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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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"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!"
- Backstage
"We
recommend "The Sugar Bean Sisters"!
- 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 "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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| (Nell Page, Diane Bearden & Lauren Caldwell, Hippodrome State Theatre) |
"GAINESVILLE SUN"
Spring,
1995
Review by Arline Greer
Theatre Critic
Rookie
ballplayers don't usually step up to the plate and bang home runs their first time at bat any more than first-time playwrights
write solid hits. Nathan Sanders has defied the odds with his first play, "The Sugar Bean Sisters," an exuberantly
wacky comedy at the Hippodrome State Theatre.
"The Sugar Bean Sisters" had its initial run at the WPA
Theatre in New York City, where it was hailed as a true Southern Gothic comedy. (The Hipp is presenting its Southeastern premiere.)
Southern Gothic may be the name of the genre, but what rings a bell in this very funny play is its ties to all off-the-wall
comedy.
After watching the slightly touched sisters of Sugar Bean plan murder, mayhem and southern comfort in
a Florida swamp near Disney World, there comes to mind another set of sisters, the quaintly murderous Brooklyn duo of "Arsenic
and Old Lace," 50 years and 1,300 miles removed. The sisters of the South and their northern counterparts share a common
endearing lunacy that makes audiences root for insanity over reason.
There's enough lunacy in "The Sugar
Bean Sisters" to fill several plays. Sanders has called upon real-life experiences to create Willie and Faye, the Mormon
sisters who live at the edge of the swamp. In accordance with her faith, Willie yearns for a husband so that she can go to
the celestial kingdom when she dies. Faye is awaiting the return of space people on the 25th anniversary of their landing
outside her home. She didn't go away with them 25 years ago; now, she's ready for lift-off.
Unusual visitors arrive
in the sisters' home. They include the mysterious Videllia Sparks, who performs as a "bird woman in a cage in New Orleans."
Bishop Crumley, the handsome Mormon minister, comes to escort the smitten Willie to a house of mourning. The Reptile Woman
is called in to exorcise snakes. (Venomous snakes are a source of macabre fun in the play.)
Sanders' dialogue
for "The Sugar Bean Sisters" is laced with acid humor reflecting the love-hate relationship of the sisters. Sparkling
hot one-liners follow hard on each others' heels as the sisters fight for their separate dreams.
Faye could go
off with her Martians if only Willie were called to the celestial kingdom. The fortune Willie has acquired could be left to
both Faye and the visiting bird woman (who is not quite what she seems).
Underlying the outrageous humor lies
a certain affection, a sure bond the sisters feel for each other. It pops out in redemptive fashion, enlisting our sympathy
and identification.
The play's denouement is as weird and wonderful as all that's preceeded it. It is brilliantly
acted as is the entire play by its cast of five.
As bald-headed Willie, who years for a good Mormon husband, Nell
Page Sexton gives a zany performance that's both rueful and sharp-tongued. Her flirtatious mannerisms with Bishop Crumely,
and her carefully rehearsed saintly behavior for the newly bereaved, are wonderfully executed.
Lauren Caldwell
as Faye, the hard-nosed sister who makes sandwiches for her expected guests from outer space, gives a crafty interpretation
of her role that balances the sister act.
Interjecting yet a third dimension of humor with her inspired acting
is Diane Bearden, who plays Videllia Sparks, the bird woman. Bearden is all fluttery, scatter-brained, wide-eyed, mysterious
and entirely funny.
Brad Evans makes a dignified Bishop Crumley. Bonnie Harrison gives an eccentric performance
in the cameo role of the Reptile Woman.
Mary Hausch's direction moves with inspired, unfailing humor. Marilyn
Wall-Asse's costumes are funny and appropriate. James Morgan's set of a home in the Florida swamps complete with attic, porch
and creepy outdoors is just what you'd expect of a place named Sugar Bean in Watchalahoochee, Florida.
"The
Sugar Witch"
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| (Paul Ulloa, Kezia Radke & Kendra Owens in "The Sugar Witch" at Northside Theatre Co. in San Jose) |
| CLICK BELOW FOR SUGAR WITCH PROMO CLIP |
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"Like gothic drama
and fiction, southern gothic uses place, irony, and atmosphere to obscure the boundaries between the natural and
supernatural. But unlike its parent genre, southern gothic is
bound by the south's smothering ties to a dark social and cultural legacy, seen in the works of writers such as William
Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Harper Lee. Nathan
Sanders, whose eerie drama 'The Sugar Witch' will play tonight and Saturday at
the Theatre Passe Muraille, can
add his name to that list." - The Torontoist
"Intriguing...chilling...
Where 'The Sugar Witch' is most interesting is in Sanders' treatment of same-sex love
not as a coming-out trauma
or a cause, but as a natural part of life."
- Robert Hurwitt, The San Francisco Chronicle
"In
the style called Southern Gothic, this tale of mysticism is as eerie as a ghost story.
The actors give energetic, well
timed performances on the realistic stage set
to denote the attitude of mundane acceptance of a simmering undercurrent
of evil."
- Albert Goodwyn, San Francisco
Examiner
Playwright Nathan Sanders displays a delightful propensity for twinkling
weirdness.
'The Sugar Witch' deserves high marks... a whimsical journey into ominous territories."
-
Richard Dodds, The Bay Area Reporter
"Nathan Sanders is a grab-you-by-the-nuts
playwright.
