MRS. WIDDERSHINS:
Eh? Uh, well, that’s a point isn’t it? Hmmm...we do have to respect the artistic integrity of the Teacup Challenge idea...Hmmm...
REGINALD:
Pl...pl...please?
MRS. WIDDERSHINS:
(proudly, grandly)
As the visionary who designed this great gimmick, I would have to say that...Yes. Let’s let him have his second attempt.
Teacup Tipsy is "ground-breaking in ways more than one"!
By Dale Burrows
Published April 21, 2010
Local playwright Jeff Stillwell’s comedy-fable: Shakespeare, Starbucks and, blank verse, a mix and match that wows.
What’s hot? What’s not?
Those questions sell celeb mags. Last weekend, at the Wade James in Edmonds, on stage, an imaginative comedy and thoughtful fable, in blank verse, on stage and all at once, a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party blew away those of us who showed up. It was a trip and a half in a little more than an hour and a half through an Alice-like wonderland and a half; ground-breaking in ways more than one.
Lonely Lyla (Catherine Bailey) presents a winning cup of tea to the love-struck, if mousy, Reginald (Gary Nelson) in Northwest playwright Jeff Stilwell’s new fable, “Teacup Tipsy.”
The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party was Alternative Stages’ production of “Teacup Tipsy;” written, directed and acted in by Jeff Stillwell.
Marvel at the ambition: to apply Shakespearean language to American idiom, put dance, rhapsody and wisdom into big business swallowing up small business, wrap it all up in a personal feel for modern-day humanity and make it public for all to see. That is going some.
So how’d it play?
A mom-and-pop tea shop, a small-business landmark for years, not unlike one you might find in downtown Edmonds, lacks for customers because they are all going to one of the Starbucks that is constantly popping up.
Mom and pop have gone on to their reward. Their lonely, luckless and lovely daughter, Lyla, keeps the tea shop going but just barely and only because of her faith in the legacy entrusted to her and with a little financial help from her deceased mom’s best friend, the forever-grousing Mrs. Widdershins.
A homeless, constantly iambic-pentameter-spouting, wretch of a minstrel in rags, sitting because he is too world-weary to stand on his soap box, is waxing eloquent on poor Lyla’s undeserved misfortune when, wonder of wonders, a stuttering, stammering corporate accountant happens by, takes a shine to damsel in distress and Stillwell’s house of fun and games swings into wild party action, intellect stimulating and emotion-stirring.
How Stillwell managed the tongue-twisting lines with frenzied-eyes rolling, only Lawrence Olivier could have possibly fathomed, it’s beyond me. His Man In The Box was where he belonged; focused, reincarnated, engaging.
A lovelier, more ethereal, vulnerable vision of transcendental faith than Catherine Bailey’s Lyla would be an auditioning director’s impossible dream. Bailey’s Lyla has to have been what Stillwell had in mind. She was entrancing.
True, Wendy Cohen started lines over again here and there, so what? Cohen had her Mrs. Widdershins underlying optimism surface up through a sourpuss’s cynical take on the status quo, in the perfect place, at the perfect time and in an exhilarating way. Cohen lit me up when I didn’t expect it.
Accountants can be more than numbers, decimal points and spreadsheets, Stillwell blueprinted one. Gary Nelson’s could have been a cliché, heaven knows we get them. Nelson’s was the blueprint made human. I liked the guy.
“Teacup Tipsy” wasn’t an easy watch. You had to let it in. It played if you paid; attention, that is.
Hats off to the Wade James for hosting, Driftwood Players for supporting, Alternative Stages for performing and Jeff Stillwell for taking a chance on himself.
Experimental theater that dares, it’s close to my heart.
For information about Alternative Stages Festival of Shorts coming up July 9 & 10, visit www.driftwoodplayers.com or call 425-774-9600.
Reactions? Comments? E-mail Dale Burrows at entfeatures@heraldnet.com or grayghost7@comcast.net.