TheatreDate.com Reviews

Equal parts eerie and elegant, strange and beautiful, the show “Goblin Market,” now playing at the Blue Room captures something both childish and erotic.

Based on a poem supposedly written for children by Christina Rossetti, the adaptation by Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon is full of overtly sexual undertones. An alluring blend of music, poetry and prose, the show is experimental and edgy, the kind of daring performance the Blue Room is justly known for.

The two women show tells the story of a pair of sisters, Laura (played by Allison Rich), and Lizzy (played by Ashley Mauerhan). The play begins in song, with the two adult Victorian era women returning to their childhood nursery.

Together they are magically transported back to childhood and their room is transformed to a woody glen, a wilderness inhabited by fruit gobbling goblins. Laura is enticed by the fruity offerings, Lizzy wary. The diametrically opposed personalities of the sisters are illustrated by the difference in their costumes, Laura wearing black lingerie with hell-fire red fringe, and innocent Lizzy gingerly sporting virginal pink and white.

The two are transported through the childhood fairyland and ushered on by absinth and alluring recollections of adolescence.

Like all good poetry the message is mired in language and metaphoric imagery, leaving the audience to draw what they will from the performance.

The show itself has been bouncing around the Blue Room for over a year, the idea kicked from hand to hand, Rich said. It finally found a home in the directorial dome of David Davalos, and the script landed in Rich’s lap.

“I fell in love with it, you know,” she said. “The language is so beautiful.”

Joe Hilsee gave her the script and music and asked her to find another performer who could join her in the show, she said. Having just worked with Mauerhan at a production for Chico State she proposed the part to her.

“I went to Ashley ’cause she’s perfect,” she said. “Her voice is just perfect for this role.”

Mauerhan is perfect for the part, but she was apprehensive before opening night.

“I was nervous all day,” she admitted.

Part of her apprehension comes from the fact that her role calls for nudity during the climactic song of the show, and she was more nervous about the exposure then the notes, she said.

“It [the nudity] kind of works to work with the nervous energy,” she explained.

The show is a wonderful and highly experimental piece of poetic play work. Maybe not a family show if you’re uncomfortable with your kids seeing flesh, but still a show that should satisfy all age groups. Rich in meaning and very imaginative, the show is full of playful imagery. Everything in the performance has its place.

“It’s wonderful,” Mauerhan said of the staging. “Everything has a point. There’s nothing that doesn’t have meaning on stage.”

The Blue Room is playing host to “Nixon’s Nixon” a powerful political performance that speculates what might have happened August 7, 1974 in the Lincoln sitting room of the White House. That night President Nixon summoned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the presidential home; the next day he announced to the world his intention to resign.

The two-man show staring local Joe Hilsee and play write David Davalos is intriguing, entertaining and well performed.

The show follows the two men through the late summer evening. They chat and bicker like old friends over countless glasses of brandy while recounting in vivid detail some of their memorable presidential moments. They take turns doing impressions of soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev, they act out their interview with Mao Zedong, and they even do imitations of each other.

The audience gets an inside look at some of the presidents dirty little secrets, and although Russell Lees’ scripts is not necessarily sympathetic to the two statesmen, it does humanize them and show a certain uncharacteristic complexity.

Hilsee and Davalos — who first read through the script in Hilsee’s living room sometime last summer — recruited Director Jerry Miller into the project, Hilsee said. Miller was all too happy to work with the accomplished performers.

“We were all pretty much on the same page on this,” Miller said. “I’d show up at rehearsals and it would just be fun all the way.”

That amusing, playful energy seeps into the audience, who gets to laugh along with the tasteless frat house humor of the president and the self-serving seriousness of the secretary.

Davalos, an actor, director and playwright who splits his time between living in Denver and New York, portrays the President with such realism that at first you think Nixon must be rolling over in his grave, and then you swear he got out of the grave to play himself on stage. Davalos not only nails the Nixon manner of speech, he also masterfully manipulates his body, performing the quintessential Nixon mannerisms right down to the President’s stooping posture.

Hilsee also did a wonderful job with his role as the straight man in the slapstick duo. Although he put less focus on trying to impersonate Dr. Kissinger, he did capture something of the uptight Jewish immigrant.

“It comes down to how far do you want to go with an impression,” Hilsee said.

Although the character portrayals were good, what really makes the show impressive is the casual banter between the only two actors on stage. Like a well-choreographed dance, the conversation is so realistic that at times it’s hard to remember that the show is scripted.

It’s an even more impressive accomplishment when you take into consideration the fact that the two have only been rehearsing for a week. Because of Davalos’ obligations back East, he only came into town a few days before the show opened, Hilsee said.

All and all this show is a real winner. Its got it all: laughs, tears, and incriminating tapes. The show is fun for all ages, not just those who can remember the events portrayed in the play first hand.

The helpful and informative program has a list of world leaders, first family members and presidential henchmen to help younger audience members understand what’s going on. It even has a time line of events that starts in 1948 and walks readers through the official resignation on August 9, 1974.

Catch this show before it leaves office forever.