Anatole (Jordan Patrick) and Natasha (Alexandria Joy) have a palpable chemistry in “Great Comet.” Photo: Courtesy of Horizon Theatre

By Danielle Charbonneau
Feb 1, 2025

[READ THE ARTICLE ON THE AJC WEBSITE (paywall)]

Imagine a wild saloon with girls stomping and twirling in dresses, an accordion player banging out tunes and drunken revelry that escalates to merrymakers dancing atop the bar. Now transport this scene to 19th century Moscow. Replace the beer with vodka. Add a cello, piano, glockenspiel and viola. Place yourself at a cocktail table in the center of the action. You’ve now arrived at the experience you’ll have at Horizon Theatre’s immersive, raucous production of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812″ directed by Heidi McKerley.

The play, which is based on 70 racy pages of Leo Tolstoy’s dense novel “War and Peace,” was nominated for 12 Tony Awards when it was on Broadway in 2017. Locally, Horizon Theatre production’s staging also won accolades. After its first run of shows in late 2023 sold out every night, its second round in early 2024 racked up eight Suzi Bass awards.

Now, the theater’s third run is expected to draw crowds that either missed out on the fun, or want another taste.

Often called an electropop opera, the show features live musicians dispersed throughout the theater playing a wide range of instruments over a soundtrack of electronic beats. The plot unfolds through song. Actors use the entire house as a stage, encircling audience members who can be seated at the bar, cocktail tables, couches, in the balconies or regular seats.

The story centers on Natasha (played by Alexandria Joy), a young woman who falls madly in love with the quintessential bad boy Anatole (played by Jordan Patrick) when her fiancé Andrey (played by Hayden Rowe) is off fighting in the Napoleonic wars. Natasha’s best friend and cousin Sonya (played by Anna Dvorak) cringes as she watches Natasha grow increasingly lustful and love drunk over Anatole, risking her integrity and throwing her future away for the seductive playboy.

In a moving moment of female friendship, Sonya swears she will barricade the door if it means saving her cousin from derailing her life over a melodramatic fling.

For being based on a 19th century Russian novel with the reputation as a thick and challenging read, the story is surprisingly relatable, especially in its romantic tropes. Humorously playing with book’s reputation, however, the program comes with a family diagram and the play opens with a song to help guests memorize the characters.

“There’s a war going on out there somewhere and Andrey isn’t here. Natasha is young … Anatole is hot; he spends his money on women and wine,” the song repeats through all the characters.

Pierre, the play’s other main character, is a melancholy, awkward man married to Andrey’s sister Mary. He is suffering an existential crisis, wondering if he’ll ever find the love he craves. By the end of the play, Pierre learns that by giving love — by showing compassion to Natasha while she faces the consequences of her own naive self-sabotage — he receives a satisfaction greater than romance. As the famous St. Francis prayer goes, perhaps it is more important to love, than be loved; to understand, than be understood.

The comet makes only one appearance, firing through the night sky as the climactic end. Is the blaze of interstellar light a bad omen? It could be. But the characters seem to find a renewed sense of hope and a reminder of their small place in the universe.

Be fair warned: After seeing the show and getting invested in the characters — a testament to Horizon’s enrapturing production — one might be tempted to pick up a copy of Tolstoy’s roughly 1,500-page novel “War and Peace,” which contains both Russian and French dialogue. Only then can one know what truly befalls Natasha or Pierre in the end. But if not, the scandalous slice devoured through the play is certainly satisfying on its own.

If you go

“Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812″ plays at Horizon Theatre (1083 Austin Ave. in Little Five Points) Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2:30 and 8 p.m.; and Sundays at 5 p.m. The show runtime is 2.5 hours with a 15-minute intermission. Tickets start at $55. The play runs from now until Feb. 23. Tickets can be purchased at horizontheatre.com.

Horizon Theatre Company and Atlanta Children’s Theatre’s collaborative production of ‘Madeline’s Christmas’ bridges communities by casting child actors from 26 diverse schools.

By Danielle Charbonneau

Dec 14, 2024

Twenty-seven girls from 26 schools across Atlanta have joined professional actors, Atlanta Children’s Theatre and Horizon Theatre Company to performthe annual holiday musical “Madeline’s Christmas.” In its 14th year, the theatrical production has become a cherished tradition that bridges diverse communities through theater.

The two casts of 12 girls each, plus three understudies, hail from Gwinnett, Cobb, Fulton and DeKalb counties, giving a wide range of girls the opportunity to bond through creative collaboration.

Adapted from the classic children’s book series by Ludwig Bemelmans, the script follows Madeline, an adorable French girl who lives with 11 other girls at a Paris boarding school under the care of a warmhearted nun, Miss Clavel. Madeline is known for her contagious gumption and adventurous spirit. The play opens with the 12 girls, dressed in darling red wool cape coats and canotier hats, belting out Bemelmans’ famous words: “In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived 12 little girls in two straight lines. … The smallest one was Madeline.”

The girls and Miss Clavel take a day trip to a zoo, but when they return to school, all but Madeline discover they forgot to wear their scarves in the cold Paris winter. Everyone except Madeline comes down with a feverish cold. Sneezing fits ensue during a musical number aptly titled “Achoo!” Our young heroineis left to care for the girls, who fear they might not be able to go home to their families for Christmas.

In typical Madeline fashion, she saves Christmas when she befriends a rug salesperson, Monsieur Brun, who happens to be a geniewith magic carpets. Soon, soaring above the Seine, by the Eiffel Tower and over the Arc de Triomphe, the girls make it home for the holidays.

Credit: Danielle Charbonneau

Madeline, played by 10-year-old Anari Vasser from DeKalb Arts Academy, meets Monsieur Brun/Harsha, a genie played by Conner Kocks on opening night of Madeline’s Christmas. Danielle Charbonneau/AJC More

Performed in an intimate, 160-seat theaterin the Little 5 Points Community Center (fittingly, a former schoolhouse), Madeline’s Christmas gives audience members ample opportunities to interact with the close-up cast. Some select kids in the crowd are given fake snow to throw during one scene, and all have the option to buy magic wands to illuminate when the genie needs a magic boost.

