. and Sun at 2 p.m. More details, and ticket sales, here.

San Souci’s book (vividly illustrated by the nationally syndicated political cartoonist David Catrow) retells the Cinderella story with a Tim Burton/Neil Gaiman graveyard slant. The rhyming, rigor-mortis-stricken romp has the bony title character fleeing “Prince Charnel”’s ball and losing not just a slipper but her whole brittle foot:

Cinderella Skeleton,

Ignoring the thump of her footless stump,

Reached her coach and cried, “Away!

I must be home by the break of day!”

They raced pell-mell past the palace gate;

The prince kept pleading, “Lady, wait!”

In his hand, a foot—in his throat, a lump.

Ain’t that charming? Bernardi had been wanting to adapt the book for years when he was finally granted the rights by San Souci in 2006. It was staged that year at Downtown Cabaret but wouldn’t stay dead. It’s being resurrencted for New Haven at Halloweentime with the same actress, Mary Mannix, who starred as Cinderella Skeleton five years ago. Jimmy Johansmeyer designed the costumes, and also performs in the show as “Tall Bony Jane,” one of the evil stepsisters. The songs were composed by Killingsworth-based composer Scott Simonelli. “This was the first show that Scott and I did together,” Bernardi says, “and we’ve done a dozen shows since. The score isn’t frightening—it’s sweet pop music.”

Besides big productions such as Cinderella Skeleton, Bernardi tours short shows around public schools and occasionally does strictly adult fare. He and Joe Landry (whose adaptation of the Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life will be at the Long Wharf Theatre Dec. 7-31) did a reading of Lifeboat Darling, a spoof of the Alfred Hitchcock/Tallulah Bankhead disaster flick Lifeboat, at Firehouse 12 last year.

But grown-up tastes are taken into account on every show Bert Bernardi does. “For Mom and Dad, a lot of children’s theater can be painful to sit through,” he admits. “I try to do something everybody enjoys. As far as the writing goes, I learned from the greats—Disney, Bugs Bunny, I Love Lucy and The Three Stooges.” The hour-long, two-act Cinderella Skeleton, Bernardi says, is “structured like a musical. He intones the opening lines, about a magical graveyard.

Another reason to attend: Sugar Bakery and Sweet Shop, which won the Cupcake Wars competition on the Food Network, has fashioned a special corpse-themed cupcake in honor of Cinderella Skeleton, the Musical. The terrifying treat is available only at the East Haven bakery… and during intermissions at the ECA Arts Hall.

Bert Bernardi’s hoping to adapt more contemporary children’s books for the stage. It’s something he started exploring in the final years of his tenure at Bridgeport, and though he sighs that the process “can take years,” he’s found books that are worth the patience and effort. One of them, Otto the Boy Who Loved Cars, is by a established children’s author Kara LaReau, who happened to perform in Bernardi’s Downtown Cabaret Theatre ensemble company back in the 1980s.

He’s also happy with his new location, which is behaving like a brick-and-mortar fairy godmother. “The Arts Hall is a lovely space. The ECA has been very welcoming, and wants more.”

Bring out your dead!

David Catrow illustration from Robert San Souci's Cinderella Skeleton. The book was published in 2000 by Harcourt Inc.'s Silver Whistle imprint.

Aaron Jafferis, one of several theater-savvy recipients of 2011 Arts Awards from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. The awards ceremony is Dec. 2 at the New Haven Lawn Club.

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven has announced who’s getting its 2011 Arts Awards.

These awards are cool. There’s always a loose theme—this year it’s “Great Adaptations”—but the recipients are chosen for deep and longstanding commitment to the local arts community. (Objectivity prize: I was given one of these sweet statuettes in 2001, and have served on the jury twice, including just last year.)

A couple of names on this year’s list are fairly new to the are—Will Baker’s been in his post for less than a year, and while A Broken Umbrella Theatre has been producing shows in town for four years, other companies (Elm Shakespeare, for instance) took much longer to earn Arts Award recognition.

The awards ceremony, held each winter at the New Haven Lawn Club, is a highlight of the community arts calendar. Sure, some of the patrons can be pretentious, but there are always unpredictable moments and heartfelt speeches and rousing speeches about how we should support the arts in New Haven, shouldn’t we?

