Hey Brad !! How's The Show?

[lashbear]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

Can I just say that opening night was the best night ever? .

I take it the quick change went OK?

[katiesue]

Way to go GC!!!

[Gemini Cricket]

Me with the Director, Paul.


Scott and me.

[Gemini Cricket]

More promo shots:

[Gemini Cricket]

A review came in this morning for the show.

'Duck Hunter' a good time, with a twist'

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Special to The Advertiser
"Duck Hunter Shoots Angel" doesn't walk the line between reality and sensational tabloid journalism, it tromps and dances across it, trailing bits from both worlds until it's hard to determine where that line might have been.
Take the half-man, half-alligator, for instance. He's a silent figure with a remarkably expressive papier maché crocodile grin that slips in and out of the action like an attentive butler, giving a shave or a back massage. Gator Man (Vincent Fitzgerald) is the physical manifestation of a story invented to sell newspapers at the supermarket checkout stand, but he's also an accepted part of the action.
While the audience is concentrating on realism, fantasy elements creep in at the edges, like the pair of duck hunters who believe they have shot down an angel because they keep finding pieces of her in a swamp.
They're a pair of good ol' country boys — Duane (pronounced do-wayne) and Duwell (do-well) — played by Jim Tharp and Braddoc DeCaires for all the broad laughs they can scoop up. Duwell is the gullible brother and the butt of Duane's sarcasm. "The wheels are turning," scoffs Duane as Duwell concentrates hard on collecting a thought, "But the hamster died."
With these two providing chorus, the job of creating melody goes to Scott Francis Russell as a New York reporter sent south to cover the angel story — or to invent it. Turns out he's packing his own history, revealed as the memory of the Woman (Chantelle Sawa) he loved and left behind.
Playwright Mitch Albom — whose "Tuesdays With Morrie" played successfully at MVT earlier this season — eventually pulls all the story threads together into a surprise ending. Along the way, he noticeably links dialogue by repeating the closing words of the ending scene in the first lines of the one that follows.
The action is tightly managed by director Paul Mitri and played out on Karen Archibald's realistic stage set filled with large swamp trees. But to see them, we spend the evening peering through a large scrim that is used only rarely for projections.
Some of the heartfelt emotion that is found so generously in "Tuesdays With Morrie" spills over into "Angel," primarily when the reporter retreats into memory from his everyday pose of hard-bitten cynicism. But the play exists primarily for laughs based on character idiosyncrasies and absurd exaggeration.
It's a good time capped by an unexpected switch.

Source

The other article already went into the Hon Adv's "pay to read it" archives. Darn it.

ETA: But here it is anyway!

May 8, 2009

Theology — and humor — with a 12-gauge

By Dave Dondoneau
TGIF Editor
There may be an underlying message in the name of the character Braddoc DeCaires plays in "Duck Hunter Shoots Angel," Manoa Valley Theatre's latest stage production, opening Thursday.
DeCaires plays Duwell (pronounced DO-well), one of two bumbling Alabama brothers who believe they shot a celestial being.
That neither Duwell nor brother Duwayne have ever shot anything before is part of the excitement. Both are unemployed and hunt daily, so when they see what they think is a duck dropping from the sky, they celebrate.
And when they see what they shot laying on the ground has a long robe, blonde hair and huge wings — they contemplate their fate and which shooter will be in trouble for bringing down the alleged angel.
Along the way they're joined by a cynical tabloid journalist and photographer who don't believe anything until feathers, wings and a tiara are discovered.
"There's a good vibe with this show," DeCaires said. "The cast is funny. My character, we think, may have a psychic connection with the angel, so maybe 'DOwell' is a tip on his character. It's all part of the story, which is very funny. My brother Duwayne (Jim Tharp) is a cross between Elmer Fudd and Dick Cheney."
"Duck Hunter Shoots Angel," is a play written by Mitch Albom, who also penned MVT's last production "Tuesdays with Morrie."
This one is much different. Instead of basically a two-man play like "Tuesdays," "Ducks" has eight characters. And while the "Tuesdays" set was basically a bed or chair, "Ducks" drops theater patrons into the Alabama backwoods and swamp.
It's a comedy with an underlying message.
"It makes you think and it makes you laugh," DeCaires said. "To me, everybody's idea of faith is different, just like your own fingerprint."
In real life, DeCaires said he doesn't know if he could ever hunt.
"The one time I thought about it, I was fly-fishing and a deer came into the stream, a 14- or 16-point buck that was huge," DeCaires said. "I remember looking at it and thinking 'I could never shoot something so beautiful.' "
Though Duwell and Duwayne shoot the angel (or was it?), Albom's play follows the cynical journalist (Sandy) as his beliefs are tested.
"All I can tell you is there is a resolution at the end if it really is an angel," DeCaires said. "But I don't want to give anything away. With this set and cast, you really get sucked in."
Correction: Manoa Valley Theatre’s “Duck Hunter Shoots Angel” opens Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. and runs through May 31.

