Something From Nothing

Go! Feature

Bruce Cromer is simply full of Prospero these days.

Near the end of the last theater season, he starred in the Human Race Theatre Company’s production of “The Tempest” in the role he now reprises for the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival under the direction of Drew Fracher. He is also currently directing a production of “The Tempest” with a female “Prospera” at Wright State University where he teaches acting.

“It’s fascinating as an intellectual puzzle,” he said. “Shakespeare can be interpreted in so many different ways and Prospero is one of those roles you can never really get right.”

In contrast to his previous incarnation of Prospero, Cromer said that Fracher has him more obsessed with vengeance and has refocused his relationship with his daughter, Miranda.

“Drew is having Hayley (Clark, the actress playing Miranda) being a bit of a pain at times,” he said. “She fights back and doesn’t want to do what her dad says.”

One key difference between the productions is the way that Caliban, described in the text as “a savage and deformed slave.”

“Giles (Davies) is literally all over the place, kind of a scary, hop-toed kind of goblin,” Cromer said. “It’s an amazing transformation.”

Although “The Tempest” is often considered to be one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” it tends to get a lot of productions because of it’s “fantastical nature,” Cromer said, “which draws a lot of directors and design teams to the supernatural part of it.

“It’s fantasy schtick is just as funny as ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ but it is also a comedy, a romance and on top of it all you get this dark, vengeful side,” he said. “So you can look at it not as a problem  play, but as a good mix of genres."

Having previously appeared at Cincinnati Shakespeare festival in Edward Albee’s drama “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” Cromer is also slated to return next season in the title role of “King Lear.”

“I know that it’s a monster of a role,” he said. “Lear has such gigantic emotions of rage and grief and madness that I’m always amazed at the actors that chew into Lear. They have to go deep inside themselves emotionally.”

how to go
WHAT: “The Tempest.”
WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati.
WHEN: May 3-27.
COST: $18-$24.
MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; cincyshakes.com.

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Go! feature

New Stage Collective has become Cincinnati’s fifth professional theater company to take up permanent residency in its own dedicated space, and the third in Over the Rhine.

“It’s awesome,” said producing artistic director Alan Patrick Kenny of the space, formerly Jekyll & Hyde’s Billiard Club at 1140 Main St., Cincinnati. “We’ve been re-inventing everything we do to make sure that the space is totally original.

“We’ve been doing all kinds of stuff, usually in a contemporary vein, with programming like a resident theater, but now we’re trying to be as untheater as possible.”

That reinvention encompasses everything from the kinds of plays they do to how they are presented, he said.

“We have a space that has an incredible amount of character,” Kenny said. “It has hardwood floors and brick walls, with windows looking out onto Main Street that can be neutralized if we want.”

But for the opening gambit, Edward Albee’s provocative “The Goat,” Kenny has gone out of his way to make seem like the play is actually taking place in someone’s living room, not just a set of a living room.

The play concerns a successful architect whose world falls apart when he falls in love with a goat. Considered by many, including Kenny, to be one of the best plays in Albee’s long and substantial career, “The Goat” challenges audience members to question their morality on difficult issues such as homosexuality, incest and infidelity.

“In this case, the familiar terrain of the family living room becomes dangerous terrain,” Kenny said, “and this personal tragedy begins to take on epic proportions.”

The cast includes Brian Isaac Phillips, the artistic director of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and Amy Warner, a classically-experienced actress now living in Cincinnati, and who performed the role of Martha in Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” last season, which Phillips directed.

“Both Brian and Amy have extensive experience in classical theater and tragedy,” Kenny said. “They have the capacity to go where the show needs to go.

“We didn’t pick ‘The Goat’ because it is controversial,” he said, “but because this is a story that needs to be told.

“It’s a crime that this play has not yet been produced in Cincinnati five years after it won the Tony award for Best Play,” he said.        

how to go
WHAT: “The Goat.”
WHERE: New Stage Collective, 1140 Main St., Cincinnati.
WHEN: April 26-May 20.
COST:  $20, $12 students.
MORE INFO: (513) 621-3700.

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Go! Feature

HORSE the Band will perform “Nintendocore” music  — a genre inspired by 8-bit video game soundtracks — at Top Cat’s Club in Cincinnati. We spent a few minutes on the phone with keyboardist Erik Engstrom.

GO!: How did Horse the Band get together?

EE: “Way back in the beginning, me and the guitar player (David Isen) went to elementary school together. We first got interested in music in high school when we were jumping up and down on the bed with inflatable guitars listening to punk and heavy metal screaming music. Later, we got into playing in the Imaginary Wrestling Association by mail. Every day we were together writing nasty comments for each other’s wrestlers. Then we got tired of that and needed something to fill the void, so we decided to start a ban d.

GO!: Who named the band?

EE:: “Nobody remembers. We can’t even think of a time when we decided on a name. It was originally just 'Horse,’ but we’re not an animal, we’re a band.

GO!: What’s your latest record?

EE: “We’ve got one coming out on June 26 that we just finished recording. It’s called 'A Natural Death.’ ”

GO!: Is the title foreshadowing something?

EE: “Inevitably it is. There’s no song by that name or anything. The last song is called 'Life’ because when anything good or bad happens to us, that’s what we say. 'Life.’ Then our singer started spelling it, so we have a song where we’re misspelling it.”

GO!: Is this album much like your last album, “Pizza”?

EE: “ 'Pizza’ is a horrible album. We wrote every song in two weeks and recorded it in two days. It’s a complete joke with no seriousness behind it. It was just for our hard-core fans. We got a new drummer who can actually play drums on the new album and a bunch of weird orchestral stuff.”

GO!: What are your shows like?

EE: “Our shows are crazy. All the other bands who say their shows are crazy aren’t really. It’s like maybe the lead singer spills some water on himself and they call it crazy. But all of our fans are mentally challenged with tumors or maybe they just have greasy hair. There are never any girls, just a bunch of nerds who want to talk about Nintendo. But they are very energetic and sweaty. We draw from different groups like goths and nerds who all hate each other and they all get beaten up by the hard-core crews.”

GO!: So what would you want to tell people who plan to come to your show?

EE: “Tell them to bring life-size realistic stuffed animals to give to us.”

how to go
WHAT: HORSE the Band.
WHERE: Top Cat’s Club, 2820 Vine St., Cincinnati.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.
COST: $11 advance; $13 day of show.
MORE INFO: (513) 281-2005; topcatsclub.com.

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