Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year.

This week I can choose from a wide variety of local events to get in the Halloween mood, including concerts, costume contests, hayrides and more. I may even enter a pumpkin carving contest.

Neighborhood Theatre Group, Ypsilanti’s new theater company, has a brand new Halloween offering – a delightfully entertaining mix of Halloween music and theater. Featuring a full bar, costume contest, and the NTG “Haunted” House Band, Black Cat Cabaret is directed by Kristin Anne Danko and features local performers Colleen Cartwright, Alice Duhon, Eric Hohnke, Greg Pizzino, Angela VanKempen, and Craig VanKempen.

Neighborhood Theatre Group is dedicated to cultivating a welcoming and collaborative environment for local theatre artists while providing audiences with a very unique and intimate theatre experience. Featuring original works, sketch shows, cabarets, and self-produced videos – NTG believes in theatre’s ability to bring individuals together. They guarantee that this “spooktacular evening” of music and theatre will get you in the Halloween spirit.

Black Cat Cabaret runs Friday and Saturday, October 28 & 29 at Bona Sera Underground in downtown Ypsilanti. Performances are at 8:30 pm with doors opening at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $10 General Admission, $5 Students (with a Valid ID) and can be pre-purchased at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2605416.

Tim Grimes is manager of Community Relations & Marketing at the Ann Arbor District Library and co-founder of Redbud Productions.

Black Cat Cabaret runs Friday and Saturday, October 28 & 29 at Bona Sera Underground in downtown Ypsilanti. Performances are at 8:30 pm with doors opening at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $10 General Admission, $5 Students (with a Valid ID) and can be pre-purchased at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2605416 .

If you’re going to see Dorrance Dance, and you should (there’s one more show, tonight at the Power Center), go with your eyes peeled, your ears pricked, and your antennae waving. Sit up, pay attention -- you’re going to space out. With the first piece on the program, excerpts from SOUNDspace, you will have to take in the fact that all the music -- all the different tones and volumes and counterpoint rhythms -- you hear is generated by dancers’ feet. Don’t stop watching, though, because the scene before you will shift pretty swiftly.

Michelle Dorrance, the MacArthur Genius (2015) choreographer who masterminds the show, gives you a quick primer, an introduction to her multi-sensory world. Early on, you see four dancers lit from the waist down, compelling your focus to the lower body. Those legs and feet enunciate slowly at first -- see how a different touch by a different part of the foot results in a different sound, and see how those sounds combine. Oh, and don’t fail to notice the catchy angular patterns that the eight legs make, rotating in and out to create a kaleidoscope of bending knees and flexing ankles. Got it? Great, because Dorrance is moving on, expanding the vocabulary. She and Elizabeth Burke, with upper bodies still in semi-darkness, are trading steps, and although the angles are still there, more complicated rhythms are flying. This is a good time to mention that every single dancer you see is a hotshot; Dorrance repeatedly pulls off a move that I can’t even compute -- what the hell are her feet doing?

And that’s it; your education in this medium is over and all you can do is go along for the ride. All the lights are up, and Dorrance does a solo that both slides and taps. Dancers come and go in pairs and quartets, eventually circling around Warren Craft. As he tips, twists, and topples, the others accompany him with a snuffly, sandy sound, perforated by silence and snaps. By now you are fluent, comfortable in this world. Good, because it’s about to change: four dancers appear on wood platforms that have a furrow-patterned metal panel along one side, like a washboard. The possibilities for feet-generated sound have just multiplied, and it’s fun to watch and listen to the dancers play this new surface with their heels. Enjoy the super-satisfying simplicity of each dancer -- quickly, one after another -- dragging a foot along the washboard and as the foot releases, spinning: kkkshrwih spin, kkkshrwih spin, down the line.

Here you might become aware that you are watching only an excerpt of the full-length SOUNDspace. Just as the dancers begin, STOMP-like, to play with the potential that different objects have for making sound -- still on the washboard platforms, they suddenly have metal chains that, when lowered or dropped, add a distinct sound to the percussive mix -- the dance is over.

It’s okay. Stretch your legs and reset your head, because as lush and variegated as the sensory world of SOUNDspace was, it seems practically flat in comparison to the explosion that is Act II, ETM: Double Down (again, excerpted here from a longer work). Whereas in SOUNDspace you have only (“only”!) the music generated by feet talking to the floor, in ETM, the floor finds its voice. On wired platforms designed by Nicholas Van Young, every step not only makes the expected tap sound but also triggers an electronic tone. Now there are musicians on stage too -- Donovan Dorrance, Aaron Marcellus, and Gregory Richardson -- their live performance instantaneously recorded and played back so that they can accompany themselves. Richardson plucks a simple theme on his stand-up bass, then impishly stands by as the theme continues without him touching his instrument. He layers on bowed tracks, then switches to electric guitar. Vocalist Marcellus lets loose with a stream of golden tones, these likewise immediately re-played and altered by a device he holds in his hand.

