"THE SUGAR BEAN SISTERS": OVER 85 PRODUCTIONS AND COUNTING!
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| San Jose Stage Company 2006 |
"THE METRO WEEKLY" (Silicon
Valley)
November, 2005Swamp
Things
Bayou siblings go over the top in Stage Company's outrageous 'Sugar Bean Sisters'
By Marianne Messina
Taking on a plot that sounds too outrageous to bear, San Jose Stage Company makes The Sugar
Bean Sisters work, sensationally - it feels a bit like Granny Clampett falls into "A Rose for Emily." Fascinating
and funny, the sisters Faye Clementine (Nancy Madden) and Willie Mae (Jeffra Cook) Nettles grab on from the first drawled
words out of Faye's mouth: "I got one nerve left, and you are dangling from it."
The knotted, contentious
relationship between the sisters in their crotchety Florida bayou cabin (picture what is known in Silicon Valley as a "tear-down")
drives this bristly story right on through the absurdities. And the deaths by flying cat, the family ghosts and the much-awaited
return visit of Martians seem no more disruptive than the odd character quirks of a good friend.
Dressed down
and back woodsy (costume designer Jeremy Cole hit the nail on this one), Madden's short, squat body suits the let-go appearance
of someone whose plans for the future involve being taken off by Martians. And the way she slyly pours water on electrical
wires as her sister Willie Mae handles them is pure impishness. The sisters are Latter Day Saints by way of handsome bell-ringing
proselyte. But where afraid-of-her-shadow, prim (bald, wig-sporting) Willie is desperate to marry the Mormon minister on her
way to Celestial Heaven, Faye is the cussing, drink-sneaking handywoman who provokes her sister with language like, "Makes
my ass want to chew tobacco."
Never overstated, Madden's Faye can give a withering look that crosses
patience and seething, and keeps us in suspense as to how far she's gone over to the dark side. But even the righteous
Miss Willie has her nasty outbursts, holding us ever between pity and empathy. The handsome minister calls (James Bigelow
gave him a nice combination of charm and whitewash); a potion-selling, poisonous-snake-collecting "Reptile Woman"
is invited over (a Caribbean-flavored Casey Jones Bastiaans did vodun creepiness to a T-it's all in the laugh); and the
standard mystery visitor takes the form of feathered floozy, Videllia Sparks (Judith Miller).
This delightful
production gets everything right: Ching-Yi Wei's set design encircles the cutaway front room of the perfectly cluttered
shack with the swamp wharf outside, and director Rick Singleton establishes the invisible wall between them right away, having
Miss Sparks run around the perimeter of the open room seeking entrance to finally climb in a window. Michael Walsh's lighting
and Jamie D. Mann's sound help make it easy to shift focus from inside to outside. The shack's lights go dim or dark,
eerie twilight lighting singles out the perimeter and teeming bayou sounds come up all around. The effect underscores the
dread sense of an encroaching unknown world that is this play's subtle metaphor for our latter days.
The so-satisfying
special effects in the three finale scenes included a marvelous black light (which forefronts any white surface). Its stunning
effect showed that someone preplanned these white surfaces down to amazing detail. Add great musical choices, stage trappings
and humor, and you get three finale "endings" with an anthem-like power to bring up swells of emotion all over the
chart.
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| (Lauren Caldwell in "The Sugar Bean Sisters" at the Hipp) |
"BACKSTAGE" Review: 'The Sugar Bean Sisters'
May 11, 2006
By Barry Wisdom
Like a page from the Weekly World News brought to life, Nathan
Sanders' The Sugar Bean Sisters is an improbable "swamp tale" filled with flying cats and flying saucers, sisterly
betrayal, and voodoo curses. And like those supermarket tabloids that keep us occupied as we queue up at the checkout, The
Sugar Bean Sisters provides an oasis from the real world, keeping us laughing and entertained in the face of grim realities.
In its superbly performed, well-directed debut as a professional Equity company, the Studio Theatre offers the
stage equivalent of a summer popcorn movie: lightweight escapist fare that is nonetheless well done from top to bottom, including
a knock-your-wig-off set courtesy of designer Michael Peters. He is just one member of a high-performing cast and crew that
producer Jacqueline Schultz, who stages this production, has assembled for her 11-year-old theatre's step into the big
leagues.
Faye Clementine Nettles (Nancy Madden) and sibling Willie Mae (Chris Hille) are a pair of twisted spinster
sisters in the mythical hamlet of Sugar Bean, Fla. It's summertime and the living is anything but easy as the cynical
and frustrated Faye plots her escape from the one-gator town via an alien spaceship, which is due to return on the 20th anniversary
of its original close encounter with Sugar Bean. Dithering and dotty (and hairless) Willie Mae dreams of a new life in the
celestial kingdom promised by the Book of Mormon.
Throwing a monkey wrench into schemes for salvation is Videllia
Sparks (Nisa Davis Hayden), a molting and mysterious "bird lady" from New Orleans whose visit to the Nettles homestead
isn't as accidental as she leads us to believe. Before the night is through, Sanders' surreal story -- a mix of Green
Acres and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? -- takes several more absurd turns, including visits from a spell-casting Reptile
Lady (Lauren Charlesworth) and a Scripture-toting Mormon bishop (Jay Charlesworth).