This year’s awards ceremony is Dec. 2. And the recipients will be:

• A Broken Umbrella Theatre
• Institute Library Executive Director Will Baker
• Thea Buxbaum of Westville Village Renaissance Alliance.
• Eileen Carpinella, executive director of the non-profit Young Audiences Arts for Learning Connecticut.
• Playwright/performer/teacher/rapper Aaron Jafferis.

Baba David Coleman, who already has an Arts Award (from 2002), is receiving the C. Newton Schenk III Award for Lifetime Achievement.

I certainly can’t find fault with these choices. I’ve been an Institute Library member for years and can attest to the fresh energy that Will Baker’s brought to this wondrous 185-year-old institution. He’s given the place an online presence, recently held a fundraising book sale there and is encouraging a range of new events, from gallery exhibits to readings and lectures.

Thea Buxbaum’s been shortlisted for an Arts Award for years, due to her perserverance in finding and maintaining affordable housing for artists in New Haven’s culture-happy Westville neighborhood.

I’ve known Aaron Jafferis since he was a teenaged intern at the New Haven Advocate in the mid-1990s. Aaron shared in an Arts Award a few years ago, when the Fair Haven-based Bregamos Theatre Company won after producing his musical Kingdom, about New Haven street gangs. But Aaron’s done many notable projects before and since Kingdom. He won an Open Rap Slam championship at the National Poetry Slam, performed his hip-hop play No Lie at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and elsewhere. His current work-in-progress Stuck Elevator was developed at the Yale Institute for Music Theatre in the summer of 2010. He’s also been devising original works with weighty social themes as an instructor at New Haven’s Educational Center for the Arts. Aaron’s work is unfailingly progressive and multiculturally rich. He’s unified some disparate arts communities in town, and this honor clinches it.

Not much to say about A Broken Umbrella Theatre that’s not in this post I just wrote about the company’s latest site-specific, local-historical production Play With Matches. Their originality and enthusiasm has boosted the entire local small theater scene.

Baba David Coleman is the longtime percussionist for the Afro-Semitic Experience one of the finest jazz/world ensembles anywhere. I reviewed the band’s latest album on my main scribblers.us site, here.
Coleman, who besides being an awesome drummer is a great teacher and a Yoruba priest, has suffered some debilitating health problems in recent months. A big benefit concert was held for him in May.

I don’t know Ms. Carpinella, but I’m sure she’s very nice too. Her organization is the Connecticut affiliate of VSA, “the international organization on arts and disability.” The acronym stands for Very Special Arts.

Congrats to all. Arts isn’t easy. You deserve these prizes.

Ryan Gardner as Ebenezer Beecher, New Haven-based founder of the Diamond Safety Matches Company, in A Broken Umbrella Theatre's latest production Play With Matches. Photo by Dana Astmann.

A Broken Umbrella theatre is named after a common household object. The company’ s latest show is performed in a factory. One of ABT’ s founding members runs a scrapyard.

But there’s nothing prefabricated, assembly-line or disposable about the troupe’ s work, which in recent years has been developed through originall research into
Intriguing footnotes of local history, then staged in environments which underscore the themes of the work. Last year’s offering, Vaudevillain, was about a real-life murder in Westville nearly a hundred years ago, and was produced at Westville’s Lyric Hall , which had been newly renovated by its owner John Cavaliere to resemble its early 1900s origins as a silent movie house. The company’s next work, scheduled for spring, will likely be about the progressive local interest in “bicycles, corsets and women’s liberation” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, set in a Westville factory space.
But first that old warehouse, at 446A Blake Street, will house the creepy and inventive Play With Matches, Oct. 21-Nov. 6. Tickets and details can be found here.

A Broken Umbrella first unfurled a decade ago in Pennsylvania, then made inroads into the fertile Chicago small theater scene. When company members Ian and Rachel Alderman moved to New Haven, where Ian had grown up and where he now helps run his family’s scrapyard business, they packed A Broken Umbrella with them. Miraculously, other veterans of the troupe’s Midwestern line-up, Ryan Gardner (a shop carpenter at the Yale Repertory Theatre) and Ruben Ortiz, also found work in the New Haven area.