You get the idea: the sonic landscape has exploded. In the same way, the movement goes far beyond its Act I parameters. SOUNDspace’s movement vocabulary -- with the exception of Craft’s rubbery, off-kilter solo -- stayed largely in the realm of familiar tap-dancing. Dancers were upright with their torsos inclined a bit forward, arms mostly a functional, swinging counterbalance to the complicated activity below. In ETM, upper bodies become more eloquent, and the more pedestrian, vertical stance cedes some of its default status. This isn’t always successful, as when Dorrance stands slumped and alone; she seems contrived or affected, like a caricature of despondency. More often, though, the expanded physicality delights. Dorrance shares a duet with Craft in which they lean into each other, barely holding each other up as their feet get away from them on some runaway train.

Matthew “Mega Watts” West shows up, and at first he seems gratuitous -- why is this man in sneakers rather than tap shoes executing showy hip hop and b-boy moves? Sure, these forms share a common Africanist lineage with tap, but you might think he looks out of place. You’ll get over it; he is the harbinger of a broader and richer movement palette.

There is a nearly perfect duet for Byron Tittle and Leonardo Sandoval, poignant in an unexpected 3/4 time. One leans, the other holds him up, slides him across the floor. They are in sync, and then just a little out, like windshield wipers gone awry. Sandoval stands and watches Tittle dance, but when Sandoval dances, Tittle faces away -- it’s so apparent, though, that he’s listening intently to Sandoval. Somehow, it’s a heart-breaker. You’ll see.

Dorrance, on a raised wired platform, starts a duet with West who is below, on the stage itself. She recedes into the role of accompanist, generating a simple rhythm of sounds that remind me of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s celesta, as West pours and snakes his way onto his shoulder, his hands, back on his feet. West starts messing with an intriguing-looking wooden control panel near the front of the stage. Its wires and knobs allow him to control amplified electronic sounds; he turns on this one and then that one, like a kid with a Casio keyboard. Dorrance joins him, and you won’t know it just then, but you are poised on the edge of something.

What follows is a full-on eruption, sound and bodies hurtling in all directions. Dancers cross the stage, playing percussion instruments as they go. All the musicians are whaling on their instruments, the electric guitar is rocking out, limbs are flailing, taps are hitting the floor with furious frequency. The stage is fevered, the energy is at maximum intensity and there’s nowhere to go but oh yes, there is: Watts bursts into the center pulling out all the power moves, his legs flaring as he spins on his hands. Is this the climax? Or is this it, a minute later, when, impossibly, there is even more movement, more sound? I think there might even be smoke….

The only response possible at this point is to participate in the onstage bedlam: stand up with all the people around you, and clap and clap.

From 1993-2004, Veronica Dittman Stanich danced in New York and co-produced The Industrial Valley Celebrity Hour in Brooklyn. Now, PhD in hand, she writes about dance and other important matters.

Dorrance Dance continues through Friday, October 21 at the Power Center, 121 Fletcher St., Ann Arbor. For more information and tickets, visit: http://ums.org/performance/dorrance-dance/.

A new one-person show, Screw It: Doin' Time on the Line, tells the story of an artist, broke from following his performing arts dreams, who gets an assembly line factory job in order to get back on his feet. Written and performed by native Detroiter Tim Campos, the show runs October 27-30 at Theatre Nova.

Campos portrays more than 50 different characters in this close-up view of factory life, drawing from his personal experiences during his years working on Ford Motor Company assembly lines in Saline, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois. Fast-paced and funny, the show is peppered with explicit language, absurdity, and emotion.

Directed by Midwestern director and actor Antoine McKay, the show features original music by Ryan Bentley, Ray Smetana (former Ford Saline Parts Plant worker, now working at Dearborn Truck), and band Quasar Wut-Wut.

Sara Wedell is a Production Librarian at the Ann Arbor District Library.

Performance are Thursday, Oct. 27 through Saturday, Oct. 29 at 8 pm, and Sunday, Oct. 30 at 2 pm. Tickets are $15 and are on sale at the Theatre Nova box office and online. Theatre Nova is located at 410 West Huron, tucked away in the parking lot across from the YMCA in downtown Ann Arbor.

Choreographer Mark Morris notes that the ancient story of Layla and Majnun presented by UMS at the Power Center this weekend -- a Persian romance retold across the Mid-East since the 12th-century -- is one of profound, abundant, eternal love, and that a full staging of it has the potential to make it more accessible to a larger audience. Given the western penchant for a good tragic love story -- think Romeo and Juliet -- this tale of young lovers so desperate for each other that the man is driven mad certainly has potential cultural traction here. With his production of Layla and Majnun, Morris succeeds in bringing this story to life for audiences who may be unfamiliar with it and in so doing adds his distinct mark to a tale that has already had many hands on it.