Madden and Hille are a fabulously
earnest pair, whose dead-serious demeanor makes the loopy dialogue all the funnier. Hayden adds sex and sparkle in her flamboyant
performance, which is the best of the show. That being said, it's impossible not to fall under Lauren Charlesworth's spell as the creepy snake-handler,
who adds an engaging bit of gothic spookiness to the proceedings. And, as mentioned, Peters' set is a wondrous accomplishment
-- detailed, meticulous, and enhanced by his own lighting design.
Director Schultz keeps the pace moving in this
very funny, very well acted staging that may not leave us lying awake at night pondering the human condition, but does leave
us smiling.
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| ("The Sugar Bean Sisters" at WaterTower Theatre, Addison, TX) |
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| ( Karen Garrett as Willie Mae & Daniel Osofsky as The Bishop Crumley in "The Sugar Bean Sisters") |
Theatre Review: "The Sugar Bean Sisters" from the "Florida Times-Union" Review by Lee McDonald (October 22, 2010) Run;
don't walk to get tickets to see "The Sugar Bean Sisters". This dark comedy about three sisters, who are bound
by a brooding social and cultural heritage, sometimes too reflective of legacies left in southern families, is hilarious and
poignant. It is ridiculous and borders on the absurd but if you are remotely in touch with the dysfunctional relationships
which may occasionally plague families, suddenly you realize the dialogue is all too familiar. The play is written by
Nathan Sanders and premiered in New York off Broadway more than a decade ago and has since been performed in over seventy-five
regional theatres. Sanders, a native of Central Florida, set the cast in the middle of a swamp house built by the hands
of the sisters' father. The sugar cane he tended seems to have a mind of its own and grows continuously though no one
now tends the field. Obviously in this play, you can "raise the cane back up when it's in defeat". The
sisters lost their mother while they were young, but her chair is vacant like much of the unfulfilled longing in sisters own
lives. The genre of a Southern Gothic tale plays up the supernatural in relationship to the natural world; reality is
cloaked in mystery, motives are ambivalent, and good and evil are often confused. The mystery of certain duality is
present as a prophetic voice says, "Sometimes, you can't tell an angel from a devil." Because
the play is performed in "Black Box", the audience has a considerably intimate relationship with the actors.
ABET Art Director, Celia Frank, has oriented the audience in the cane field. Your immediate impression will be the sense
of smell - the sweet smell of sugar cane. For me it was nostalgic. Prepare for the sisters to take you on a strange
ride which reflects unrealized dreams and missed opportunities, the tender reality of love in the midst of pain, and more
than a degree of imperfection. There is a submerged frustration, anger, and even violence that are often a part of the
southern family legacies which we often prefer not to examine. To be sure this is a serious play, but one that is hilariously
funny and reminds you that many connections to family will push most of us to laugh to avoid the tears. The
line reflecting the real tension in the sister's relationship rings clear. "It isn't that I hated you, I just couldn't
ever leave you." -- Much like the past that can not be divorced from its effects on the present and its influence
on future aspirations. As one sister says, they are clearly, "up a creek in a chicken wire boat." Under the direction of Caryl Butterly the ABET's, small, well rehearsed cast will delight and entertain you.
When you leave, you may suddenly realize they left you with something to ponder. Absurdity sometimes invites a dialogue
with reality, and this playwright clearly does just that. The show opens October 22 to a sold out house.
Additional performances are October 23, 29, 30, 31 and November 4, 5, and 6. To reserve your seat, call 249-7177.
Click here to read the Florida Times-Union Review on-line
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To view "The Sugar Bean Sisters" slideshow presentation please click youtube logo below:
"The Sugar
Bean Sisters" "Hilarious!"
- The Los Angeles Times
"Authentic
Southern Gothic comedy... You will enjoy recalling its deliciously lunatic lines!"
- New York Newsday
"Endearing... An exuberantly wacky comedy...Weird and wonderful!"
- The Gainesville Sun
"Deliciously offbeat...
Sisterhood as an extreme sport... It's just plum impossible to resist the flights of whimsy!" - The San Jose Mercury News
"A wildly funny script... Recommended!"
- LA Weekly
"Imaginative and fascinating!"
- Scripps Howard
"Sanders has a colorfully twisted imagination, a sharp-tongued way with one-liners and uniquely vulnerable
characters who have no desire to live ordinary lives."
- The San Francisco Bay Times
"Stunning... an absolute, hilarious winner!"
- The Florida Islander
"Magical!"
- The Naples Daily News
"Fascinating
and funny...marvelous and stunning... a subtle metaphor for our latter days.... "The Sugar Bean Sisters" brings
up swells of emotion all over the chart!"
- Metro Weekly (Silicon Valley)
"Richly
absurd... surprisingly touching... Our best recommendation!"
- Out & About Magazine
"A wacky alternative to the usual holiday fare!"