The use of puppets and effects — a mouse hand puppet, a cardboard giraffe, changing scenes of Paris on a digital screen — add an extra layer of fun. The 70-minute play (with no intermission) keeps a quick clip.

The real hook throughout, of course, is Madeline. Since 1939, the character’sspunk and bravery has tickled readers through multiple generations. Lisa Adler, Horizon’s president for 40 years, remembers reading the Madeline series when she was a girl, and she has gifted books and dolls to her nieces.

“Madeline has been a role model for girls learning to speak their mind, explore their individuality and understand that femininity includes being clever, smart and strong,” Adler writes in the show notes.

Seventeen years ago, when Adler ran into an old acting friend — Spring Mason, artistic director of Atlanta Children’s Theatre Company — they were inspired to partner their companies for a production that would match Horizon’s professional actors with Mason’s child actors. Madeline’s Christmas seemed a great fit, and they were correct: The production has been going strong since 2007, minus three years because of the pandemic.

The duo decided that rather than charge kids to take classes to put on the production (a common financial model for children’s theater), they would host auditions across Atlanta, find young performers who were talented enough to warrant ticket purchases and run on what Adler called “the gift economy.” In this arrangement, parents can choose to pay what they want in the form of time, support or money.

Madeline’s Christmas has relied on this model ever since. Ticket sales account for less than half the show’s budget, and the rest comes from donors and public arts funding agencies.

“The Madeline model really works,” Adler said. “The holidays are a time when people will take their kids out to things. Not just because it’s theater, but because it’s a holiday. … We’ve decided that it’s sort of our little ‘Nutcracker.’ It recruits the next generation of people.”

Natalie Rogovin’s family has been coming to the show for nine years. Her daughter Maefaire, now 12, from thePaideia School in Druid Hills, was only 4 the first time she attended Madeline’s Christmas.

“There’s a scene in the show where the girls have a pillow fight, and she always said, ‘I want to be in that pillow fight scene,’” Natalie Rogovin recalled.

This year, Maefaire Rogovin got her wish. After she auditioned, competing with more than 100 girls for the 27 spots, she was cast as Mary in one of the show’s two casts.

Credit: Danielle Charbonneau

A cast of 12 girls surround Miss Clavel, played by Ciara Pysczynski on the opening night of Madeline’s Christmas. Pictured back right is Conner Kocks as Monsieur Brun and Kymberli Green as Mrs. Murphy.

As a deposit to the “gift economy,” Natalie Rogovin was the volunteer controlling the steady flow of opening night audience members into a room where, after every show, the young cast members sign autographs. The room was abuzz with girls who seemed to be the best of friends, even though few of the 27 actresseshad met before October.

Bridging disparate communities has always been one of Adler’s goals for Madeline’s Christmas.

“We wanted it to be a citywide opportunity. We cast the best ensemble of kids that reflects the diversity of Atlanta,” she said. “When they get out the other end, they are young women with great amounts of confidence in themselves and great friendships.”

Tania Vasser, the mother of Anari Vasser — a 10-year-old from DeKalb Arts Academy who played Madeline on opening night — agreed.

Anari “has made an overwhelming amount of friends,” her momsaid. “They FaceTime quite often. They go over their lines in group chats. … We’ve (the parents) actually gained some dinner partners and friends as well.”

Tania Vassar was astounded by opening night.

“I knew (Anari)was going to knock our socks off, but I just didn’t know how much,” she said. “I’m so emotional … and then to know that there’s a future in it for her, it just blew me away.”

Of the roughly 330 girlswho have appeared in Madeline’s Christmas over its 14 years at Horizon, some have gone on to successful acting careers. One went on national tour with Matilda, Adler said, and another was cast in a Canadian television series.

“And a lot of them are very quickly doing the movies and television stuff in Atlanta because there’s such a demand,” she said.

Kymberli Green, who plays Mrs. Murphy, said watching the girls connect and learn throughout the process was beautiful.

“I think theater is an invaluable, important healer and merger of all backgrounds,” she said.

The girls, who had long rehearsals every Saturday, Sunday and Monday for 10 weeks, learned discipline, collaboration, cooperation, respect and teamwork, Adler said.

“It’s similar to what sports teaches in a way,” she said. “Of course, theater builds a lot of empathy for others too.”

In the end, the process of creating the show taught the same values Madeline does: to embrace new things, spread loving kindness and approach life boldly.

Enoch King as Gil, left, has Brad Raymond as Mo to keep his grief at bay in Coleman Domingo’s “Wild With Happy.” (Photos by Shannel J. Resto)

Review: ‘Wild With Happy’ tempers death with humor and magic 

Alexis Hauk

August 28, 2024

Mothers and the complicated relationships we have with them — especially once they’re gone — are a bottomless well that writers have drunk from since the first scrawls across cave walls. In theater, many of the most famous examples of motherhood tend to go the route of Amanda Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie: an opportunity for the playwright to work out some lingering bitterness from childhood, as Tennessee Williams did. 

(Interestingly, decades later, Menagerie would inspire Pulitzer-winning playwright Paula Vogel to grapple empathetically with her own mom’s deeply flawed humanity in this year’s Tony-nominated Mother Play.)

It’s that storied tradition that makes the abundance of tenderness in actor/writer/director Colman Domingo’s ode to his late mother, Wild with Happy, onstage at Horizon Theatre through September 15, an interesting outlier. That gentle fondness in Domingo’s writing also gives the show its most affecting moments.

Protagonist Gil (Enoch King) is a 40-year-old struggling actor who spends the play wrestling with the legacy of his larger-than-life mother, Adelaide, who has died after a period of illness. Left to handle arrangements mostly on his own, Gil bears a mix of financial, emotional and existential burdens and fluctuates between self-shielding cynicism, sorrow and impulsivity. We bounce back and forth between Gil’s specific memories of Adelaide when she was alive and her haunting presence over his life now after death.

