Po'okela Awards:
Lina Jeong Doo
Nominations:
Mary Chestnut
Stefanie Okuda
Derek Daniels
Directed by
STEPHANIE CONCHING
Musical Direction by
LINA JEONG DOO
Choreographed by
DEREK DANIELS
Set Design by
TOM GIZA
Costume Design by
KATHY KOHL
Lighting Design by
CHET TONI
Eva Peron - MARY CHESTNUT
Juan Peron - ALEX SANTIAGO
Che - JOSHUA HARRIS
Magaldi - KALANI HICKS
Mistress - STEFANIE OKUDA
The Company - Emily Darigo, Elaine Endo, Ruby Equila, Kendra Eurbanks, Michael Feliciani,
Shadae Higa, Brett Hudson, Serafin Justo, Alvin Kitamura, Ginnie Little, Bob MacGregor, Diana Mills,
Frances Oka, Stefanie Okuda, Darylene Santiago, Ed Suka, Nicole Sullivan, Deenie Tagudin Kam,
Donna Thomasson, Jonathon Veles, Viet Vo, Jimi Wheeler, Sean Yamura, Ed Yu
Children - (under the direction of JUNE CHUN) Alyssa Chin, Kyla Hsia, Marcus Shinbo, Evan
Suemori, Ryan Suemori, Philip-Andrew Yuen
Thursday, May 17, 2001
Dynamic women
bring emotion
to ACTs Evita
Review by John Berger
The role of Juan Peron's teenage mistress is a small one, but Stefanie Okuda makes her moment one of the highlights of Army Community Theatre's inviting production of "Evita."
"Another Suitcase in Another Hall" marks the moment when Peron's new mistress, Eva Duarte, enters Peron's apartment and brusquely informs the younger woman that she's been dismissed. The scene says much about the character of Duarte and Peron. She's cold and cruel and vindictive in her victory over the less experienced woman. Peron, the politically shrewd soldier, remains outside and has his new lover earn her place by doing the dirty work of telling his former lover to hit the road.
Okuda makes that key scene her own. She sings it beautifully and physically portrays the hapless woman's emotional devastation as well.
How Eva, born poor and illegitimate, became the glamorous and controversial Evita Peron, first lady of Argentina, is the story Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber tell in the musical. Suffice it to say that "Evita" is a bit more PG-13 in theme and content than most of the fare at ACT.
"Evita" dissects the story of an intelligent and ruthless woman who became the 15-year-old mistress of a popular singer, dumped the singer when she met a man better placed to advance her career, and repeated the process until she met Peron.
Working-class Argentines and the millions of impoverished "shirtless ones" embraced her as one of their own, even though much of the money collected on their behalf by the Eva Peron Foundation disappeared before it could reach the intended recipients.
Joshua Harris plays Che Guevara, who provides cynical commentary as the narrator. Che is to Evita what Judas was to Jesus in "Jesus Christ Superstar."
Director Stephanie Conching makes ACT's "Evita" a smooth and colorful social parable, maintaining a dramatic crispness from start to finish. Nothing feels rushed. Nothing seems too long.
Lina Jeong Doo (musical director) gives the cast a solid musical score. Tom Giza (set design) opts for stylization in framing the action; that approach works well. Derek Daniels (choreography) doesn't have many conventional production numbers to work with, but he captures the energy of urban Argentina with "Buenos Aires" and neatly illustrates Eva's predatory climb in "Goodnight and Thank You."
Audio quality was a problem on opening night. At times, microphones weren't turned on fast enough to catch singers' first words. Several impassioned performances were allowed to spike beyond the capability of the speakers. Those problems should be resolved by now.
ACT veteran Mary Chesnut does a fine job in the title role. Forget the movie, forget the several other productions that have played here, and enjoy her interpretation. "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" is the show's grand anthem -- and she does it well. She establishes herself as a dynamic Eva early in Act 1 and goes on to deliver an engaging performance throughout.
Rice and Lloyd Webber weren't interested in Peron except as the final rung on Eva's ladder to power. But Conching and Alex Santiago as Peron show Peron's feelings grow deeper as the relationship develops. It is a fine debut for Santiago.
Kalani Hicks is another asset with his portrayal of the tango singer Magaldo, "the first man to be of use" to Eva.
