Llewellyn J. Rhoe founder of Arts Equity: Reviews

"Herringbone" [WW-Reccomended]

A dark vaudevillian tale of possession and repression told through the frantic song and dance of one actor, Taylor Askman, who plays nine characters with distinct voices and gestures. George's (a.k.a. Herringbone) cash-starved parents enroll him in acting lessons with the latter (and surviving) partner of the famous duo "The Frog and The Chicken." But the vengeful spirit of Lou the Frog will not rest, and he seizes the body of the boy in hopes of taking his act on the road with a new pair of feet. A word of warning: Some of what comes next as the boy struggles to reclaim his body is definitely not family-friendly. Askman gives a gripping performance in each and every role; if nothing else, he deserves recognition for the monumental force of will it takes to make dozens of character changes without screwing up once. Askman and Arts Equity should be applauded for reprising a powerful work at the Main Street Theatre. STEVEN WALLING. The Willamette Week

Arts Equity Onstage at the Main Street Theatre, 606 Main St., Vancouver, 360-695-3770. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays. Closes Dec. 23. $8-$24.

Herringbone
BY ALISON HALLETT

I'd never heard of actor Taylor Askman before the Vancouver Arts Equity's production of Herringbone, but as I took my seat in the funky Main Street Theatre in downtown Vancouver, a drunken woman sitting in front of me assured me that the 22-year-old is "extremely talented." My first thought? He'd better be. Herringbone is a one-man show, which means that if that one man can't swing it, the audience is in for a long, painful night. Fortunately, Askman can swing it. Damn, can he swing it.

The shockingly talented Askman plays Herringbone's titular character, a tall, self-possessed vaudevillian with curly orange hair and a ratty (what else) herringbone suit. Herringbone is the host of this show, as well as the sole performer. His first number is the song "One of Those Years," as in, "Have you ever had 'one of those years?'" Herringbone has, and this play is about that year.

Before he was called Herringbone, he was called George. During the year in question, George is a precocious eight-year-old living in the Depression-era South. His family is dirt poor, and when George wins a speech competition, his parents use the money to enroll him in dance classes: They've heard that "child stars" can make good money in Los Angeles, and they're hoping that George might be their ticket out of poverty.

George takes dances lessons from a man called Chicken, formerly of the famed vaudeville act Chicken and Turtle. Lou, Chicken's former partner, is dead; while studying with Chicken, George becomes possessed by Lou's ghost, who seizes control of George's body and forces him to strangle Chicken. George's parents hit the road, fleeing the crime scene with the Lou-possessed George in tow.

The family makes their way to Hollywood, paying their way with money Lou makes performing in bars (in George's body, of course). Through it all, Lou and George share George's body in an awkward tug of war. While in Hollywood, Lou forces George to run away from his parents—an abrupt introduction to manhood.

George and Lou vie for possession of George's body, a struggle that comes to a disturbing head when Lou invites a woman back to their room and tries to seduce her. George is horrified (and the scene is horrifying), forcing the conflict between Lou and George to a climactic end.

This elaborate story is reenacted entirely by Herringbone: Herringbone is George, all grown up and in full mastery of his inner demons. As Herringbone tells his story, he moves seamlessly from one character to the next: from George's wide eyes and high-pitched stutter, to George's mother's lazy Southern drawl, to Lou's hoarse, raspy bark.

Whether you take this show at face value, as a tale of ghostly possession, or read it as a coming-of-age parable with Oedipal implications, there's no doubt that in the wrong hands Herringbone could be an unmitigated disaster:The script, simply, is a bitch. It's demanding, hectic, and thematically abstruse. There's no room for error; if even one character is anything less than distinct, narrative coherence would quickly vanish.

And as if multiple characters weren't enough to contend with, there's the song-and-dance angle as well. Lyricist Ellen Fitzhugh has penned a few gems, like "What's a Body to Do (with a Body)?" after Chicken is murdered, and pianist K.J. McElrath keeps admirable pace with the demands of Skip Kennon's score. Some of the songs involve two or three characters, requiring Askman to rifle through his repertoire of characters with dizzying speed.

Askman, though, endows each char acter with enough specific mannerisms that they are each easy to identify and distinguish from one another, but he never veers into caricature: Each character remains human, even the fiendish Lou. It's almost unsettling, how good he is; at times Askman, like George, seems possessed. He keeps it up even during the musical numbers: As with everything else he attempts during this production, Askman makes singing duets with himself seem easy.

Therein lines the real marvel of this show: Askman's ability to keep so many plates spinning at once. His curly red hair and smooth, clammy make-up invite comparisons to a clown, and like any good clown, he is a mimic, a cipher. His identity shifts and dissolves behind his enigmatic grease-painted face; Askman looks like Gene Wilder and sounds like Tim Curry, but the sum of his talents is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive performances I've seen.