The audience actually screamed with laughter in the first act - and slunk down in their seats in the second.
Not because they didn't like it. They were scared.
(The Sugar Witch) is dazzlingly written... downright spooky
and dangerous!"
- Lee Hartgrave, Critics
World
"The Sugar Witch provides a solid evening of entertainment anchored
by strong performances.
Nathan Sanders has created a highly entertaining ghost story filled with enough overt racism,
warped religion,
repressed gay lust, and lesbian intrigue to cast a powerful spell on audiences. "
-
George Heymont, My Cultural Landscape
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| (William Giammona & Michael Phillis in the New Conservatory Theatre production of "The Sugar Witch") |
"Bewitching!"
-San Jose Mercury News
"Spellbinding...
a gem of special effects, dead bodies, silent demons,
flickering campfires and flying cats...
eerie... chilling...
moody...
(The Sugar Witch) embraces gay/lesbian themes as
heartily as anything you'll get south of San Francisco...
(a) gender-reversed Sleeping Beauty!"
- Metro Weekly (Silicon Valley)
"A hauntingly creepy delight...
lyrically written... a standout... quality play...
intriguing... impressive...wonderful...
(a) story of decay, violence and transformation...
Li'l Abner meets William
Faulkner...
(The Sugar Witch) is filled with weird, surreal, stageworthy dramatic moments and situations...
a satisfying
balance between gothic horror and humor!"
-Palo Alto Daily News
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| (Original illustration and typography © 2008 Andy Markley - Art101.com, with thanks to Dan Sparks) |
CLICK HERE TO ORDER ACTING EDITION OF "THE SUGAR WITCH" FROM SAMUEL FRENCH
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| (Scott Cox & Paul Ulloa in "The Sugar Witch" at Northside Theatre Co.) |
THEATRE REVIEW:
From the "Palo
Alto Daily News"
'Sugar Witch' a standout
production
Northside Theater Company's comic horror play scores
By John Angell Grant
/ Theater Reviewer The dead are walking in the swamp tonight. You
don't want to be caught there after sundown.
So goes the advice in Nathan Sanders' intriguing new play,
"The Sugar Witch," a gothic, comic horror about death and rebirth.
San Jose's impressive Northside
Theater Company is presenting the world premiere of this excellent community production at the Black Box Theater near
downtown San Jose. With this show, Northside lives up to its reputation as the best-kept theater secret in the South Bay.
"The Sugar Witch" is a southern American story, told in a hybrid cockeyed genre. It's like Li'l
Abner meets William Faulkner. Although he lives in San Francisco now, playwright Sanders is originally from Florida.
"The Sugar Witch" tells the tale of a broken family who lives in a run-down haunted house on the edge of a Florida
swamp. This is a family that was cursed years ago by an evil spirit. Since then, things have deteriorated.
The
Bean family, as they are called, used to own much of the local sugar cane land before they fell on troubled times. On the
particular night in which the play unfolds, flying cats haunt the air. Everyone can see them.
It's hot and
humid in the old shack by the swamp. Before long, things get bad. Very bad. "The Sugar
Witch" is a sequel to playwright Sanders' "The Sugar Bean Sisters," which has seen about 30 productions
since its New York off-Broadway staging in 1995. In that play, three wacky sisters wait to be picked up by a UFO. In "The Sugar Witch" sequel, Sanders offers the same town, but tells of mostly different characters. Set designer Richard Orlando's wonderful, falling-down ramshackle house porch and river-edge swamp land provide an appropriate
matrix for this story of decay, violence and transformation. The acting is quite good. Overweight "Sisser"
(Kezia Radke), sits in a wheelchair on the porch eating oatmeal cream pies and other Southern junk food. Psychologically,
Sisser is not all there, the way characters in Southern stories sometimes aren't. Her younger brother Moses
(Scott Cox), the local Texaco mechanic, feels that he's trapped in his tiny hometown, but also feels that he can't
live without Sisser. As family history tells it, a housekeeper found Moses one day as an infant in the nearby swamp reeds.
JeannieRae Orlando is wonderful as a demented backwoods stalker, desperate for sex one last time before her upcoming
baptism in the river. Kendra Owens does some impressive acting as Annabelle, the family retainer and the last
of the Sugar Witches. She reads minds and understands what people are thinking before they say it. Paul Ulloa
is strong as the town's funeral home owner. As the play's only well-dressed character, he is reluctantly back living
in his boyhood small town, after a spell in the big city, but carrying a secret. Although the script of "Sugar
Witch" can get exposition-heavy in its back story, the play is lyrically written, contains interesting characters and
is filled with weird, surreal, stageworthy dramatic moments and situations. Doubling as set designer and director,
Orlando finds a satisfying balance between gothic horror and humor. Although they are eccentric, the characters are firmly
rooted in real human dilemmas, and are thus anchored to the real world. Colin A. Trevor's excellent sound
design offers a low level of subdued, eerie swamp noises. There is also some great backwoods bluegrass and folk music. Kudos to Northside for doing such a good job of bringing this quality play to life with its world premiere. This is
what many theaters aspire to do, but few actually achieve. The production is a standout. Rating: Three
and 1/2 stars
E-mail John Angell Grant at jagplays@paloaltodailynews.com.
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| (Paul Ulloa & Scott Cox in "The Sugar Witch" at Northside Theatre Co,, San Jose, CA) |
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