Harris had a harder time than he should have had in establishing Che as the cynical observer of the political circus. His first number, "Oh What a Circus," is intended to do that, but it didn't happen on opening night. A thin audio mix sapped much of the song's dramatic impact, but there were other times when it was hard to tell if it was the sound operator or Harris who was responsible for Che's lack of presence.
At times it seemed the audience was simply missing the acid-etched humor of Che's observations and the verbal sparring between other characters.
"Evita"
On stage: 7:30 p.m. today to Saturday and May 24 to 26, Richardson Theatre, Fort Shafter. Tickets $12 and $15. Call 438-4480 or 438-5320.
Friday May 4, 2001
Don't cry for 'Annie' . . . 'Evita' is here
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer
In the beginning, it was a woman named "Annie," not "Evita," who was slated for residency this month at Richardson Theatre.
That was until Army Community Theatre director Vanita Rae Smith got word in June 2000 from the Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical Library in New York that she would not be receiving their go-ahead to stage the duo's perennial "Annie Get Your Gun" in her Fort Shafter theater the following May. Also, Smith was told a touring company of "Annie" might come to Hawai'i, which would preclude a community theater production; that never happened.
With 1,500 "Annie Get Your Gun" tickets already sold a year from show date, Smith needed a replacement that would keep ticket buyers from the refund lines.
"I decided on the plane ride back from New York that 'Evita' might be a good choice for us," says Smith. "I had always loved the show and wanted to do it. The other challenge was that it was a (rock) opera, and ... (ACT) had never done an opera before."
Composed in the potent '70s Broadway musical dream factory of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice, "Evita" recasts Argentine first lady Eva Peron's life as a mythic rags-to-riches rock musical tragedy.
A quasi real-life story told a la opera entirely through song, "Evita" enjoyed long runs on both London and Broadway stages in the late 1970s, even spawning a near-instant musical classic in "Don't Cry For Me Argentina." The musical's success eventually inspired a 1996 movie version starring music diva Madonna as Eva.
After a couple of directors accepted the project and eventually passed on it, Smith asked local actor ("Carousel"), director ("Jackie: An American Life") and Hawaii Opera Theatre educational coordinator Stephanie Curtis Conching if she wanted the job in February. A mere three months before opening night.
"I knew Vanita had a couple of people in line before me, and I didn't mind that at all," remembers Curtis Conching. "I may have taken a night to think about it and doublecheck with my husband, but I still said 'yes' fairly quickly."
With a month until March cast rehearsals, Curtis Conching sunk herself into researching a musical she had never seen performed on stage or on screen.
"That was a good thing or maybe bad . . . I don't know," says the ever-candid Curtis Conching, laughing about her lack of familiarity with "Evita." "I knew it was about Eva Peron and was sort of a metaphor for her life and the job that she did in Argentina, but I really had no clue as to even how many people I might need on stage or anything like that." So why the interest?
"I've staged a lot of children's touring productions for (HOT). . . but this was an opportunity for me to do a huge, full-scale musical production in community theater," says Curtis Conching. "I liked the fact the show is a giant metaphor ... there's opportunities to experiment with so many scenes. I figured I had to give it a go."
Conching studied the script, bought a copy of the score and in a move that might upset "Evita" stage production purists even "broke down" and checked out a video copy of the movie.
"I had a feeling that the movie wouldn't sway me in any way because it's so cinematic," says Curtis Conching. "What it did was give me some ideas of the types of community for the ensemble like the ordinary citizens in Eva's life, and the jobs they did."
Curtis Conching ended up keeping faithful to the original Lloyd Webber/Rice Broadway "Evita" production.
Among a few other things, that means that ACT audiences won't be hearing the composers' "You Must Love Me" specifically written for the movie version in the hopes of winning an Academy Award for best song. The composition scored the film's single Oscar win.
Though not the initial lure that drew her into the director's chair, Curtis Conching eventually grew more and more fond of "Evita's" intensely crowd-pleasing story the deeper she got into her production.
"It's really a wonderful story about this amazing woman who came from nowhere and was able to work her way up to being on equal status with the aristocrats, without ever really being accepted by them," says Curtis Conching. "She assisted so many people that they raised themselves from a poverty level to a middle class that she created, basically. It was this one woman's strength and perseverance that basically allowed them to do that."
Take that, Annie Oakley.