Consider all the permutations of this ancient tale that are present in Morris’s production. Its musical source is a 1908 Azerbaijani opera, Leyli and Majnun, that in turn is based on a 16th-century poetic setting of the ancient story. The opera was the first instance of western symphonic music combined with mugham¸ a traditional Azerbaijani improvisational form performed by vocalists accompanied by frame drums, lute, and spike fiddle. Although the opera is beloved in Azerbaijan, it has been reconceived for this production. Renowned mugham singer Alim Quasimov, in collaboration with the Silk Road Ensemble, has compressed the three-and-a-half-hour opera into a more easily digestible seventy minutes, distilled around Majnun’s solos and his duets with Layla. Furthermore, elements that were kept separate in the original opera - mugham and western instruments, improvisation and written parts - are here integrated. To this story many times retold and this music many times re-imagined, Morris adds his dancing.

The musicians - Qasimov and his daughter, Fargana Qasimova, with the Silk Road Ensemble - fill the center of the stage while the dancers weave around and between them. The story unfolds in five acts: Love and Separation, The Parents’ Disapproval, Sorrow and Despair, Layla’s Unwanted Wedding, and The Lover’s Demise.

The tone of the verses, present as a libretto in the printed program, is sustained, seldom varying even as the story progresses from act to act. The lovers continuously profess their agonized passion, but Morris’s choreography refracts this one-noted desperation. In Act I, Layla and Majnun glow with smiles. They rebound from broad and deep pliés and extend glorious legs, testing their connection with one another from different angles and at different distances across the stage. They play a little game, encircling each other with their arms. This merry interaction directly contrasts the verses of Act I - “My heart is heavy because I am alone…I feel like a nightingale that cries in pain…” In so doing, it creates a satisfying starting place; theatrically, the story has somewhere to go.

The dancing also adds breadth to the characters. The full cast of twelve is almost always on stage, but different dancers take on the roles of Layla and Majnun in each of the first four acts. The different aspects of these characters that emerge over time and through circumstance are made evident by the different humans who embody them. Stacy Martorana’s Layla of Act I is exuberant and expansive, whereas Nicole Sabella’s Act II Layla becomes more restrained.
With the work of story-telling done by the printed libretto (and largely superfluous projected supertitles), Morris’s choreography only occasionally employs mime-like “literal” movement: Layla’s unwanted husband shakes his fist at Majnun, or Layla reaches longingly toward her lover. More often, the dancing relies on a more visceral meaning-making: as Majnun goes mad, he pitches backward with knees bent deep and arms spread wide. When her parents disapprove, Layla curtsies low and slow, her fingers and wrists tracing sinuous curlicues, but then finds herself standing high on a step, pushing the air away from her. As Layla’s Unwanted Wedding unfolds, the stage is flanked by rows of unison dancers whose pert and precise footwork and shifting facings manage to evoke both a folk dance and the inevitability of tradition and ceremony.

Sometimes, as with that wedding scene, the ensemble of dancers is a community. They herd the lovers away from each other, or watch and seem to whisper about them. Sometimes they play the role of a Greek chorus, commenting on or translating the actions of the central characters. In Sorrow and Despair, they stand linked together, heads whipping and rolling from side to side, on and on, creating a frenzy of obsession. Sometimes they are all Laylas and all Majnuns, reflecting the actions of the “real” Layla and Majnun.

The resolution of Layla and Majnun’s desperate affair is, of course, death. In the final act, all four Laylas and all four Majnuns are present, but their respective demises seem asymmetric. My impression is of all the Laylas descending together to sit with bowed heads, but each Majnun has a brief solo before surrendering to the floor. (After all, the story tells that it’s Majnun who officially goes crazy; Layla just expires.) A clarinet solo draws all the dancers up to their feet, and each pair of Layla and Majnun meets briefly before exiting. I want to think they have been united in death, or that their earthly love has been subsumed in a divine one, but the final image is of a pair of female dancers returning to extinguish two of the lanterns that have been burning throughout the performance.

If there’s a shortcoming in the production, it lies with an uneven distribution of restraint. In comparison to the wildness, the near-hysteria, of the singers’ improvised solos, the choreography sometimes seems safe, tame, comparatively unimpassioned. Perhaps it’s a function of spatial confinement; the Silk Road musicians and mugham singers take up a good chunk of the stage and the dancers have only limited paths available. Or maybe it’s the nature of the rehearsed versus the spontaneous; when each of the Majnuns performed his last, brief solo, I glimpsed an unleashing that paralleled that of the singers’ and I suspect it’s because those solos are largely improvisatory. Mine is a small complaint, though; this Layla and Majnun is a worthy installment in the story’s evolving history as a performance work. Its reconceived music and eloquent dancing serve the famous story and render it quite legible to a non-Azerbaijani audience.