Additional Facts 'Duck Hunter Shoots Angel' Manoa Valley Theatre
Wednesday through May 31
Performances: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays; 4 p.m. Sundays
$30 general admission, $25 seniors and military, $15 for 25 and younger.
988-6131
www.manoavalleytheatre.com

[Gemini Cricket]

We got another good review for the show. My sisters and supervisors came to the show last night. They liked it.

Manoa Theatre captures satirical 'Duck Hunter'

By John Berger

POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, May 18, 2009

The world of supermarket tabloids is a marvelous place where Elvis and Bigfoot shop at night at 7-Eleven, space aliens regularly make themselves known and mankind shares the planet with various "half-human, half-something else" creatures whose existence defies the laws of Mendelian genetics. Welcome to the world of "Duck Hunter Shoots Angel," Manoa Valley Theatre's Hawaii premiere production of Mitch Albom's tart and satirical yet surprisingly substantial send-up of "tabs" and those who write for them.
Albom combines predictable stereotypes -- the semiliterate malapropism-spouting Southerner first and foremost -- with a subtle but effective message about tolerance, not judging people by geographic origin. Jim Tharp (Duane) and Braddoc DeCaires (Duwell) star as bumbling brothers, allegedly the most inept duck hunters in Dixie, who nonetheless succeeded in shooting something they saw flying over the swamp. They believe it was an angel.
Word of the shooting reaches Lester, the shameless owner/publisher of the "Weekly World & Globe" in New York. Lester and his half-alligator factotum dispatch Sandy, a cynical, burned-out reporter who is both "anti-gun and anti-redneck," to rural Alabama with orders to buy exclusive rights to the hunters' story and fabricate the physical evidence needed to substantiate it if necessary.
(Sandy's back story: He left Alabama years before in search of wealth and fame in "legitimate" journalism. In doing so, he left an innocent woman behind. She had something she wanted to tell him. He was too busy to listen.)
Sandy goes south with Lenny, the paper's 300-pound photographer. They find Duane and Duwell in the swamp and gradually earn their trust. Then, inexplicable things start happening.
Tharp, a longtime star of the local stage, sacrificed his white hair and full white beard to play Duane; Greg Howell, MVT's hair and makeup master, took at least 20 years off Tharp's actual age. With a radical new look and a new spring in his step, Tharp sets aside his usual stage persona of the genial old codger and delivers a well-calibrated comic performance as a much younger man.
DeCaires makes a welcome return to the stage as Duwell. He is well cast opposite Tharp, and they swap one-liners with the precise timing of a veteran comic duo.
Gregory Scott Harris (Lenny), another actor who has been away from the stage too long, is a third key to the show's success. A "fat suit" gives Harris bulk for his role but doesn't slow the flow of his performance.
Karen Archibald's set places the swamp behind a scrim that allows it to disappear when cast members -- Harris, Scott Francis Russell (Sandy), Chantelle J.M. Sawa (Woman) and Vincent Fitzgerald (Gator Man) -- move to other locales. Katherine Clifton (Kansas) tends the counter at a convenience store on one end of the stage. Thomas L. McCurdy (Lester) directs the hunt for the angel-shooters from an office high on the other end.
Archibald's swamp, Janine Myers' angelic lighting effects and sound designer Jason Taglianetti's thunderstorms enhance the actors' work. Mark Archibald's video designs are particularly effective in creating the experience of driving down a rural Southern road at night. Video adds a sense of motion to what could otherwise be a long and static scene.

Source

[wendybeth]

Great review, GC!

[Gn2Dlnd]

Congrats!

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Congrats!

[Deebs]

Congratulations! I wish we could hear your Alabama accent!

I am so not surprised that everything went so well for you.

Big bummer for the stage manager though, I hope he is feeling better soon. I'm glad his stand in was great for you guys.

I hope tonight is just as fabulous.