- San Jose Magazine
"'The Sugar Bean Sisters' provides an oasis from the real world, keeping us laughing and entertained
in the face of grim realities... a page from the 'Weekly World News' brought to life... just plain fun!"
-
Backstage
"We recommend "The Sugar Bean Sisters"!
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The Wave Magazine
"(The Sugar Bean Sisters) is a unique, genre-less show packed with laughs and a little
bit of everything but the kitchen sink... chock-full of guffaws, giggles and outright hysterical laughter. By plays's end,
each of the three key characters achieves the karmic consequences of their actions, and the audience is left to ponder the
deeper meaning of the play. Is there a deeper meaning? Of course not, but who cares?!"
-City Pulse
"There's a whole lot of wacky in Nathan Sanders' light comic charmer!"
-
The Sacramento Bee
"Nathan Sanders' Southern gothic fantasy is a potent, odd mix of Tobacco Road's shabby
poetics and Ma and Pa Kettle's whimsy, with a dollop of supermarket tabloid Weekly World News thrown in. The sisters'
dreams don't evaporate under harsh reality, they metastasize!"
- Houston Press
"(an)
unpretentious laugher... the theatrical equivalent of comfort food!"
- Capital Public Radio (KXJZ - Sacramento)
"'Brilliant dialogue... a hilarious comedy...don't miss the opportunity to laugh out loud!"
-The
Oroville Mercury Register
"Uproarious... a wonderful sight and sound experience!"
Russian
River Monthly
"Playwright Sanders has a real gift of writing in the vernacular,
capturing the colorful, often very humorous phrases of his characters!"
- Aisle Say (San Francisco)
"Delightfully screwy!"
- Billings Gazette
"A fresh little alligator soufflé... a swampy good time!"
-"Dallas
Morning News"
"And just wait until you see the ending
- it has to be one of the craziest, unexpected, exhilaratingly satisfying endings ever staged. With special effects that leave
you hyperventilating with disbelief while you are choking with laughter, it had the whole audience cheering with delight.
The Sugar Bean Sisters is one story that will take you out of this world!"
- Gainesville Sun
"'The
Sugar Bean Sisters' is a lively show full of Southern sass and memorable one-liners. A wacky and funny combination!"
-WhatToDoInMtDora.com
"The show is bursting with oddities so original and surprisingly cohesive
that no funny bone could possible remain untouched - regardless of how old one's funny bone might be!" -Lansing's
Lowdown Entertainment Guide "If
Southern Gothic is your cup of Jack Daniel's, you're more than likely to go for The Sugar Bean Sisters!" - Orlando
Sentinel "An
entertaining, phantasmagorical tale... The Sugar Bean Sisters is one sweet success!"
- Vero Beach Press Journal
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| (Lauren Charlesworth as "The Reptile Woman") |
"Out & About Magazine"
December, 2005
by Paul Myrvold
"The Sugar Bean Sisters":
Deliciously Dark Comedy
at San Jose Stage Company
I don't know what more one could ask for in a comedy.
The Northern California Premiere of Nathan Sanders "The Sugar Bean Sisters" at San Jose Stage Company has it all:
richly absurd characters in ridiculous situations living out an improbable plot line that wrings peals of well-earned laughter
from a delighted audience. And it is all deliciously dark with setups and payoffs, one-liners and physical jokes that lead
to the satisfaction of the surprising yet inevitable end. But through it all there is a warmth in the characters that is surprisingly
touching.
Sisters Faye Clementine Nettles (Nancy Madden) and her sister Willie Mae (Jeffra Cook), middle-aged
"bachelor girls", live in a tin-roofed, run down house on the outskirts of the Florida swamp town of Sugar Bean.
Recent converts to the Mormon faith, Willie Mae longs to ascend to the Celestial Kingdom but not before she marries the handsome
young Bishop (James Bigelow) while her sister Faye plans to leave Earth in an alien space craft. A flighty, anxious New Orleans
strip club chanteuse, Miss Videllia Sparks (Judith Miller) dressed in red and trimmed in feathers, literally comes through
the window into this hot bed of expectation on a steamy, stormy August night. Ostensibly lured by the tabloid report of Faye
Clementine's UFO sighting, she has her own mysterious motivations for showing up. And for good comedic measure, into the
mix Mr. Sanders stirs the Reptile Woman (Casey Jones Bastiaans), a witchy, voodoo-like snake charmer who seems to see through
all the posing and pretenses of the zany trio.
The enthralling, nuanced performances are superb in this ensemble
piece, as is the production. Ching-Yi Wei's busy, detailed and wonderfully dressed house set is just right and the lighting
plot by Michael Walsh unobtrusively serves the action and the design just as it should. Costume designer Jeremy Cole gets
each character's individuality just right, especially that of Videllia whose bird jacket is its own visual joke.
The humor of this show has depth in all areas and meets and exceeds the high artistic standard that is the hallmark of the
Stage Company, a Bay Area treasure.
My best recommendation: get to this show before it closes on December 11.
You'll have a very good time.
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| (Studio Theatre production of "The Sugar Bean Sisters") |
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