From 1993-2004, Veronica Dittman Stanich danced in New York and co-produced The Industrial Valley Celebrity Hour in Brooklyn. Now, PhD in hand, she writes about dance and other important matters.

Layla and Majnun continues through Saturday, October 15 at the Power Center, 121 Fletcher St., Ann Arbor. For more information and tickets, visit: http://ums.org/performance/layla-and-majnun/.

A man with gray flecked hair, dressed in an old cardigan sweater sits in the dark complaining about modern theater and modern life in general. Things just ain’t what they used to be.

This is the beginning of magic, a near perfect production of The Drowsy Chaperone by the University of Michigan Department of Musical Theatre.

The man in the chair is sharing his weary view of the world and his obsession with a recording of a 1928 musical, from back in the day when musicals were fun. That musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, is a fizzy, frivolous fluff with the usual stock characters, thin and predictable plot, jazz inspired score and a fine example to the man in the chair of all the sweetness that has been lost in the world.

As the man tells us the story of the musical, the musical comes vividly to life in his nostalgia filled apartment. He swoons over every nuance of story and every piece of stage business and recounts the back stories for all the original stars, rising diva and fading diva, vaudeville comedy team and notorious womanizer, secretly gay leading man and charming old pros who have seen better days.

Director Mark Madama has assembled a terrific cast, each perfectly fit to the character they play. The style is arch, satirical but never so overplayed that it loses touch with what might have been a smashing opening night on Broadway those many years ago. The Drowsy Chaperone, with music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison and book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar, uses that happy style of musical theater to poke fun at nostalgia but also offer an ode to entertainment for entertainment’s sake.

The 1928 play concerns the romance of a Broadway star and a businessman, their impending marriage, the star’s woozy “chaperone,” a couple of bakers (who are really gangsters), a producer afraid of losing his star, a chorus girl angling to take her place, a Latin lover, a dotty lady and her droll “underling.” Sound familiar? And every piece goes together like clockwork. Every performance is choice.

Hannah Lynne Miller is the effervescent Janet Van de Graaff, the star about to throw away the spotlight for marriage. Miller is a riot as she poses for the press, sputters between devotion for her new beau and anxiety over losing her celebrity fix. She’s a fine singer who delivers sincerity even on a song that the man in the chair warns has awful lyrics.

Equally compelling is Nkeki Obi-Melekwe as the title character, the chaperone. She is a deft comedian, with arched eyes and pained sophistication. Her singing shows great range and precise, sensitive phrasing needed to deliver all the humor and sly emotion of her “anthem” “As We Stumble Along.”

Charlie Patterson is hilarious as the egotistic, posturing Adolpho, self-styled Latin lover. He has a love song to himself “I Am Adolpho” that he delivers with just the right amount of clueless self-congratulation.

Kyle McClellan as the potential groom matches the self-loving ego of his bride to be with comic charm. But he also sings and dances superbly. McClellen and Christopher Campbell as his diligent best man perform a great tap dance routine to the song “Cold Feet.”

The tap dance is interrupted by the underling, a butler in the tradition of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves, always one step ahead of the upper crusty. Aidan Ziegler-Hansen delivers his lines with precision timing and a bit of droll disdain. He also goes a mean little tap dance.

His usual partner is the ever-confused Mrs. Tottendale, played by Isbel Stein. Stein is amusingly spacey, dressed in a long-dated dress to match her bafflement. She and Ziegler-Hansen sing a goofy love song, “Love is Always Lovely in the End.”

Riley McFarland is the producer, a man in a constant state of despair as he is hounded by gangsters and a pushy chorine. He brings a bit of authority to a funny character. Jo Ellen Pellman plays Kitty, the “dumb blonde” stereotype, to a tee. Her voice cracks, her eyes roll, her body shimmies. It all works.

What also works is the clockwork timing of Joseph Sammour and Simon Longnight as the comic gangsters in both their comic wordplay (a stereotype of ’20s musicals) and their dizzy dance number “Toledo Surprise.”

Another post Lindbergh element to musicals of those days was an aviator, but here an aviatrix with a booming singing voice, well played by Cydney Clark.

The heart and soul of this production is Alexander Sherwin, that man in the chair. His voice may remind you of David Sedaris, a hint of sadness behind every laugh line. Sherwin takes us deep into this man who loves the theater and hates what has happened to it. He knows the story of every performer, the way kids know the story behind sports figures and rappers. He harbors ill will to the modern world and slowly, surely we find out why. Sherwin’s performance is impeccable and gives this bit of fluff its deeper meaning.