In the role of Adelaide, we get the treat of watching a phenomenal Tonia Jackson, who was wonderful as the titular character in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at Theatrical Outfit earlier this year. Jackson never makes Gil’s mother, even in all her quirky glory, seem cartoonish. She’s a character — but she’s the kind of character most of us will recognize from our real lives.

Wild With Happy premiered in 2012 at the Public Theater in New York six years after the Tony and Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning Domingo lost his mom, Edith Bowles, with whom he was extremely close. (Edith Productions, the company Domingo and his husband Raul run, is named for her.)

There are biographical details about their mother-son relationship that Domingo has shared in interviews — like how Bowles wrote to Oprah multiple times when her son was still trying to land his big break in New York — which show up here. It’s those specific moments that have the most strength and poignancy. (In a touching twist, Oprah played Adelaide in the Audible version of the play, released this summer.)

We see Gil’s experience with his mother as sometimes embarrassing, sometimes confounding, but always warm and real and loving. “Are you OK?” he asks her over the phone at one point. “Why — what did you hear?” she snaps.

Later in that conversation, he’s sharing that he has an audition for a Craisin commercial, and she mishears him and yells excitedly, “Oh! A Raisin in the Sun!?” After which he must sheepishly correct her. Every scene between Jackson and King has easy, lived-in chemistry, to the point that their repartee practically glows. 

Structurally, the play flows from one point in time to another, like memories drenched in grief. At one jump, we’re in a surreal, over-the-top church service Gil experienced as a child — a scene bubbling with hammy religious satire and the Ohio Players — and, in another, decades later, a shopping trip for her casket. 

Jackson gets more time to shine and display her impeccable comic timing in a dual role as Gil’s outspoken force of nature Aunt Glo. If for no other reason, you should go see this show just for the scene where Aunt Glo is picking her late sister’s closet clean by literally donning more and more wardrobe items (eventually, she’s got at least three hats on her head). The more clothes that go on, the more indignant and self-righteous she gets about her nephew’s choice to have his mother cremated rather than buried, as she thinks tradition mandates.

Jackson plays the scene like a maestro conducting an orchestra of laughter. At one point, she puts on a pair of her dead sister’s pumps and crouches down saying, “She would want me to have these!”

As Gil’s best friend Mo, stage veteran Brad Raymond also showcases some comedic chops, garnering a guffaw with just a flick of his brightly colored bangs. (One highlight is his long rant about Disney princesses.) In the central role of Gil, which provides the more grounded and less showy throughline, King delivers a moving portrait of a son trying to find his way through guilt, uncertainty and grief.

The traditions that surround death and the incomprehensibility of death and loss are absurd, and Domingo mines a lot of nice humorous moments. The writing is clever, vulnerable and often very funny.

Granted, some scenes worked better than others. The meet cute between Gil and his new romantic interest, Terry (Markell Williams), who happens to be the funeral director, trods over too-well-worn material with its funeral-industrial complex satire, recognizable from the early aughts HBO classic Six Feet Under or even that “modestly priced receptacle” line from The Big Lebowski.

At the opening night performance, the first act took a while to take shape and gain momentum, as if the play were a new shoe the cast was trying on, and they needed to walk around a few more laps to truly wear it in. But by the second act, that shoe began to fit snuggly; pacing and transitions moved along more easily.

Aided by confident direction from Thomas W. Jones II, simple but well-utilized scenic design from Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay and some creative sound and projection design by Matt Reynolds, we are transported from a funeral home and cherished apartment in Philly to roadside gas stations along the East coast, and, finally, all the way to Disney World, as if by magic. It’s professional make-believe worthy of Adelaide herself.

As Domingo once said of his mother who inspired the play, “She believed in magic and lottery tickets and was very much a romantic.” This play tells us that there’s something brave about having big, impossible dreams — even if those dreams are as fragile as a prized porcelain Cinderella from QVC.

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Alexis Hauk has written and edited for numerous newspapers, alt-weeklies, trade publications and national magazines, including Time, The Atlantic, Mental Floss, Uproxx and Washingtonian. Having grown up in Decatur, Alexis returned to Atlanta in 2018 after a decade living in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles. By day, she works in health communications. By night, she enjoys covering the arts and being Batman.

The women in “The Game” — L to R, Hope Clayborne, Shannon Eubanks, Jennifer Alice Acker, Marcie Millard and Michelle Pokopac — enjoy each other’s company after rallying against their husbands. (Photos by Shannel J. Resto Photography)

Review: Horizon’s ‘Game’ plays on human behavior with winning results

Luke Evans

July 10, 2024

Video games and sex are at the center of The Game, the new comedy by Bekah Brunstetter currently having its regional premiere at Horizon Theatre. Running through July 28, the musical explores a group of women who, in trying to pull their partners away from their game consoles, end up grappling with their own loneliness and need for connection. While the script could use a touch of fine-tuning, there is nothing out of tune about this production, which boasts stellar performances, smart direction and more than a few laugh-out-loud moments.

The play opens on Alyssa (Jennifer Alice Acker), a no-nonsense, career-focused architect who has grown tired of her husband Homer’s (Chris Hecke) obsession with “The Game,” a popular multiplayer online shooting game. At her wits’ end, she allies with a group of women who also have lost partners to The Game, and they plot to withhold sex until their partners give up their addiction.

If the latter bit sounds familiar, it’s because this tactic is taken from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, though The Game is not a direct adaptation of the ancient Greek comedy. There are obvious allusions, such as the names Homer and Alyssa, but the plot trajectory is markedly different. While both are interested in interrogating the nature of male/female relationships — particularly the ways in which romantic partners try and fail to communicate their needs — Brunstetter does so using modern relationship dynamics, which fundamentally changes the structure of the narrative. 

Brunstetter is a keen observer of human behavior, and the three-dimensional cast of characters she has created are a credit to her empathetic writing style. The relationships feel real and specific, bolstered by finely tuned performances from a cast with more chemistry than a hydrogen bomb. She knows how to mine these relationships for comedy and pathos, and director Caroline Jane Davis brings those relationships to life on stage. 

