Review - Snow White

While you probably wouldn't expect period recordings of "Let's Do It" and "St. Louis Woman" to be part of the pre-show soundtrack for a family friendly production of Snow White, director/choreographer Austin McCormick's Company XIV has never been a group to provide the expected.

Making their home in an unnoticeable building on an unnoticeable block in a residential section of Brooklyn, Company XIV has been enthralling those in the know with their multimedia theatre/dance pieces that lean toward an elegant eroticism. Remarkably, they manage to engage in a dark and subtly sexual telling of the Grimm tale without being inappropriate for children. The young ones in the audience the evening I attended were quiet and attentive throughout the performance and seemed very enthused while applauding at the conclusion.

Jeff Takacs, who penned the text, also plays the ringmaster-type narrator who advises, "The gold you will see is just gilt. The kingdom and forest is plastic and steel. But the dancing feet are real."

But despite its phoniness, Zane Pihlstrom's set, highlighted by a silvery tree and a crystal chandelier, makes a lovely environment, enhanced by Olivera Gajic's costumes which has most of the company - men and women - dressed in corsets and primarily utilizes a palate of black, white and red.

The red is worn with dazzling presence by Laura Careless, who acts and dances the evil queen with captivating confidence and expression. There are times McCormick has her moving her body with lightning-fast physicality, only matched when she's paired with ensemble dancer Davon Rainey. Corey Tatarczuk's projections place nightmare mirror images of her on the floor, to which she reacts with pained madness as they taunt her with the news that she is not the fairest of all. The story has her delving into French, Spanish and Russian characters, which she does with comic brio, but her bravura moment is saved for the end, when the queen is fitted for freshly-molded iron shoes that send her wildly dancing to ease the pain of her scorched feet.

Snow White is played by the petite aerialist Gracie White, who performs striking acrobatic feats on a pair of hanging silk cloths and on a circular hoop suspended in air. (There are no dwarves in this telling and Snow spends much of her time lounging in the forest.) When the prince (Joseph McEachern) arrives, he is performing tricks on the ground inside a spinning hoop. Ensemble member Sam Hilbelink also impressively partakes in the silk climbing and tumbling. The varied recorded score uses classical, jazz and folk themes, with beautiful soprano tones sung live by Lauren-Michelle.

Takacs' text warns against the dangers of vanity, both in the queen's determination to kill Snow White for the sin of being fairer than her, and in Snow White's innocent susceptibility to the promise of becoming more beautiful. The queen nearly kills her three times, once by luring her with a slimming corset (which she intends to suffocate her with) and the next time with a poisoned comb. The inspiration for using a poisoned apple comes from the knowledge that the ingénue had been pretty much starving herself with little to eat during the winter months.

"Like nicotine and drink, children," the narrator warns," beauty to the vain only intensifies its thirst for more."

Photos by Steven Schreiber: Top: Gracie White and Laura Careless; Bottom: Laura Careless and Davon Rainey.

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Call me envious, but the genre of plays that feature smart, educated, financially well-off characters screwing up their lives under the knowing smirks of the maid serves as a kind of comfort food for me. And while the discomfort in class, racial and gender issues experienced by the LeVay family in Lydia R. Diamond's funny and quite heated family drama, Stick Fly, may seem a bit too familiar at times, director Kenny Leon and his terrific ensemble help deliver a lively evening.

The setting is the living room of the old-money LeVay's summer home in Martha's Vineyard. (The unique situation that would explain how they, a black family, would have had this home for generations is only hinted at, and it isn't pretty.) David Gallo's wonderfully detailed set displays classic hominess, but abstract touches allow us to see it through a jauntier eye. A valuable art collection is painted onto a wall, rather than having realistic individual props. The same wall is sliced open at an angle (as is a sculpture set at a table) to provide a peek into the kitchen.

Tracie Thoms is an endearing bundle of scattered energy - as fiercely intelligent as she is socially awkward - as Taylor, a grad-student entomologist (the title refers to a method of observing flying insects by attaching them to sticks) raised by a college professor mother who struggled to get her to school after they were abandoned for a new wife and family by her father, a famous author. Taylor is nervous from the outset about meeting the family of her new fiancé, Kent - nicknamed Spoon - (Dulé Hill), a promising writer, but she has no idea how much she's in for. She's intimidated by Spoon's neurosurgeon dad, Joe (an excellent Ruben Santiago-Hudson); the type that can switch from casual and loving to coldly judgmental in a flash. She feels guilty about being served by Cheryl (Condola Rashad), the young college-bound daughter of the family maid who's filling in for her ailing mom (The moments between Thoms and the multi-layered Rashad give the play its thickest tension.) and she explodes with anger in a discussion involving race relations with Kimber (Rosie Benton), the white girlfriend of Spoon's older brother Harold, aka Flip (Mekhi Phifer), a successful plastic surgeon and dad's favorite. But the privileged Kimber, who studies racial inequities in our education system, is skilled at keeping herself from seeming the outsider in such situations.

To make matters worse, Taylor and Flip had a brief past together years ago; a situation that was barely a blip on Flip's radar but tugged at Taylor's abandonment issues. And to make matters a little suspect, the expected arrival of Spoon and Flip's mom doesn't seem to be coming.

The various conflicts and squabbles that emerge, as well as the big kicker, are more entertaining than emotionally involving, and some scenes come off a bit too melodramatically compared with the others, but Stick Fly is continually funny and the issues brought up regarding class distinctions among black families are not common Broadway fare.

The big name above the title on the Cort Theatre's marquee belongs to only one of the play's twenty-one producers, singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, who also composed the instrumentals played between scenes; a collection of jazz/R&B vamps that provide the occasional breather. Some of them go on for quite a spell - the opening vamp was repeated so many times before anything happened that it was getting comical - but Leon smoothly glides the action in and out of the attractive licks.

Photos by Richard Termine: Top: Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Tracie Thoms; Bottom: Rosie Benton, Condola Rashad and Mekhi Phifer.

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