The musical direction and the jazz style orchestra under Jason DeBord is outstanding, especially in its ability to give punctuation to the humor on stage. Mara Newbery Greer’s choreography is terrific whether handing the lively tap numbers, a tricky skate routine or the ensemble in full motion.

Caleb Levengood’s set is a masterful tribute to nostalgia, a green colored parlor covered with star photos, posters and playbills and the comfy furniture of another era. The set is also well suited to the quick scene changes of the musical within the play. But there are some subtle touches that get at the heart of the man in the chair, like a row of pill bottles on his side table.

This is a big show, full of humor within the musical and at the expense of the musical. This is an ode to the giddy, goofy '20s musical in all its glory and the UM production grabs all that humor and goes deep into back story for a little more. Bravo!

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit.

The Drowsy Chaperone continues at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre Friday through Sunday Oct. 14-16 and Thursday-Sunday Oct. 20-23. For tickets call the box office at (734)764-2538 or go online to http://tickets.music.umich.edu.

Theatre Bizarre, the "greatest masquerade on earth," returns to the Masonic Temple in Detroit this month for elaborate, extravagant, eerie debauchery. The annual event has grown in size enormously since its origin as essentially a backyard Halloween party 17 years ago and now takes place across eight floors of the Masonic. The brainchild of mastermind John Dunivant, Theatre Bizarre previously took place in an abandoned area near the Michigan State Fairgrounds before being unceremoniously shut down by city officials in 2010 (before that, they’d been kicked out of the Russell Industrial Complex). Now completely legal, the Masonic seems to be the perfect home for the event, and this year, for the first time, organizers have expanded it to take place across two weekends rather than just one.

Part circus, part carnival, part burlesque and fetish show, and part, yes, masquerade, Theatre Bizarre is unlike most parties taking place this time of year. Illusionists, carnival acts, dancers, musicians, and spontaneous theatrics greet attendees around every turn, along with mind-bendingly detailed scenery and exhibitions. Last year, a "Ghost Train," lit by a single strobe light and conducted by a silent masked man, took guests on a careening mini-roller coaster ride around the Masonic's foggy seventh floor, while several floors below, burlesque dancers emerged from the mouth of a giant devil and strutted down a long catwalk. Elsewhere, taxidermy animals held court over long buffet tables, mimes and jugglers moved among the crowd, and acrobats leaped over furniture. The Grand Ballroom is often the largest room at the Bizarre, and in previous years has been filled with an array of carnival games, treat stands and sideshow performances, including an ice cream shop serving Theatre Bizarre-inspired flavors.

Attendees are required to come in costume; in fact, you'll be turned away at the door with no refund if you show up in street clothes. Costumes run the gamut from homemade affairs, cobbled together from secondhand store finds to expensive, custom-ordered creations. You won't find Captain America or Minnie Mouse wandering around Theatre Bizarre either; the emphasis is on costumes that are weird, satanic, sexy, occult, eerie and/or decadent.

There are four separate Theatre Bizarre events this year, two Gala Masquerades on Fridays and two Historic Theatre Bizarres on Saturdays. The more expensive Gala Masquerade is a formal masquerade ball with a maximum attendance of only 450 people. Dinner and drinks are included in the ticket price, and formal attire, along with masks that conceal one's identity are a must. Guests can enjoy a cocktail reception, strolling dinner, pockets of entertainment around the Masonic, and dancing. The main Theatre Bizarre event takes place on Saturdays, and is less formal, although many still include masks in their costumes. This event is much larger, with attendance pushing 2,000, 5 separate main stages, and 20 performance areas, all of which remain active until the event closes at 4 am.

Theatre Bizarre is particularly unique for its lack of corporate sponsors. Dunivant and those he works with to create the event are artists, and don’t want logos interrupting the world they create or jolting visitors back to reality. Putting the event on at the Masonic is no easy feat: not only do sets and architectural features need to be built elsewhere and reassembled on site, but the wiring in the building is so old that Dunivant and his co-creators run the risk of frying it if they used it to support the electrical demands of the show. Instead, cables and wiring—thousands of feet of them—have to be routed through back hallways, walls, and vents. But Dunivant keeps making it happen every year, and hundreds of devoted attendees are glad. Still, who knows how much longer they’ll be able to pull off this outrageous event, so if there’s ever a year to go experience the magic, this is surely it.

Elizabeth Pearce is a Library Technician at the Ann Arbor District Library. She is super excited to wear a giant horned headdress to Theatre Bizarre this year.

Theatre Bizarre takes place October 14-15 and October 21-22 at the Masonic Temple in Detroit. Tickets range from $95-$260 and can be purchased online, where you can also find out more information about the event.

Growing old can be hell but it can also be hilarious as proven by the Purple Rose Theatre Company’s World Premiere presentation of playwright Carey Crim’s Morning After Grace.

