This review has been reposted courtesy of the League of Cincinnati Theatres. For more LCT reviews click here to visit their reviews page.
If you haven’t seen Transmigration, the CCM student written marathon of short, 30 minute plays, make a plan to go next year! It’s fun, fast, and furious and you get a peak into what’s on students’ minds. Many of the vignettes centered on making some sort of “migration, or journey to find something, leave something, or transform,” sort of like moving from schooling into the professional world and working their way through the intense four year journey through the CCM odyssey.
The students have a scant 2 weeks to write, rehearse, and perform the 30 minute pieces. It shows what these talented students can do with very little of the technical support they enjoy in a full production at CCM. Here’s a taste from each. Sadly, there are no students’ names in the program for individual praise:
Coulter Cliffs is sort of Grand Budapest Hotel meets The Shining. A hotel where once you enter, you can’t leave until a new person arrives to provide a swap. The audience votes on who can leave (or “win”) based on the most compelling story. Sort of like what happens when they graduate. Some have been there for 149 years—they never age of course. Who knows what’s waiting for them in the “real” world. The characters who made bold choices were the most successful in winning their escape. It was enjoyable and fun connecting to the characters.
A Fool’s Paradise was a favorite among the reviewers and is a community theatre in Boca Raton Florida; probably the worst graduation nightmare for these talented students! Hilarious musical compositions by the students and sung with great bravado, most notably by the “Mayor” of Boca, the old curmudgeon who leads this cast. The director-diva,Peaches Montgomery, the scariest fool in the “paradise” for her power and control over her universe, exhorts us to have a “Peachy Day” as she blindly props up her son, the piano player, who played expertly. We meet familiar characters like the perennial leads, so often seen in community theatre. Here they are brother and sister vying for Romeo and Juliet and happily provide the audience an “eeewww” factor in the love scenes. The football hero turned “actor” with Brad Pitt good looks, and the fresh newbie, are all drawn, no doubt, from the students’ own pre-CCM experiences.
Seven Feet Under was different from the other concept pieces and drew on a more dramatic through line that didn’t rely solely on humor. The vain and selfish Snow White sends the seven miners on a mission below to find “the treasure” and must face the monster the get it, another graduation truth. Nice monster puppet was created with cardboard and burlap and even some dry ice for effect. The “dwarves” were a good ensemble and played on their strengths as actors so that we very quickly identified and cared about their journey and demise.
cult(ured) was akin to drinking the Kool-Aid in this woodland cult of characters led by an iconic mother nature figure trolling for recruits–just like CCM. The characters, like the sanguine loner who promoted cocaine-flavored yogurt, were engaging, and the show had smartly showed transitions and the passage of time.
Neutral and Non Partisan: Very well written and performed! This cautionary tale about the very real possibility of big brother watching random, “average” Americans under the guise of psychological research. This employed great use of multi-media combined with layered performances.
Mandatory Fun: This was the only piece that was less than enthusiastically received by the panelists. In a robot game show where humans battle each other, the plot seemed too obvious and the characters shallow.
Well, you can’t win them all but even with a clinker or two, this is an exceptional evening celebrating enormous creativity and, as we always know we’re going to get from CCM,talent!
For more information on the production, click here.
Behind the Curtain Cincinnati 