Presented by Army Community Theatre
7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 10, and May 11-12, 17-19, 24-26
Richardson Theatre, Fort Shafter
Adults $12, $15; children, $6, $8
438-4480
STEPHANIE CONCHING
Musical Direction by
LINA JEONG DOO
Choreographed by
DEREK DANIELS
Set Design by
TOM GIZA
Costume Design by
KATHY KOHL
Lighting Design by
CHET TONI
Eva Peron - MARY CHESTNUT
Juan Peron - ALEX SANTIAGO
Che - JOSHUA HARRIS
Magaldi - KALANI HICKS
Mistress - STEFANIE OKUDA
The Company - Emily Darigo, Elaine Endo, Ruby Equila, Kendra Eurbanks, Michael Feliciani, Shadae Higa, Brett Hudson, Serafin Justo, Alvin Kitamura, Ginnie Little, Bob MacGregor, Diana Mills, Frances Oka, Stefanie Okuda, Darylene Santiago, Ed Suka, Nicole Sullivan, Deenie Tagudin Kam, Donna Thomasson, Jonathon Veles, Viet Vo, Jimi Wheeler, Sean Yamura, Ed Yu
Children - (under the direction of JUNE CHUN) Alyssa Chin, Kyla Hsia, Marcus Shinbo, Evan Suemori, Ryan Suemori, Philip-Andrew Yuen
Thursday, May 17, 2001
Dynamic women
bring emotion
to ACTs Evita
Review by John Berger
The role of Juan Peron's teenage mistress is a small one, but Stefanie Okuda makes her moment one of the highlights of Army Community Theatre's inviting production of "Evita."
"Another Suitcase in Another Hall" marks the moment when Peron's new mistress, Eva Duarte, enters Peron's apartment and brusquely informs the younger woman that she's been dismissed. The scene says much about the character of Duarte and Peron. She's cold and cruel and vindictive in her victory over the less experienced woman. Peron, the politically shrewd soldier, remains outside and has his new lover earn her place by doing the dirty work of telling his former lover to hit the road.
Okuda makes that key scene her own. She sings it beautifully and physically portrays the hapless woman's emotional devastation as well.
How Eva, born poor and illegitimate, became the glamorous and controversial Evita Peron, first lady of Argentina, is the story Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber tell in the musical. Suffice it to say that "Evita" is a bit more PG-13 in theme and content than most of the fare at ACT.
"Evita" dissects the story of an intelligent and ruthless woman who became the 15-year-old mistress of a popular singer, dumped the singer when she met a man better placed to advance her career, and repeated the process until she met Peron.
Working-class Argentines and the millions of impoverished "shirtless ones" embraced her as one of their own, even though much of the money collected on their behalf by the Eva Peron Foundation disappeared before it could reach the intended recipients.
Joshua Harris plays Che Guevara, who provides cynical commentary as the narrator. Che is to Evita what Judas was to Jesus in "Jesus Christ Superstar."
Director Stephanie Conching makes ACT's "Evita" a smooth and colorful social parable, maintaining a dramatic crispness from start to finish. Nothing feels rushed. Nothing seems too long.
Lina Jeong Doo (musical director) gives the cast a solid musical score. Tom Giza (set design) opts for stylization in framing the action; that approach works well. Derek Daniels (choreography) doesn't have many conventional production numbers to work with, but he captures the energy of urban Argentina with "Buenos Aires" and neatly illustrates Eva's predatory climb in "Goodnight and Thank You."
Audio quality was a problem on opening night. At times, microphones weren't turned on fast enough to catch singers' first words. Several impassioned performances were allowed to spike beyond the capability of the speakers. Those problems should be resolved by now.
ACT veteran Mary Chesnut does a fine job in the title role. Forget the movie, forget the several other productions that have played here, and enjoy her interpretation. "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" is the show's grand anthem -- and she does it well. She establishes herself as a dynamic Eva early in Act 1 and goes on to deliver an engaging performance throughout.
Rice and Lloyd Webber weren't interested in Peron except as the final rung on Eva's ladder to power. But Conching and Alex Santiago as Peron show Peron's feelings grow deeper as the relationship develops. It is a fine debut for Santiago.
Kalani Hicks is another asset with his portrayal of the tango singer Magaldo, "the first man to be of use" to Eva.
Harris had a harder time than he should have had in establishing Che as the cynical observer of the political circus. His first number, "Oh What a Circus," is intended to do that, but it didn't happen on opening night. A thin audio mix sapped much of the song's dramatic impact, but there were other times when it was hard to tell if it was the sound operator or Harris who was responsible for Che's lack of presence.