Crim’s meditation on aging, marriage and sexual frustration is in the superb hands of director Guy Sanville. A three-actor cast handles the unforced and sparkling humor with the precision of a well-disciplined string quartet while also letting it all out when the humor turns to a cathartic sadness.

The scene is a wealthy retirement community on Amelia Island, Florida. An older but still handsome man stumbles from his bedroom into his living room with all the evidence of a head-splitting hangover. He plops on a couch with a look of bewildered exhaustion and falls into a light sleep. Suddenly, a head pops out from a tangled comforter. A woman’s face peeks out and a giddy, happy grin spreads across her face.

In this small opening we immediately understand the dynamic that will play out in Crim’s play. These two characters were strangers to each other just a day before. They’ve had a night at the man’s condominium. Their very different personalities will delight, challenge and comfort each other over a momentous morning.

The title is a pun. Grace refers both to the religious meaning of divine favor but it also refers to the man’s now-deceased wife, whose funeral is the catalyst for what ensues. In this production, it also could refer to the grace and style of the three performers.

Michelle Mountain is Abigail. Her beaming entrance is a clue to Abigail’s attempts to keep a happy mood as she navigates her way through her mid-60s after a divorce. Mountain is a gifted actress. She is as adept at physical comedy, which she demonstrates with some creative costume changes, as she is with fast repartee. She has an expressive face that can light up with delight and also display deep sympathy. Her Abigail seems to have it all together as a professional grief counselor until bit by bit we learn of her insecurity. But she’s an optimist and sweet-natured, a perfect foil to the stranger she went home with.

Randolph Mantooth is Angus, Abigail’s emotional opposite. He’s a young-looking 70-year-old with some unsettled business with his late wife. But he has long been a taciturn, cynical and angry man. This comes through in some sharp barbs that Mantooth delivers with droll precision. Mantooth’s gruff demeanor has a shaggy dog quality that promises that his bark in worse than his bite, even when things get a bit rough. He seems to be getting the upper hand in his byplay with Abigail, but things take an unusual turn.

Ollie enters the scene. Ollie is another resident at the community. He’s a 66-year-old former Detroit Tiger and Grace’s friend. Played by Lynch Travis, a big man who brings big warmth to the character of Ollie, he could seem menacing, but is really gentle, big-hearted and struggling with issues of his own.

Sanville has a deft touch with comedy. He never allows his actors to overplay or get out of character for the purpose of drawing a bigger laugh. This is comedy rooted in reality. These three fine actors bounce lines off each other that are often roaringly funny but are never delivered as jokes. Crim’s comedy emerges from the characters she has created not from a standard joke book.

It would be unfair to those planning to see the production to say more about the plot, but the story has several amusing revelations that twist the perspective on what we’re seeing. As we begin to understand what has gone wrong with Angus’ marriage, comedy gives way to some agonizing self-reflection and real moments of despair. Mantooth makes these moments chillingly real.

Just as the comedy itself is rooted in the real world, Sanville and set designer Bartley H. Bauer have opted to create a stunningly realistic upscale Florida condo, complete with a state of the art kitchen, which plays a major role in the play. This works well as it makes voyeurs of the audience, giving the sense that we are really there is someone’s apartment watching these three lives entangle.

Crim has premiered five plays at the Purple Rose and has a booming career on regional and Broadway stages. This is an excellent addition to those successes. She’s a witty, subtle but also deeply sensitive playwright. She explores in the real context of this play some serious issues facing older people and she brings true compassion to the questions raised. The play should get produced at many other theaters in the future.

This is a winner for the Purple Rose, a fine play with a superb cast.

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit.

Regular performances of Morning After Grace are Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 pm, with 3 pm matinees Wednesday and Saturdays and 2 pm matinees Sundays through Dec. 17 at the Purple Rose, 137 Park St., Chelsea. For more information or to make reservations, call the Purple Rose box office at (734)433-7673 or visit them online.

Ah, Wilderness! is an outlier among Eugene O’Neill’s plays, usually full of painful truth telling. It’s a summertime comedy, nostalgic for the youth the playwright never had. Its humor is soft and warm but it is also a quiet reflection on the limits of freedom, set appropriately on the Fourth of July.

The play offers two challenges to a university theater company. It is set in 1906, a time that O’Neill romanticizes as a period of innocence and propriety under assault, a time far removed from now. It is also a family play, in which most of the characters are younger or quite a bit older than the student actors.

The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance cast under the direction of John Neville-Andrews tries hard to create a semblance of an early 20th century family but seems stiff, corseted in their roles and their interplay with each other. This play depends on that interplay, but in this production only a few scenes capture what O’Neill was about.

The Millers of a “large small town” in Connecticut are a solidly middle class clan. Father Nat is the owner of the local newspaper, his wife, Essie, is the dominant figure at home and a stickler for moral values. They have four children, Arthur, a Yale student; Mildred, a modern young woman; Richard, an emerging firebrand; and young Tommy, a firecracker in more ways than one.