But though much of the troupe has reunited, A Broken Umbrella’s mission has changed. When the company formed at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, it was doing improv comedy under the name Uninvited Guests and presenting classic scripted shows such as Waiting for Godot (which was performed at a maximum security prison). In New Haven, they’ve become known for “sharing with its audiences, by way of off-the-beaten path, site-specific and thought-provoking productions, the legends, lore, people, and places that have contributed to the compelling history of New Haven and the lives of those who have long called the city home.” That’s a quote from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, which has just announced that A Broken Umbrella will be receiving one of the council’s coveted Arts Awards at a ceremony in December.

“There’s something appealing about taking on new ideas in a city you live in,” says Ian Alderman. His family’s been a part of New Haven since the 1880s. He calls the family business, Alderman-Dow Iron & Metal on Chapel Street, “the longest running show in town”—founded in 1895, it’s the city’s oldest scrapyard—and often finds ideal theater set pieces and props there. “We needed a stainless steel morgue table for Vaudevillain, and one just appeared at work.”

When asked if he’s a history geek who finds theatrical applications for quirky historical tidbits he picks up, he turns the question on its head. “It’s more of a theater geekdom,” he suggests. The impetus for Play With Matches was an item in local historian Colin Caplan’s book Westville: Tales from a Connecticut Hamlet, but if the tale hadn’t included “secret panels and Ebenezer Beecher and how he had something to do with matches,” it probably wouldn’t have inspired Alderman to turn it into the latest ABT production. The show’s being promoted as a Halloween-friendly mystery about “the quirky New Haven inventor Ebenezer Beecher, who ignited a spark that would set the world ablaze with his automated matchstick machine. … This show takes you back to 1852, when a mansion called Blonstone stood where the Mitchell Library is today. Filled with secrets, not yet with books, the building knew that progress has a price.”

The title characters in Play With Matches. Photo by Dana Astmann.

“This show is not the story of Ebenezer Beecher,” says Alderman, who’s directing Play With Matches from a script by Jason Patrick Wells. “It’s 80 percent fact and 100 percent theater. There are elements of reality in the work, but we don’t want the history to hinder the show.”

Play With Matches is A Broken Umbrella Theatre’s fifth original work in three years. Alderman calls it “the most complex piece we have ever done.” It also has the longest run of any ABU show in New Haven so far—three weekends. Previous ABT productions sold out rapidly, but seats are still available for this one.

Westville’s Mitchell Branch Library was considered as a performance venue, since it was built on the very site where some spooky events depicted in the play took place. But when Alderman preferred the empty warehouse space on Blake Street, which he discovered had its own connections to the inventor. “Beecher had a hand in building it, right across the street from his Diamond Match Company. For A Broken Umbrella, the appropriate space is essential to the project.”

The company isn’t just creative with its use of space. It openly plays with concepts of time and human energy as well. Vaudevillain has a much larger cast than it technically needed, making for a riotous barroom scene, and a short running time, which ratcheted up the show’s pell-mell suspense. Alderman puts great stock in this “element of surprise,” making each new show a fresh challenge for both the company and its loyal audience.

Play With Matches runs about 80 minutes, Alderman says, and has about “20 people working on it,” 12 of them acting in the show. Several have multiple duties: Matthew Gaffney, for instance, both performs and serves as Technical Director. Jason Patrick Wells penned the script, acts, and designed the lighting.

Play With Matches playwright/lighting designer Jason Patrick Wells (left) and Technical Director Matthew Gaffney, as they appear in the performance. Photo by Dana Astmann.

A Broken Umbrella currently has around two dozen active members. “It’s the people who have joined A Broken Umbrella in New Haven who have made it what is. We’ve been in existence for 10 years, but only been alive for four.”

Which is where the company name comes in. Asked to explain A Broken Umbrella, Alderman has three answers: “First, everybody has a story about a broken umbrella. Then, it’s also a familiar theater comedy image, of the cane and top hat. Also, after we did Waiting for Godot in college, we all went to separate places—but stayed together under this umbrella.”