However, there are moments where this attentiveness to emotional realism hamstrings the premise. Structurally, the script is confused. Alyssa’s coalition of women decide to go full-on Lysistrata and use sex as a bargaining chip but are forced to re-strategize when confronted with the fact that ultimatums are not conducive to healthy relationships. On the one hand, this is a clever way of subverting the premise of Aristophanes’ original. On the other, it leaves the script feeling strangely aimless. Brunstetter’s more farcical impulses are in conflict with her realist sensibilities, and the play becomes somewhat muddled in tone as a result.

That is not to say that there is not much to love in the show’s individual parts, as Brunstetter’s writing is still intelligent and insightful. A particular strength is how she builds the relationships between the women, who begin to form bonds that go beyond the initial purpose of their alliance. Alyssa’s relationship with Homer is also lovingly crafted, inviting audiences to invest in the survival of their marriage.

The performances across the board are above critique. Every actor is in top form, inhabiting their characters with such ease that you’d think they’ve been playing these roles for years. They hit every comedic beat just right while finding intriguing layers of pathos, creating lived-in performances that are endlessly enjoyable to watch. Honestly, the ensemble is so tight and their performances so intertwined that it feels impossible to choose a standout.

The script is also uproariously funny. Brunstetter shows an impressive command of contemporary slang, which can often feel forced or unnatural when used in comedic contexts, but it is cleverly employed throughout. But really, the script is at its funniest when it leans into the raunchy nature of the premise (Let’s just say that props master Cori Williams got to have some fun).

Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay work their magic with the set design, including a rotating piece that turns Alyssa’s living room into Homer’s man cave. Costume designer April Andrew Carswell opts for something simple with most of the characters but has some fun with online shopaholic Rhonda (Marcie Millard), who never enters a scene without cheetah print or some kind of statement jewelry. Mary Parker has few opportunities for flashy lighting design, save for a lovely sequence toward the end, in which Homer’s video game world is brought to life before our eyes — a sequence that also benefits from Amy L. Levin’s sound design.

All in all, The Game is a very enjoyable experience — a raucously good time that is bound to tug on the heartstrings in places. It’s perhaps a little confused in its purpose, but any holes in the script are overshadowed by this pitch-perfect production. 

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Luke Evans is an Atlanta-based writer, critic and dramaturg. He covers theater for ArtsATL and Broadway World Atlanta and has worked with theaters such as the Alliance, Actor’s Express, Out Front Theatre and Woodstock Arts. He’s a graduate of Oglethorpe University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, and the University of Houston, where he earned his master’s.

Anatole (Jordan Patrick) and Natasha (Alexandria Joy) have great chemistry in “Great Comet” (Photos courtesy of Horizon Theatre)

Review: ‘Comet’ presents sexy parts of Tolstoy in constellation of musical talent

ALEXIS HAUK·NOVEMBER 2, 2023

“Leo Tolstoy: He’s a fizzy, dizzy good time!” That’s what one imagines a review of the verbose Russian author’s War and Peace might have read if critics of the late 19th century had only had Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 — the electropop musical adaptation of just 70 pages of Tolstoy’s sweeping tome — to go from.

This effervescent, absorbing and musically versatile delight, playing at Horizon Theatre through November 26, cleverly gives us the sexier, more scandalous portion of Tolstoy’s 1867 epic quilt of narratives and philosophical musings set during the Napoleonic Wars.

Under the dexterous direction of Heidi McKerley and in the hands of a go-for-broke cast, it’s a production that, simply put, demonstrates what live theater at its best can do.

With a two-and-a-half-hour run time that somehow flies by faster than a comet’s tail, the story line follows a sweet but naïve young woman named Natasha (Alexandria Joy), who’s engaged to Andrey (Hayden Rowe, who also plays violin), the son of a prince who’s serving as a soldier in the far-off war.

Things soon go awry for Natasha and the soap opera-like soup of supporting characters swirling around their Moscow social scene. And why else? In the parlance of our times: A f***boi. Natasha meets and instantly falls for the magnetic charlatan Anatole (Jordan Patrick), setting off a Rube Goldberg of bad choices that ends, in true Russian fashion, in ruin and exile.

Finally, just to round out the rest of the titular characters, there’s also wealthy, unhappily married Pierre (Daniel Burns), the shy and frequently melancholy friend of Andrey’s, who was played by Josh Groban in the play’s Tony-winning Broadway iteration that ran in 2016 and 2017.

That’s a pared-down, very Wikipedia-entry-level description of what transpires — which leads me to one of the magic tricks of the show, which is how the excessive intricacies of the plot are acknowledged outright in the lyrics of the songs (It’s more like an opera in that virtually every line is sung.).

The very first number, appropriately titled “Prologue,” sets the tongue-in-cheek tone that pervades the evening, beginning somberly and slowly: “There’s a war going on / out there somewhere / and Andrey isn’t here.”

And then the ensemble pauses a beat, and the whole score shifts as they launch into a jaunty, vaudeville-like tune that directly addresses the audience and makes a Meta Meal out of our plight.

“And this is all in your program. You are at the opera. Gonna have to study up a little bit if you wanna keep with the plot,” the entire cast sings, smiles on their faces, swaying back and forth. “Cause it’s a complicated Russian novel. Everyone’s got nine different names. So look it up in your program; we’d appreciate it; thanks a lot. Da da da, da da da.”

The musical was first produced in 2012, then spent four years or so making the rounds at different theaters, including stagings in Quito, Ecuador, and in Massachusetts. After its celebrated run on Broadway, it was sadly beaten out for the Tony for Best Musical by Dear Evan Hansen, but hey, time will tell which one holds up better. (Spoiler: It’s this one.)

Creator Dave Malloy, who crafted the book, music and lyrics of the show, is no stranger to adapting literary giants. In 2019, he crafted a musical from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. And he also wrote the music and lyrics for a new musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, which opens in London this month. Keep an eye on this kid — he’s going places!