Richard is the central character here. He’s a young man intoxicated by new, revolutionary ideas. He’s hiding his copies of Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, Algernon Swinburne and Omar Khayyam. He’s also intoxicated with a girl named Muriel and trying out all he’s learned on her innocent person.

Another main character is Essie’s brother Sid. Uncle Sid is a cautionary tale, an alcoholic with a good heart and a crippling weakness. Sid is the object of Nat’s sister Lily’s affection and deep disappointment.

The Fourth is a holiday dedicated to celebrating a revolution and the ideas it helped take hold. But Richard is a classic naïf, a 16-year-old boy anxious to get on with becoming a man and ready to take that first step into naughty rebellion.

This production never settles into a comfortable give and take. The actors seem too often to be reciting and moving stiffly about. The gentle humor is often lost and the humor that is meant to be forced and awkward is never separated from all the rest. The actors seem to have trouble playing the middle aged characters authentically and fall back on stiff mannerisms of an earlier time. But there are good moments and solid effort.

Kevin Corbett gives Richard Miller the right amount of "gee whiz" enthusiasm for the swirl of ideas in his head and he has some good comic moments as he goes to the “dark side” in his encounter with a brassy lady of the night. But even he doesn’t quite capture the giddiness and fear of a boy on the cusp of manhood.

Larissa Marten has every bit the look of a strong matriarch as Essie. She’s tall with an attractive face made stern from admonishing her children. She also has a commanding voice. But her performance is stiff, missing the humor intended under what she says and posing too often. Essie is more than she seems as we see later in the play, but we get few suggestions of that early on.

Liam Loomer brings honest warmth to the role of Nat. He struggles to relax into a real middle-aged man and is forced into playing with cigars and pipes and too much joie de vivre. He does a fine bit of physical comedy in a scene with Corbett where he struggles to explain the “facts of life.” Loomer also has an uncanny resemblance to a young Orson Welles.

Oren Steiner probably has the hardest role in the play as Uncle Sid. Sid is a one-time valued newspaper reporter brought down by a weakness for alcohol. Despite his weakness, Sid is a lovable drunk, not the usual mess found in other O’Neill plays. Steiner does a good job of melding the two sides of Sid and brings some sweet interplay with his nephew Richard after Richard’s night out. But a lot of the humor that is sad/funny about Uncle Sid doesn’t come through and seems, again, stiff and labored.

Amy Aaron as the long-suffering Lily is fairly convincing but looks far too young for the part and lacks the nervousness that seems intended in a character defined as “poor spinster” forced to take shelter in her brother’s house while pining for desolate Sid.

Juliana Tassos plays the brassy prostitute with a nod to Mae West and a squawky voice. Morgan Waggoner is the ethereal Muriel. She gets the tension between desire and rectitude as the play becomes a poetic valentine.

A couple actors seem a bit more relaxed in their performances. Sarah Prendergast plays sister Mildred with a breezy good humor and no posed mannerisms. Eddie Williams as a shifty bartender is also natural as he seems to glide across the barroom.

Ah, Wilderness! was a sweet spot to which O’Neill never ventured again. His family plays in the future would be dark and brooding and even more revolutionary than Wilde, Shaw or Omar Khayyam. But even here he raised some real issues about the limits of freedom and the value of restraint when it comes in the warm embrace of a loving and upright family.

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit.

Ah, Wilderness! continues at the Arthur Miller Theatre on the North Campus of the University of Michigan at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 13, 8 p.m. Oct. 7,8,14 and 15 and 2 p.m. Oct. 9 and 16. For tickets, call (734)764-2538, go online to tickets.music.umich.edu or in person at the League Ticket Office in the Michigan League building at Fletcher and N. University.

Redbud Productions celebrates its 18th year with the Tony-nominated comedy/drama Good People, a delightful play named Best Play of the Year by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. From the writer of the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire, Good People explores the struggles, shifting loyalties, and unshakable hopes that come with having next to nothing in America.

Welcome to Southie, the Boston neighborhood where a night on the town means a few rounds of bingo; where this month’s paycheck covers last month’s bills, and where Margie Walsh (Katie Whitney) has just been fired from yet another job.

Facing eviction from her eccentric landlady (Linda Lee Austin) and scrambling to catch a break, Margie, on the advice of her best friend (Emily Rogers), approaches her former boyfriend (Dave Barker), now a wealthy doctor, in hopes that he is her ticket to a fresh new start. Will this self-made man face his humble beginnings? Margie risks what little she has left to find out.

David Lindsay-Abaire’s play Rabbit Hole was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, five Tony Award nominations, and the Spirit of America Award. Good People premiered on Broadway and received two Tony Award nominations and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play of the Year.

