THE LOST AND THE DEAD
posted by James Reel
In the latest Tucson Weekly, I review very good productions of newish plays with local connections. First, what you might call a “found” work:
Two years ago, after viewing a video of a New York production of the musical stage work _Lost_, I peered into my crystal ball and declared, "Arizona Onstage Productions could surely do a brilliant job with the material." (See "Finding 'Lost,' Nov. 9, 2006.) I was right. The company has mounted a heartfelt production of this dark fairy tale, scored by former Tucsonan Jessica Grace Wing. In her 20s, Wing moved to New York, where she directed short films and wrote off-Broadway theater scores. In 2003, barely into her 30s, she succumbed to colon cancer, but not before completing _Lost_; she worked on it until literally hours before she died. Less than a month later, _Lost_ was mounted in New York to highly favorable reviews, but it seems that it had not been performed in the intervening five years. The available libretto and lyrics didn't reflect changes made for the New York International Fringe Festival production, and the orchestration, which Wing didn't have time to complete to her satisfaction, needed work. Arizona Onstage's Kevin Johnson and his team fashioned a new edition, polishing the orchestration until the afternoon of last week's Tucson opening. Now the work is in shape to travel from one company to another, and it certainly deserves to.
You can read the full review here, and then proceed to my evaluation of a new play by Tucsonan Gavin Kayner:
Are we defined by our stories, or by our actions? That's a question posed by a character in the new Gavin Kayner play _Noche de los Muertos_, set toward the end of the Mexican revolutionary period. The storytellers are adherents to the Catholic church; the men and women of action are the secularists behind the revolution. Which of those two forces, incompatible when pushed to their heights of fervor, would set the course for 20th-century Mexico? _Noche de los Muertos_ is the latest offering from Beowulf Alley Theatre Company, and it opened just in time for the Day of the Dead, a time to honor one's ancestors, who are said to visit the altars we prepare and nibble on the snacks we leave, although, unlike Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, they leave nothing in return; having given life to us some decades before seems a sufficient enough gesture. _Noche_ is set on the Day of the Dead in 1927 in the town of Magdalena, not far south of Nogales. A young schoolteacher and her entourage have arrived to take over public education from the local priest, one of only about 40 in Mexico who have not yet been killed or driven from their posts by the post-revolutionary government and its supporters. But Catholic partisanship remains strong in rural areas and frontier towns like Magdalena, and the priest refuses to give up his post. In his opinion, and that of supporters like the woman who runs the local cantina, it's the teacher who must be driven out.
Learn how Kayner develops his themes and what the Beowulf Alley team does with them here.