While Malloy’s writing is strong, this show is a heavy lift; its success relies on a strong cast and musical team. Thankfully, at Horizon, the stage is a crowded constellation of Atlanta musical theater talent who invite you in to bask in the glow of their artistry all the way through their final bow.

This is particularly true of Joy, a fresh but already familiar face who has appeared on stages across Metro Atlanta. Natasha finally grants Joy a role worthy of her gifts as a performer and, especially, as a vocalist. In the solo “No One Else,” for instance, she’s tasked with climbing around the entire set as she delivers a soaring piece on longing, envisioning what life might be like with Andrey, the uncertain promise of love and security. In a feat, Joy manages to almost make you forget that she’s moving at all as her voice carries us with her.

In a smart casting choice, Joy has been matched up again here with Patrick, her same toxic-love co-star from last year’s production of Heathers at Actor’s Express (Nothing more toxic than the literal poisoners Veronica and J.D.). 

These two actors have a credible and crackling chemistry that makes their initial meet-and-flirt duet, “Natasha and Anatole,” captivating to watch. As does the lighting design by Mary Parker, which transforms the pivotal sequence visually into the tangled hormonal spider web in which these characters are now caught.

In the part of Anatole, Patrick gives one of the best physical comedy performances of the evening, skillfully playing up the irrepressible scumminess of the seducer while also winking at and skewering the trope of the irresistible bad boy. There’s not a comic facial expression that he hasn’t mastered, and this allows for a characterization that is simultaneously rooted in the play itself — while also very much in cahoots with the audience about the artifice of his schtick.

As Anatole’s scheming sister Helene, Janine Ayn serves up Real Housewives of Moscow energy and slams down some scorching vocals. As Natasha’s caring but confounded cousin, Anna Dvorak also delivers fine, sensitive work. Then, of course, there’s Daniel Burns as Pierre, the melancholy half-namesake of the show who anchors the entire piece with his soul.

Ultimately, the self-aware beats speckled throughout the show — and the diverting performances especially — remind us that even though this is big serious literature we’re witnessing, everyone’s here to entertain. And the spectacular entertainment does not stop. At one point in the show, the entire theater was shaking.

Is there a term for when a theater-going experience feels like riding a party bus? If so, insert that here. People were stomping in their seats, clapping and laughing and even singing along. It’s a rare thrill to feel breathless when you’ve hardly been moving at all — but that’s thankfully the very experience that an audience is in for when they go to see this strange and stunning show.

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Alexis Hauk has written and edited for numerous newspapers, alt-weeklies, trade publications and national magazines, including Time, The Atlantic, Mental Floss, Uproxx and Washingtonian. Having grown up in Decatur, Alexis returned to Atlanta in 2018 after a decade living in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles. By day, she works in health communications. By night, she enjoys covering the arts and being Batman.

By Amy Wenk – Staff Reporter, Atlanta Business Chronicle

Aug 16, 2023

Lisa Adler knows what it takes to sustain a creative community.

In 1983, she and her husband Jeff co-founded Horizon Theatre Co. in Little Five Points, creating a home for playwrights to develop new works about the Atlanta community. Adler has also been a strong voice for the arts, working to uplift the city’s theatre community throughout her long career.

What led you to your career?  I wanted to be a writer, then journalist, then actor from a young age. After graduating from college, I launched into a career as a professional actor. I loved theater because it required continually exploring new worlds and using every part of yourself. Acting in commercials, TV and film at the level that was available to me at the time was dull. I was also working for another theater company at the time, which produced plays that did not feature complex roles for women. I wanted to change that by creating a company that prioritized plays by women and plays with strong, complicated roles for women. I had taken one theater management class in college. I came to Atlanta from Chicago when the thing to do for young artists was to start a theater company. My husband was working for a small theater company that was producing in our current Horizon space, and the artistic director asked if the two of us wanted to produce a play. We decided to take the leap and used $1,000 from wedding gifts to do it. It was a big success artistically. We decided to produce another play, also a hit, and then decided to form a theatre company and produce a full season. I was thrilled to learn all the aspects of running a theater. I did it all to start with until I could afford to hire others. 

What is the biggest challenge in your career or job?  Raising money. Audiences love our intimate theater, but that small size means that ticket sales cover less than half of our costs, and post-pandemic, those costs have risen by more than 30%. Funding comes primarily from ticket sales and individual sponsors and donors, about 8% from four government agencies, and a few loyal and much-appreciated foundation sponsors. Attracting and retaining talented administrative and technical staff can also be challenging, especially post-pandemic.

What’s the most rewarding part of your job?  Anytime I am creating something new: a new play that tells a story important to the community, a new education or community program, a new partnership, marketing campaign or strategy.  Also, getting to decide who I want to work with, giving opportunities to women and people of color in all areas of the theater and collaborating with other organizations for positive change.

Lisa Adler.

SHANNEL RESTO

What’s the hardest business lesson you’ve learned?  1) Culture eats strategy for breakfast. The best strategy won’t work if the team culture is struggling. 2) Hire slow, fire fast. Good people are worth waiting for and the bad apples on a team really will spoil it for everyone.   

How do you believe Horizon Theatre has shaped Atlanta’s cultural scene?  We have been a stable institution in Atlanta for 40 years and have provided an artistic home for some of our best local actors, directors and designers to work, grow and collaborate. We have been a home for playwrights to develop new works about our community. We are in the forefront of regularly producing works with and by Black artists, and include racial diversity onstage and backstage in all of our plays. We have also been a leader in building a strong community of theaters in Atlanta who partner on marketing, fundraising, advocacy, advertising, resource-sharing and more. This started with my service on the Atlanta Theatre Coalition board, a strong voice for the arts in the 1980s and 1990s, continuing with service as president of the Atlanta New Play Project (now Working Title Playwrights), onto the founding of the Atlanta Intown Theatre Partnership (AITP), and now the online Atlanta Theatre Producers Group, which has been meeting bi-weekly on Zoom since the pandemic began.