“Good People maps the fault lines of social class with a rare acuity of perception while also packing a substantial emotional wallop.” - Boston Globe “A wonderful new play … poignant, brave and almost subversive in its focus on what it really means to be down on your luck” - The New York Post

Amy Cantú is a Production Librarian at the Ann Arbor District Library.

Good People runs October 13-15 at the Kerrytown Concert House, 415 North Fourth Avenue, Ann Arbor. General Seating Tickets - $20 for adults; $15 for students (limited front row café table seating for groups of 2 - 3 for $25 a seat. For reservations, call Kerrytown Concert House at 734-769-2999 or visit http://kerrytownconcerthouse.com.

While watching Daniel Beaty’s play Mr. Joy at Theatre Nova, I immediately thought of Yong Kim, the owner of Mary’s Fabulous Chicken and Fish in Ann Arbor, who was robbed and brutally beaten with a plastic milk crate while walking to his car from the restaurant in 2014. Kim was 74 at the time of his attack, and the assailants turned out to be two teenage boys.

According to press reports, Kim managed to do something many of us would struggle mightily to do: he forgave his attackers.

Mr. Joy tells a similar story, through the prism of one actor playing several characters. In the play, longtime Harlem shoe repair shop owner Mr. Kim is robbed and beaten one night, but he won’t tell the police who his attacker was. And while Mr. Joy is the play’s nucleus, we never actually see him. Instead, we hear perspectives from those whose lives he’s touched: a homeless former painter; an 11 year old girl from the projects with AIDS, Clarissa, who considers herself his apprentice; Clarissa’s feisty grandmother; Clarissa’s schoolyard boyfriend, Peter; a young poet, DeShawn, who finds hope at church; Mr. Joy’s Ivy League-educated, real estate dealer son; the son’s rich, black Republican boss; the boss’ white girlfriend, who yearns for a child; and the boss’ transgender, flight attendant daughter, Ashes.

The hands-down best thing about Mr. Joy is seeing actor Matthew Webb embody each of the play’s characters with tremendous focus, care, and zeal. With an assist from director Billicia Hines’ guiding hand, Webb uses minimal costume changes and props – a notebook, a blazer and briefcase, a pair of red pumps, etc. – and efficient physical cues, like posture and gait, in addition to vocal inflection, to delineate the transitions between characters, and the effect is powerful. Despite the number of characters, and despite a couple of them earning a tenuous-at-best place in the narrative, Theatre Nova’s production never lacks clarity, and Webb’s performance is truly gripping to behold. (Those who previously saw the actor perform in TN’s I and Thou will leave Mr. Joy a much deeper appreciation for his talents and versatility.)

That said, Beaty’s play itself doesn’t provide much that’s bracing or new or thought-provoking regarding our ongoing national discussion of race, class, and inequality in America. Yes, there are moments of both sweetness and pain in the show; and DeShawn, in one scene, performs an impassioned performance poem that taps into the rage and fear and frustration of the community.

But we also hear familiar banalities from Grandma Bessie about faith, and how important it is to make the effort to talk to people; we see a character who will forever define himself by his own worst act – yet it’s hard to believe he even committed the crime, based on the short glimpses we’re shown of him, so the play’s “big reveal” feels instead like an unsatisfying, unearned authorial shortcut.

And finally, we have a politically conservative black man’s self-imposed estrangement from his child, born a son, because he chooses to undergo surgery to become a woman. This level of emotional complexity demands a play unto itself, frankly, in order to really dig into the issues involved; getting the drive-by version inevitably falls short.

Set designer Kelsey Nowak keeps things simple, with a busted brick wall backdrop (in front of a screen for occasional projections), a bench, milk cartons, a stool, a coat stand, a store sign, and a raised corner for Mr. Joy’s regular customers to leave shoes as a kind of prayer for his recovery. Daniel C. Walker lights the show beautifully, signaling character and mood transitions. And costume designer Carla Milarch (who also designed the show’s sound) found clothes that were neutral, but also wholly appropriate, for Webb to wear as he navigates between a broad variety of characters.

I’ll confess Theatre Nova’s design elements, paired with Webb’s powerhouse performance, had me seduced as the lights came up; but the more I thought (and wrote) about the play, the more I couldn’t overlook the script’s shortcomings. For unlike Ta-Nehisi Coates’ invigorating, harrowing, brutally honest book Between the World and Me – a letter to Coates’ son about growing up as an endangered black man in America – Mr. Joy never takes the risks necessary to push us into new, uncharted territory in regard to talking about race; and that’s precisely where we need to go if anything’s going to change.

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.

Mr. Joy runs through October 23 at the Yellow Barn, 410 W Huron St, Ann Arbor. Visit https://www.artful.ly/theatre-nova/store/events for tickets.