At times it seemed the audience was simply missing the acid-etched humor of Che's observations and the verbal sparring between other characters.
"Evita"
On stage: 7:30 p.m. today to Saturday and May 24 to 26, Richardson Theatre, Fort Shafter. Tickets $12 and $15. Call 438-4480 or 438-5320.
Friday May 4, 2001
Don't cry for 'Annie' . . . 'Evita' is here
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer
Advertiser Staff Writer
In the beginning, it was a woman named "Annie," not "Evita," who was slated for residency this month at Richardson Theatre.
That was until Army Community Theatre director Vanita Rae Smith got word in June 2000 from the Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical Library in New York that she would not be receiving their go-ahead to stage the duo's perennial "Annie Get Your Gun" in her Fort Shafter theater the following May. Also, Smith was told a touring company of "Annie" might come to Hawai'i, which would preclude a community theater production; that never happened.
With 1,500 "Annie Get Your Gun" tickets already sold a year from show date, Smith needed a replacement that would keep ticket buyers from the refund lines.
"I decided on the plane ride back from New York that 'Evita' might be a good choice for us," says Smith. "I had always loved the show and wanted to do it. The other challenge was that it was a (rock) opera, and ... (ACT) had never done an opera before."
Composed in the potent '70s Broadway musical dream factory of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice, "Evita" recasts Argentine first lady Eva Peron's life as a mythic rags-to-riches rock musical tragedy.
A quasi real-life story told a la opera entirely through song, "Evita" enjoyed long runs on both London and Broadway stages in the late 1970s, even spawning a near-instant musical classic in "Don't Cry For Me Argentina." The musical's success eventually inspired a 1996 movie version starring music diva Madonna as Eva.
After a couple of directors accepted the project and eventually passed on it, Smith asked local actor ("Carousel"), director ("Jackie: An American Life") and Hawaii Opera Theatre educational coordinator Stephanie Curtis Conching if she wanted the job in February. A mere three months before opening night.
"I knew Vanita had a couple of people in line before me, and I didn't mind that at all," remembers Curtis Conching. "I may have taken a night to think about it and doublecheck with my husband, but I still said 'yes' fairly quickly."
With a month until March cast rehearsals, Curtis Conching sunk herself into researching a musical she had never seen performed on stage or on screen.
"That was a good thing or maybe bad . . . I don't know," says the ever-candid Curtis Conching, laughing about her lack of familiarity with "Evita." "I knew it was about Eva Peron and was sort of a metaphor for her life and the job that she did in Argentina, but I really had no clue as to even how many people I might need on stage or anything like that." So why the interest?
"I've staged a lot of children's touring productions for (HOT). . . but this was an opportunity for me to do a huge, full-scale musical production in community theater," says Curtis Conching. "I liked the fact the show is a giant metaphor ... there's opportunities to experiment with so many scenes. I figured I had to give it a go."
Conching studied the script, bought a copy of the score and in a move that might upset "Evita" stage production purists even "broke down" and checked out a video copy of the movie.
"I had a feeling that the movie wouldn't sway me in any way because it's so cinematic," says Curtis Conching. "What it did was give me some ideas of the types of community for the ensemble like the ordinary citizens in Eva's life, and the jobs they did."
Curtis Conching ended up keeping faithful to the original Lloyd Webber/Rice Broadway "Evita" production.
Among a few other things, that means that ACT audiences won't be hearing the composers' "You Must Love Me" specifically written for the movie version in the hopes of winning an Academy Award for best song. The composition scored the film's single Oscar win.
Though not the initial lure that drew her into the director's chair, Curtis Conching eventually grew more and more fond of "Evita's" intensely crowd-pleasing story the deeper she got into her production.
"It's really a wonderful story about this amazing woman who came from nowhere and was able to work her way up to being on equal status with the aristocrats, without ever really being accepted by them," says Curtis Conching. "She assisted so many people that they raised themselves from a poverty level to a middle class that she created, basically. It was this one woman's strength and perseverance that basically allowed them to do that."
Take that, Annie Oakley.
Presented by Army Community Theatre
7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 10, and May 11-12, 17-19, 24-26
Richardson Theatre, Fort Shafter
Adults $12, $15; children, $6, $8
438-4480