What have been some of the most popular productions over the years? “The Waffle Palace,” a comedy we created set in an all-night Atlanta diner. We did it three times and two years of a holiday spin-off. Our small-cast, contemporary musicals “Avenue Q,” “Cowgirls,” and “I Love You You’re Perfect Now Change,” each of which we produced multiple times in different venues. Our sold-out plays by Black writers like “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery (three productions over 20 years),” “Da Kink in my Hair,” “Blackberry Daze” and “The House That Will Not Stand,” which just closed a sold-out run. Our productions of popular Off-Broadway comedies and of course 18 years of the alternative holiday tradition “The Santaland Diaries” by David Sedaris. 

What’s up next for Horizon Theatre? Next up is a fun, quirky comedy called “Rooted” about two women who live in a treehouse who accidentally start a cult, featuring two of our favorite veteran Atlanta actors. In October, we’ll be transforming our theater into an immersive experience for the Broadway hit “Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812,” a very contemporary musical set in the glamorous, romantic world of 19th century Moscow.

What are you reading/listening to/watching? My go-to podcasts are classics: This American Life, Radiolab and Rough Translations [are] just all excellent storytelling. I’m a loyal NPR Marketplace listener to stay current on business trends told in an entertaining way, and for business-centered podcasts, How I Built This and Freakonomics. I was a sucker for the escapism and woman-centric-ness and beauty of Paris (and those great costumes) of “Emily in Paris.” Also loved Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda not letting age get in their way in “Grace and Frankie.” My guilty pleasure is mother-daughter bonding over “The Bachelor.” I also just finished watching all of “The Diplomat;” so great seeing such a complicated woman’s role and that fast-paced political plot. And yes, I want to see “Barbie:” Greta Gerwig, go girl!

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Lisa Adler

Title: Co-Artistic/Producing Director and Co-Founder, Horizon Theatre Company, a professional contemporary theatre in Inman Park/Little Five Points.

Born in: Chicago

Lives in: Ormewood Park

Education: B.F.A. in Acting/Theatre at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana

Hobbies: “Theater is my job and my hobby:directing, reading scripts, seeing plays.” Also, travel, hiking/walking, spending time with her “newly-graduated-from-college daughter,” Sophie

Favorite quote: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

Workplace superpower: “Connecting the dots between diverse ideas, people and resources to create new ideas and opportunities.”

By Benjamin Carr, For the AJC

‘Support Group for Men’ offers laughs with an undercurrent of danger.

Playwright Ellen Fairey’s “Support Group for Men,” onstage at Horizon Theatre through May 28, explores the familiar dramatic territory of masculine angst, yet this is no powder keg. This is more fun than that.

Usually, when a group of average guys appears in a play onstage, it’s all about anger, competition, posturing, repressed emotions and an inevitable, violent explosion of temper and desperation. Theater has conditioned us that, when men gather, the worst can happen, be it in Eugene O’Neill’s barroom, Reginald Rose’s jury room, Arthur Miller’s garage, David Mamet’s real estate office or any Neil LaBute setting ever. And those playwrights make the plight of being a man look like some kind of dreadful, self-inflicted, inescapable doom.

Being a man ain’t always that bad, though, and Fairey’s play dares to say so, subverting what audiences have come to expect. Though the core characters in “Support Group for Men” are unsatisfied with their lives, Fairey writes them with tenderness, humor and empathy, even as she hints that any of these characters could turn hostile. This is primarily a comedy, but there’s an undercurrent of danger here, even when it’s just a scene of men sipping rosé and asking Siri to play some rock music.

Credit: Shannel Resto/SJR Photography

Set in 2017 Chicago, months after former President Trump’s election and at the beginning of the #MeToo movement, a group of male friends gathers weekly at the apartment of Brian (Louis Kyper) to discuss their feelings about modern manhood in a safe space.

Hilariously, this involves the men engaging in a grunting ritual, giving themselves culturally appropriated Native American nicknames and passing around a baseball bat decorated with puka shells as a talking stick. This repeated bit is silly and so intentionally wrongheaded that it never stops being funny.

Brian is in his 50s, dating a younger woman and trying to connect better with his emotions.

Other members of Brian’s support group include his nerdy high school friend Delano (Marcus Hopkins-Turner), his younger Apple Store co-worker Kevin (Sariel Toribio) and Roger (Evan Bergman), whom Brian met recently through intramural sports. Roger is the most guarded about opening up about his feelings, a curmudgeon who works as a maintenance man cleaning The Bean sculpture.

Brian’s Wrigleyville apartment sits above a bar where rowdy patrons begin brawls just below his window, so the meeting is frequently interrupted by potential violence. Soon, the men witness an attack on a genderqueer person named Alex (Roberto Mendez), and the group gets questioned by police officers Caruso (Kelly Criss, who shares the role with Suehyla E. Young) and Nowak (Brad Brinkley).

The introduction of these new characters upends the group’s trajectory, giving Roger in particular new ways to consider his own anxieties.

Credit: Shannel Resto/SJR Photography

While it explores emotional intelligence and depth, it is never a slog. “Support Group for Men” is really, really funny. Running 90 minutes without intermission, laughs come quick and often. The chemistry of the entire cast is strong, and the familiar way they tease each other is endearing.

Bergman, in particular, is incredible in this, playing the complicated Roger with suggestions of tenderness, depression and bristling volatility. At the start, he is the hardest character to read, yet Bergman makes Roger the beating heart of the show. It’s a tightrope walk of a performance.

As the attacked Alex, Mendez also infuses a difficult, dynamic role with warmth and fervor. The other characters don’t know what to make of this jumpy, stumbling, bruised stranger in a wig. And yet Mendez portrays Alex with gentle, unpredictable, fragile grace.

Hopkins-Turner is hilarious as Delano, whose deadpan interjections and buttoned-up demeanor cover up the tensions he carries. The actor gets some of the biggest laughs in the play by conservatively zigging when everyone else zags.