Nice dry place to light some matches.

Have you noticed how almost none of the reviews of the Footloose film remake have bothered to mention that, between the original 1984 Kevin Bacon movie and the new Kenny Wormald one, Footloose was also a long-running Broadway musical? This is an egregious oversight, since some of the elements which have been ballyhooed as virtues of the Hollywood remake were present in that stage adaptation. This includes a deeper appreciation of the car-crash tragedy which sets the town of Beaumont into mourning and leads to the ban on dancing which so frustrates the impetuous Ren.
The musical had a long gestation, which included a production at Bridgeport’s Downtown Cabaret Theatre in 1996, over two years before the show opened on Broadway. Footloose’s first London production was rather recent, beginning as a tour in 2004 then settling into a West End run from 2006-07.
There was a 10th anniversary U.S. revival tour which played the Shubert in New Haven just three years ago.
I have fond memories of the stage Footloose, particularly the tour which came to the Shubert in late 1999 (having played Hartford’s Bushnell earlier that year). It featured Christian Borle, now an acknowledged Broadway commodity, as Ren’s pal Willard. Borle had come through the Shubert in 1996 in a non-Equity production of West Side Story, as a most animated Riff. Footloose was an Equity tour which landed Borle on Broadway as Willard for the show’s final months in New York.
Footloose was part of a wave of musicals-based-on-movies which engulfed Broadway in the mid-1990s. (Others included Big, High Society, Victor/Victoria and Whistle Down the Wind).
Funny sort of snobbery, to ignore all that in connection with the Footloose film remake, wouldn’t you say?

Every season the Shubert has at least one amazing booking that demonstrates how hard the place works to maintain its unique reputation in American theater history.

In recent years, the Shubert has hosted the construction and rehearsal of the national tours of Jersey Boys and Hair.

This year the Shubert nabbed Fela!, the cutting edge musical about the revered Afrobeat provocateur Fela Kuti, who died in 1997. Fela! is only having a limited tour, hitting less than a dozen cities. The cast members hail from both the New York and London productions of the show.

Fela! ran for over a year on Broadway and won four of the 11 Tony awards for which it was nominated. A simulcast of the London production was screened in cinemas internationally in January. The show played in Fela’s native Nigeria last year.

It’s extremely rare that a national tour of a Broadway show will not make its Connecticut debut at the Bushnell in Hartford. The Bushnell has 2800 seats and was extensively renovated decades ago so it could accommodate the largest Broadway tours. The Shubert, whose concise original design has thwarted attempts to expand its stage or auditorium, has less than half the seats of the Bushnell. Shows such as Mamma Mia or Beauty and the Beast have played the Bushnell several times before.

New Haven’s the right city for Fela!

The first major biography of Fela was published in 2000 by Michael Veal, who teaches ethnomusicology at Yale and was a guest saxophonist with Fela’s band Egypt 80. Fela—The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon is an extraordinary resource, translating and explicating Fela’s lyrics and using firsthand reporting and interviews with Fela and his associates to tell a complicated story of a modern musical rebel.

Stephen Hendel, the producer who had the original idea to create a musical about Fela, went to Yale. (See Frank Rizzo’s interview with Hendel in the Hartford Courant here.)

Fela’s son Femi Kuti played New Haven Green a decade ago and opened for Dave Matthews Band in Hartford in 2009. When Antibalas—a band deeply inspired by Fela—came to Toad’s Place in New Haven in 2007, they were already deeply involved in the development of a musical based on Fela’s life and work. The main creative force behind Fela!—A New Musical was Bill T. Jones, who’s appeared on several occasions at New Haven’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas (including a poetry discussion in 2010 and a two-part dance concert this past summer). Jones conceived the show, directed and choreographed it, and co-wrote its book with Jim Lewis.

Fela! had its first Shubert performance tonight—Thursday, Oct. 20—and continues at the theater through a Sunday matinee Oct. 23. Bill T. Jones will be present for a pre-show Q&A at 1 p.m. before that final Sunday performance.

To borrow the title of one of the dynamic Afrobeat pioneer’s first singles… “Fela’s Special.” Tickets and details here.