Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat got its start as a cantata for a boys' school choir. So it's inherently well-suited to children's theater.
And Pumpkin Theatre's holiday production is as charming and cleverly staged as any children's show you're likely to see this season.
Director/choreographer Todd Pearthree and his design team include numerous witty touches in this hourlong rendition of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's oft-produced Old Testament musical.
For example, when Joseph (mellow-voiced Brent Bell) is sold to an Ishmaelite by his brothers, the Ishmaelite's camel is represented by a chorus girl wearing a giant pack of Camel cigarettes. When Joseph's fortunes improve and Pharaoh gives him a chariot, the vehicle is an electric kiddy car. And when his now-starving brothers grovel for grub, the chow Joseph gives them comes in bags from Saks and McDonald's, as well as plastic lunch boxes.
Not all of these touches are original (the dancing cigarette pack, for one, has shown up in other productions). But the overall effect blends nicely with the eclectic playfulness of the piece, whose score ranges from rock and roll to Calypso and country-western, and whose characters include an Elvis-impersonating Pharaoh (Matthew J. Bowerman) and a hip narrator (played by pert Lauren Spencer-Harris with warmth and lovely vocal clarity).
Spencer-Harris makes her entrance by stepping out of the pages of an oversized storybook, which is opened by one of the children in the adorable nine-member kids' chorus. And though adults play most of the major roles, the children on stage -- elementary schoolers to high schoolers -- deliver performances every bit as slick as their elders.
The work of such youngsters as 11-year-old Billy Siems, who plays Joseph's brother, Benjamin, and 9-year-old Tanner Blaize, who plays a chorus member who keeps trying to push his way into the action, offers a fine testament to Pumpkin Theatre's training programs.
All in all, Pumpkin's Joseph is a fine way to introduce children to live theater -- and keep their parents amused at the same time.
Pumpkin Theatre is presenting Joseph at the Hannah More Arts Center at St. Timothy's School for Girls, 8400 Greenspring Ave. Show times are 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $10. For more information call 410-828-1814.
Maryland playwright
Maryland native Kia Corthron is one of seven playwrights who will have full-length plays produced at this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Corthron's play Slide Glide the Slippery Slope is about long-separated twins who are reunited as adults and appear to have little in common -- except an interest in cloning. The play is also slated to be produced at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum in June. Corthron's Splash Hatch on the E Going Down received its world premiere at Center Stage in 1997 and was subsequently staged at London's Donmar Warehouse.
Two other playwrights who have had work produced at Center Stage are among this year's Humana authors: Bridget Carpenter, whose play The Faculty Room takes place at an embattled high school, and Russell Davis, whose The Second Death of Priscilla has settings that range from a bedroom to an imaginary universe.
Other titles in the 27th annual Kentucky festival include: Orange Lemon Egg Canary, by Rinne Groff; The Lively Lad, by Quincy Long; and Omnium-Gatherum, by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros. All seven playwrights are new to the festival, which numbers among its past successes, D.L. Coburn's The Gin Game, Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart and William Mastrosimone's Extremities.
The 2003 festival, which runs March 2-April 13, will also include three 10-minute plays, a Spoken Word Poetry project and a dramatic anthology about phobias, to be written by 16 playwrights. Writers for these have yet to be announced. For more information about the Humana Festival, call 800-4ATL-TIX or visit www.actorstheatre.org.