Kyper grounds Brian as the leader of the group, giving him a goofy, granola energy. As the character tries to gloss over any potential challenges he might be facing by instead concentrating on the party he’s hosting, Kyper makes Brian familiar and likable.

Toribio plays up his character’s youth, optimism and energy, almost as a way to needle the others in the group, who are all from a different generation and hold different ideas about the changing world.

Credit: Shannel Resto/SJR Photography

When their characters invade the primal masculine proceedings, Criss and Brinkley steal every scene they’re in by gleefully mocking the group. Criss has an enviable side-eye, and Brinkley makes for an amusing, closed-minded dolt.

Among the technical details, the set design by Isabel and Mariah Curley-Clay feels lived-in and fantastic, and the props designed by Avanthea Holzman — particularly the decorated baseball bat — deserve praise. Dan Bauman’s sound design makes the frequent commotion in the unseen alley feel real.

As directed by Jeff Adler, Fairey’s script does feel very often like an extended sitcom pilot, and the play has more endings than it needs. The playwright doesn’t trust the audience enough to leave them with loose ends or ambiguity. But it is a satisfying, well-acted play.

THEATER REVIEW

“Support Group for Men”

Through May 28. $20-$35. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Ave NE, Atlanta. 404-584-7450, horizontheatre.com.

Bottom Line: Very funny, surprisingly layered script performed by an excellent ensemble.

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The hit play that took Canada by storm and launched a popular Netflix show has arrived in the Atlanta area. “Kim’s Convenience” is a comedic play about a Korean-Canadian family living in an up-and-coming neighborhood in Toronto. The show is on stage at Aurora Theatre in Lawrenceville through Feb. 19 and will move to Horizon Theatre in Atlanta’s Little Five Points neighborhood beginning Mar. 3. 

Director Rebecca Wear joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom about the heart-warming, thoughtful family story that’s made such waves on American stages and screens.

ALEXIS HAUK·JANUARY 26, 2023

It’s easy to see how Kim’s Convenience, which runs at Aurora Theatre through February 19, lent itself well to the sitcom-like format of its delightful and universally loved Netflix series of the same name. Drawn from Ins Choi’s real-life background as the son of Korean immigrants who operated a bodega in Toronto, the characters are so compelling and multifaceted that by the time the last scene rolls around, you’re longing to see where the rest of the story goes.

The original work for the stage is the raw clay that would eventually get shaped into its ideal format — the multi-episode arc. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to enjoy about this Rebecca Wear-directed production, which has been lovingly rendered with attention to detail at the Lawrenceville venue.

With its short run time (no intermission), the play gives us a pivotal moment in time for Mr. Kim (called “Appa,” meaning “father”) and his thriving business. With a Walmart on the way and a neighborhood that’s rapidly gentrifying, Kim is faced with the decision of whether to accept a substantial offer to sell — one that would let him retire — or whether to hang onto the community staple he spent decades establishing as an asset for his family.

For fans of the Netflix series, the Appa Kim you’ll see here is sometimes a bit harder to love. He has numerous questionable opinions; he’s stubborn and refuses to apologize. But he also has grit and determination, an immense heart and the making for a remarkably complex character in just the short hour and a half runtime.

One of Appa’s most profound flaws is how quickly he flies off the handle with his children. He has exacting standards for his daughter, Janet, an aspiring photographer, even in tasks as simple as taking out the garbage. And he’s not spoken to his son, Jung, since Appa hit 16-year-old Jung so hard that it landed the boy in the hospital. Immediately after, Jung ran away and has been estranged from his father ever since, though he still visits his mother, Umma (meaning “mother”), secretly at church.

This heavy stuff is interspersed with amusing, sitcom-like dialogue. When Kim encounters the casual racism of a customer who remarks, “You look like the guy from The Last Samurai,” he replies, “Tom Cruise?” Umma, played with compassion and subtlety by Yingling Zhu, has some funny lines of her own, as when her son asks if her happiest memory was of the day he was born, and she replies that, no, it was the “most painful.”

But there’s more going on here with the humor, which also serves to disarm and clear a path to greater emotional substance. Laughs abound when Appa Kim tells his artistic daughter, Janet, who is 30 and unmarried, “Now is the desperation time for you.” Later, though, he realizes he can give support and approval to his adult child in a way he never experienced from his dad.

Choi packs a lot of valuable observations, too, about generational differences — the dance between how to show gratitude for what you have while also having the right to make one’s own choices without being guilt-tripped. Do children owe their parents for the necessities the parents provided for them? The characters have different ideas on this age-old question.

It helps that the cast all share a comfortable chemistry, all inhabiting their roles with ease. At the helm, Vancouver-based James Yi inhabits Appa Kim with the dexterity and authority of a Kim’s Convenience veteran who has played the role multiple times all across Canada. (He also appears in the Netflix series.)

Rotating through multiple characters in rapid succession, Lamar K. Cheston brings energetic versatility and some of the evening’s funniest moments. At one point, as Janet’s love interest, he imbues a kind of rubber-faced comic timing to a series of self-conscious attempts at flirting.

As the struggling and alienated Jung, Ryan Vo subtly and tenderly conveys a man just barely keeping it together so that he can provide for his young child – –  someone whose dreams are only getting further and further away.

Another standout is the scenic design by Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay, so exquisitely detailed that you feel like you could walk on set and run errands. There are real snacks, drinks and medications. The door even has an ad for RockStar Energy Drinks.

A quick note: A couple of bits here don’t quite hold up. In the intervening years between when this premiered at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2011 and now, the Black Lives Matter movement formed, and cellphone cameras allowed for a more widespread and visceral understanding of the horrifying police brutality and racial profiling that Black and Brown citizens in the U.S. face on a regular basis. It would be tough to imagine Choi now writing a comic scene in which a Black man gets tackled to the ground by our protagonist, as occurs in this play.

Most refreshingly, though, is the thoughtful way that Aurora has worked to ensure that Korean voices remain at the center of this production. First, via a nifty fixture above the stage, we get a screen with captions in Korean throughout the mostly English dialogue.

