Sunday Morning Michael Dale: The Wizard of Oz's Celebrity Pooch Tells All and An Anti-War Pageant Arrives From Kosovo

"Put on your leashes, fellas. It's going to be a long walk."

With a slinky swagger and an upturned attitude reminiscent of Bette Davis advising what you can do with your seatbelt, playwright/performer Megan Quick commences her riotously funny Hollywood exposé And Toto Too, guaranteeing a dog's-eye view of all the juicy gossip around filming The Wizard of Oz.

"I wanted to write a tell-all book like other Hollywood luminaries, but it's difficult. I don't have opposable thumbs and it's so hard to find a good publisher."

While filled with canine quips and even some Judy Garland-inspired musical moments ("You made me pee outside / I didn't want to do it...") what makes the show work so well is that so much of it is true.

Okay, so maybe the details of her sexual escapes with Lassie are fabricated a bit, but the play also covers how Toto was played by a Cairn Terrier named Terry, a veteran of numerous on-camera speaking roles. The Wizard of Oz was her only time credited but, scandalously, her real name wasn't used.

Together with trainer Carl Spitz, Terry devised a new method for directing animal actors through the use of hand signals. Though loaded with jokes, Quick, directed by Alyssa May Gold, also adds legit pathos regarding the relationship between dogs and humans, particularly when explaining how Kerry suffered a near-fatal injury during filming and Judy Garland personally took care of her scene partner while she recovered.

Canine/feline bonding is also on display with keyboard accompanist Whitney Wallace introduced as Minerva, the cat star of Breakfast At Tiffany's.

After the play won awards and fans at the recent FRIGID Festival, I caught And Toto Too at the Kraine Theatre as part of the 22nd Annual EstroGenius Festival, which ends today. Created to promote theatre works created by women, the festival's mission has been expanded to include gender non-conforming artists.

"Immediately Following Mandatory Happy Hour With The Boss"

Poet Molly Kirschner got a good laugh announcing that as the title of the opening piece in her very enjoyable EstroGenius Festival appearance.

Her first reading since before the pandemic, Kirschner simply stood at a microphone with pages in her hand, reading several dozen new poems that were all about a minute or less in length, before an appreciative crowd that, as I gathered from the talkback, was full of fans of her published works.

While Kirschner draws inspiration from "science, eros, and the absurd", I was more drawn to her acerbic contemporary observations and would be hard-pressed to find a better description of New York life than, "I am starring in a comedy show for which I am the only audience. For some reason, they keep it on the air."

Fortunately, Molly Kirschner had her show videotaped and posted for free viewing. Enjoy.

Maybe it's me, but...

...I seriously doubt Ellen Stewart ever thought there was only one way.

As David Henry Hwang explained in Soft Power...

...one of the strengths of art is its ability to influence and educate gently through entertainment. I, for one, will admit that most of the understanding I've retained about American history has come through theatre. I had never heard of the New York draft riots before listening to the Original Broadway Cast Album of Maggie Flynn, and I hadn't a clue about the nuances involved with the beginning of Japanese/American relations before seeing Pacific Overtures.

And even when I walked into The Theatre at St. Clements for the Tony-honored Woodie King Jr.'s New Federal Theatre's world premiere of Charles L. White's Gong Lum's Legacy (tickets $39; $20 students/seniors), I was assuming the title referred to a character in the play, and not a controversial Supreme Court case.

Set in the 1920s in a Mississippi Delta town, the play starts off as a sweet and charming romantic comedy with the familiar situation of family friction getting in the way of young lovers going against cultural traditions, but it evolves into something more discomforting.

Chinese immigrant Joe Ting (Eric Yang) tells Lucy Sims (DeShawn White), the Black schoolteacher he's fallen for, that his father Charlie (Henry Yuk) wants him to marry a Chinese woman, even if he has to send for a stranger from overseas, because that's the way it's done in their culture.

But Charlie is also convinced that the Supreme Court case of Gong Lum v Rice, where a Chinese immigrant claimed his American-born children had the right to attend their district's white public school instead of the poorly funded school for Black children, will be decided in a way that will declare Chinese-Americans legally equal to whites, and he's concerned that marriage to a Black woman would harm his son's status.

Director Elizabeth Van Dyke's strong ensemble includes Alinca Hamilton as Lucy's supportive friend and Anthony Goss as Lucy's brother, who is willing to side with any member of the financially well-off Ting family that will help him fulfill his dream of owning a barber shop.

The lingering message of how institutionalized racism can create a competition for acceptance among marginalized groups could probably use a little more focus, but at this beginning stage, Gong Lum's Legacy is a very interesting and promising piece.

New Math...

Sarah Jessica Parker + Neil Simon = perfection.

It's one thing to sit in the audience of an anti-war drama from the comfort and safety of a world superpower...

...but I can only imagine what it was like for citizens of Kosovo, a country with a recent bloody history whose right to independence is disputed by half the world, to witness Balkan Bordello, Jeton Neziraj's contemporary adaptation of Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, staged by Blerta Neziraj, a noted director who is also the playwright's spouse.

After premiering at Qendra Multimedia, in Kosovo's capital city of Prishtina, where the author serves as artistic director, and playing at Theater Atelje 212 in Belgrade, Serbia, the internationally-cast produ.ction has arrived for a brief run at La MaMa (tickets $25, Students/Seniors: $20), performed in English.

Played in designer Marija Kalabić's café setting, where citizens await the arrival of their country's army after it obliterated an enemy city, Clytemnestra, played as a tragic torch singer by Onni Johnson, croons of her sorrow in knowing her abusive husband, General Agamemnon (George Drance, dripping with toxic testosterone) will be returning, while employee Esme (Valois Mickens), scoffs at his heroism.

"I bet they lived better at the front than we did here. If they fired a couple bullets, they'd party for two days after. And if they fired more, there'd be orgy after orgy."

Though the victors arrive with promises of safety and freedom for all, the artists and intellectuals (and bartenders) know better. Told with pageantry, dancing and overt symbolism (a gun that shoots out dollar bills, a blast of glitter that celebrates bloodshed), Balkan Bordello is a lively and memorable night of political theatre.

Curtain Line...

Bookwriters are musical theatre's unsung heroes.