St. Louis theatre calendar for the week of January 27. 2025

What's on St. Louis theater and cabaret stages this coming week. Please leave a comment if anything was wrong or got left out

Tim Schall and Joe Dreyer

The Blue Strawberry presents Sunday Standard Time with singer Tim Schall, pianist Joe Dreyer, and Willem Von Hombracht on bass on Sunday February 2, at 6 pm. “Join Tim, Joe and Willem in the lounge for a casual, classy Sunday evening of jazz standards, a little sophisticated pop and a dash of classic Broadway.”  The performance takes place in at The Blue Strawberry, 364 N. Boyle. For more information: bluestrawberrystl.com

Chorus of Fools presents Double Take, two new one-act plays January 30 through February 1 at 7:30 pm and February 2 at 2 pm. The plays are The Pavement Kingdom: A Clinic Escort Play by Courtney Bailey and The Bigfoot Diaries by Eric Satterfield. Performances take place at The Greenfinch Theatre and Dive, 2525 S. Jefferson. For more information: www.chorusoffools.org.

Circus Harmony presents Unbound! Saturdays and Sundays at 2 pm, February 1-23. “An unfettered look at fairy tales featuring Circus Harmony youth circus troupe.” Performances take place at City Museum downtown. For more information: circusharmony.org.

Six: The Musical
Photo: Joan Marcus

The Fabulous Fox presents Six: The Musical running through February 2. “From Tudor Queens to Pop Icons, the SIX wives of Henry VIII take the microphone to remix five hundred years of historical heartbreak into a Euphoric Celebration of 21st century girl power! This new original musical is the global sensation that everyone is losing their head over!” The Fabulous Fox is on North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: fabulousfox.com. [See my interview on Chuck's Culure Channel]

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis presents  Athena by Grace Gardner through February 9 “Mary Wallace and Athena are brave, and seventeen, and fencers, and training for the Junior Olympics. They practice together, they compete against each other, they spend their lives together. They wish they were friends.” Performances take place in the Emerson Studio Theatre of the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus. For more information: www.repstl.org.

Pictures From a Revolution
Photo: ProPhotoSTL

Upstream Theater presents the US premiere of Pictures from a Revolution (Quadri di una rivoluzione) translated by Haun Saussy through February 7. “Three last resistance fighters of an unidentified revolution are living inside the walls of a stadium, while enemies lurk outside, watching and waiting. One of the men goes looking for food and winds up bringing a woman into their closed circle. Are they right to trust her? The ensuing scenes echo a series of famous paintings by Rembrandt, Matisse, Degas, and others, and highlight themes touched on in the dialogues of this deep and darkly comic piece.” Performances take place at The Marcelle in Grand Center. For more information: www.upstreamtheater.org.

Looking for auditions and other artistic opportunities? Check out the St. Louis Auditions site.

To get your event listed here, send an email to chuck at kdhx.org Your event information should be in text format (i.e. not part of a graphic), but feel free to include publicity stills.

Would you like to be on the radio? KDHX, 88.1 FM needs theatre reviewers. If you're 18 years or older, knowledgeable in this area, have practical theatre experience (acting, directing, writing, technical design, etc.), have good oral and written communications skills and would like to become one of our volunteer reviewers, send an email describing your experience and interests to chuck at kdhx.org. Please include a sample review of something you've seen recently.

At the Humana Festival, "Wellesley Girl" displays untapped potential

L-R: Jeff Biehl, Pun Bandhu, Lynda Gravátt, Kelly McAndrew
Photo: Bill Brymer

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One of the great things about the Humana Festival of New American Plays is the valuable exposure it gives to new playwrights.  Their work is sometimes rough around the edges or even, as is the case with Brendan Pelsue's Wellesley Girl at this year's festival, a bit of a mess.  But as far as artistic growth goes, there's just no substitute for the experience of seeing one's work performed by a professional company for a paying audience.

The concept behind Wellesley Girl is intriguing, especially during our fractious political season.  Set in the year 2465, the play takes place in a walled enclave in New England whose 435 inhabitants are, as far as they know, the sole surviving population of the United States of America.  They're all members of Congress, and the Supreme Court is now one woman—the only one with legal training and the books to back it up.

Barney O'Hanlon, Rachael Leslie
Photo: Bill Brymer

Their stable if limited world is threatened when an army from Texas suddenly and inexplicably shows up, insisting that they are the real U.S. government and making a list of impossible demands.  The population soon splits into two camps, one insisting on negotiation and another on "scorched earth", which appears to mean abandoning the enclave and fleeing into the wilderness.  Neither alternative makes much sense, though, since the invading army appears to be invincible and the water supply outside of the enclave is supposedly poisoned.  Only the enclave's filtration system makes it drinkable.

This setup has the potential to offer a satirical look at our current political dysfunction and possibly an examination of how people behave when there are no good choices.  Unfortunately it offers neither.  The arguments among the enclave's residents become little more than shouting matches and the moral dilemma they face becomes buried in political maneuvering. 

L-R: Philip Taratula, Jeff Biehl
Photo: Bill Brymer

The plot also doesn't hold up to much scrutiny and much of it simply makes no sense.  If the water is poisoned, what are the mighty Texas forces drinking?  How did they even find out about the New Englanders in the first place, given that there appears to be no communication infrastructure?  If the army has them surrounded, how will they escape to the woods? 

Worse yet, the feeble final scenes seem to indicate that the playwright simply wrote himself into a corner and couldn't find a way out.  When the final blackout came, nobody clapped because it wasn't clear whether or not the play had actually ended.

The show isn't without its moments.  A scene in which Donna, The Supreme Court (Lynda Gravátt) hears arguments at her kitchen table with a hand-made "SCOTUS" sign in the center have real charm.  And Barney O'Hanlon's robot Hank is a wonderfully precise piece of acting.  Indeed, the cast as a whole is quite good, even if some of the characters they portray are a bit one-dimensional.  There's also some real comedy in the public meetings before they descend into chaos.  But ultimately this play's reach far exceeds its grasp.

That said, this is still an interesting first effort, for all its flaws.  Mr. Plesue is clearly an original voice and, given that he is still working on his M.F.A., it's reasonable to assume that he might have a bright future ahead of him.  Very few creative people get everything right the first time, after all.

Wellesley Girl runs through April 10th in the Pamela Brown Auditorium at Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the 40th Humana Festival of New American Plays.