The script also includes exchanges between Appa and Umma entirely in Korean with no English translation, which is pretty great. It reminded me of how Steven Spielberg’s sublime remake of West Side Story in 2021 presented its Spanish dialogue very purposefully without English captions to ensure that those scenes felt more authentic than they did in the 1960s version. The “language had to exist in equal proportions alongside the English with no help,” as Spielberg put it.

For audience members who are used to seeing everything framed in a way that is easy and digestible for them  — i.e. audiences that are White, non-immigrant, able-bodied, hetero, cis-gender, etc. —  it’s essential to experience, at least once, what it’s like not to have everything aimed solely at you. With Kim’s Convenience, you are invited to spend time with characters, spaces and dialogue that you may not have firsthand experience with. And that’s a vital part of what the arts can do.

READ THE ARTICLE ON THE ARTSATL WEBSITE

Narrator Topher Payne greets special guest Enoch King during a performance of “Y’allmark Christmas,” as improvisers Amber Nash and Kevin Gillese watch from the steps. (Photos by Lisa Adler)

BENJAMIN CARR·NOVEMBER 30, 2022

Those Christmas-obsessed heroes and heroines from made-for-TV romances get to choose their own unscripted adventure in Y’allmark Christmas: An Improvised Holiday “Movie”, onstage at Horizon Theatre through December 23.

Though audiences can still expect that wholesome holiday spirit during every performance, each has a touch of wacky subversiveness as well. The show was devised by Amber Nash, star of TV’s Archer and a longtime Dad’s Garage improviser, and Topher Payne, an actual screenwriter of several Hallmark Christmas movies, including Broadcasting Christmas and A Gift to Remember.

“Topher was essential from the very beginning when I first had the idea to do this show,” Nash said. “There are other improv troupes doing Hallmark movie spoofs, but I can guarantee you they don’t have a real Hallmark movie writer narrating them.”

Payne, also an award-winning playwright, last appeared onstage at Horizon Theatre as the lead actor in their final production of David Sedaris’ Santaland Diaries.

“Topher’s not just a writer,” Nash said. “He’s also a brilliant presence and stage performer. So it’s not like we’re pulling some curmudgeonly old writer out of a basement.”

The improvised show, which began in 2017 as a two-performer, 20-minute sketch at Dad’s Garage, now contains a rotating cast of performers, special guests from across Atlanta stages, two acts and an intermission. 

As the narrator in the original sketch and in the new show, Payne appears on stage alongside the improvisers, offering guidance to the story and “network notes” for when things go inevitably awry — like when a dreamy-eyed girl-next-door accidentally plummeted down the side of a snow-covered mountain at a Thanksgiving weekend performance.

“I come in with the goal every night of writing a Hallmark movie, and I’m going according to network notes I’ve received before, brand-identity specifics that I have to keep in mind when I’m writing,” Payne said. “And the cast doesn’t have to try and mess with me. The comedy comes out of a group of people actually trying to do the movie right, the push and pull of that and moments of clarifying what is brand-specific versus what isn’t.”

At other points, Payne stops the show if the language gets too PG-13 or if the actors give their characters sexual impulses or a bleak backstory. This lends the show a behind-the-scenes feel, like the plays Noises Off and The Play that Goes Wrong.

This is the first co-production of Horizon Theatre and Dad’s Garage, and Nash finds the expanded show and the Horizon stage very exciting.

“In the beginning, it was just Topher and two improvisers,” she said. “For this run, we have a big, beautiful Christmasy set. We have many more costumes and wigs because, apparently, if you shake Horizon Theatre, wigs fall out of it. They have great stuff.”

The set for Y’allmark Christmas is the same set as Horizon’s previous production, Designing Women, but that construction, designed by Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay, has been repainted and decked out with holiday regalia for the season. It also has coat racks and shelves filled with potential costumes and a wall full of wigs that performers can choose for their different characters.

The cast, featuring Nash, Kevin Gillese, Eve Krueger, Freddy Boyd, Jamila Porter and Joshua Quinn, will alternate between leading and supporting roles within each performance. Every performance will also feature a special guest star, such as Enoch King, Tom Key or Gina Rickicki. Having that expanded cast will also allow for diverse variations on the Hallmark brand of storytelling, Payne said. 

“We have nights with an all-female cast, nights with an all-male cast,” Payne said. “We have nights where it’s an entirely BIPOC cast, so we get to do stories from the Mahogany line. We’ve already done a round of that in rehearsal, and there’s an additional comedic element where it’s a story of an all-BIPOC cast created by this White guy.”

Audience suggestions are also taken during the show, which Dad’s Garage fans will find more familiar than Horizon patrons might. But the show should appeal to both audiences.

Krueger, who appeared in the cast of Designing Women and is company manager at Dad’s, suggested the partnership between the two theaters to Horizon artistic director Lisa Adler, who embraced the opportunity.

“It feels like communities coming together in a lot of ways,” Krueger said. “The Horizon audience and the Dad’s audience — there’s not a huge overlap in that Venn diagram, but I think this is a show that can hit both of them in a way that can really make everyone happy.”

Adler said holiday programming has always been a staple of the Horizon season, so she was encouraged when Payne and Krueger brought the show from Dad’s.

“We didn’t have another show running, so it was crazy not to try,” Adler said. “It’s a fun opportunity.” 

Gillese first began performing in the sketch during the pandemic when he was quarantined with Nash, his wife. He always played his part during those months with a hint of reluctance, and the pair realized that challenging Payne as the writer was comedy gold.

The expanded Y’allmark still has those little clashes, which helps playfully skewer the genre.

“I am here as a representative of everyone who likes to make the occasional dig at the genre while still lovingly doing it,” Gillese said. “Sincerely, I think that people that love the Hallmark movies will love this show, and the people that hate those movies will also love this show.”

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Benjamin Carr, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, is an arts journalist and critic who has contributed to ArtsATL since 2019. His plays have been produced at The Vineyard Theatre in Manhattan, as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and the Center for Puppetry Arts. His novel Impacted was published by The Story Plant in 2021.