Trying to pin down Pinter's rhythm
Bob Hicks
The Oregonian.

"Every piece of writing has its own rhythm. But with Harold Pinter, the British playwright celebrated for his elliptical and sometimes brutally exaggerated style, the rhythm's heightened and tricky. Like Samuel Beckett, Pinter rides a line between dead serious and absurdly funny, with a dash of British music hall in his work.

Two classic Pinter plays opened here on Friday -- 1978's "Betrayal" at Imago Theatre and 1958's "The Birthday Party" at Vancouver's Arts Equity Onstage -- and in both cases I'd like to feel Pinter's heart beating a little more quickly, with more quivers between its thumps.

"The Birthday Party" is bolder, rawer and funnier than "Betrayal," and its menace is more expressionistic. At three acts and two and a half hours it's also an hour longer than "Betrayal," and at Arts Equity Onstage it feels it. Director Llewellyn J. Rhoe and his sextet of actors get the coarse comedy, but everything needs to be notched up a speed or two.

This jumpy comedy about a loutish tenant Stanley (Stefan Kay) all whiny and pouty, his frumpy landlady (Athena McElrath a jumble of motherly libido) , and the pair of strangers who show up to lower an undefined boom (David Hudkins and John Bangs) is unpredictable and unresolved in some very fun ways. Its like a slasher movie for sophisticates. A great big "boo" that you can never guite pin down.

All six actors have made good, precise decisions about their characters, and director Rhoe carries through a consistent and engaging comic-book sort of emotional parody. It's in the meshing that things get a little lost. The strangers play their thuggishness so deadpan, and Stanley's fear gets so lost in his general dyspepsia that the tension slackens.

Both of these productions have some smart, solid work, and both have some significant pleasures. But in each case you walk away with the feeling that Pinter's tricky rhythms somehow slithered away.

"The Birthday party" continues through Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays (plus 2 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 8 and 29). Arts Equity Onstage at The Main Street Theatre, 606 Main St., Vancouver; $8-$24, 360-695-3770."

The Proof is in the Programming
How Vancouver’s theatres compare with Portland’s best
By Jack V. Booch

The theatrical vitality of a community may be judged by many scales, but one of the most precise methods I know of involves examining the programming choices of the local theatres.

Looking at the theatre scene in Southwest Washington as it shapes up this fall, the plays that the largest companies here in town have chosen highlight some significant differences between the theatre scene here and that of our closest neighbors to the south.

The current selections by the two major companies in Portland—Artists Repertory Theatre, and Portland Center Stage—include two disparate but equally appalling choices. On the one hand, ART presents the sophomoric high school hi-jinks of Mary Zimmerman’s juvenile take on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”. On the other hand, PCS has chosen to launch its first season in a brand new theatre space with that overexposed old chestnut “West Side Story” (a musical which has played virtually every high school and community theatre in this country ad infinitum)

It is exciting to be able to report that here in Vancouver plaudits for programming can be doled out equally to The Slocum Theatre Company, and Arts Equity, Inc. Both theatre companies have chosen material of great historical merit and social relevance.

Slocum House is producing Chekhov’s classic meditation on art and love, “The Seagull”, while Arts Equity is delving into what is arguably Harold Pinter’s most accessible and affecting play, “The Birthday Party”. The seasons continue with works by the father of American theatre, Eugene O’Neill (“The Long Voyage Home”, Arts Equity), and William Shakespeare (“Twelfth Night”, Slocum House), both of which are rarely, if ever produced with any skill or elucidation by either of the Portland companies mentioned here.

As ART and PCS continue in their pursuit of trendy and cheap popular entertainments, Slocum House and Arts Equity demonstrate real respect for their audiences and for the art form itself, by choosing plays of real value. Naturally, there is a lot more to producing successful theatre than programming alone, but it is encouraging that Vancouver’s two most promising companies have chosen plays from the established theatrical canon. I for one would rather take a chance on quality material than slum it at either ART or PCS.
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Jack Booch is the former Executive Producer for The Theatre Guild, Inc., in Manhattan, and was the director of The Portland Civic Theatre from 1966-1969.

Arts Equity Trots Out “The Birthday Party”
By Steven Walling


Arts Equity heralds a new season of award-winning plays with its production of Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party”, a marvelous addition to their repertoire that is sure to delight.

The one essential fact to know about “The Birthday Party” before curtain time is that it is an Absurdist play, and as such the normal consistencies of time, identity and language are turned upside-down most of the time. But never fear—absurdity in this case equals guaranteed laughs as communication breaks down in the fray of personal politics.

This hilarious and disturbing classic revolves around the struggle for power among a small cast of eccentrics in an English seaside home. The elderly couple running what may or may not be a boarding house consists of the taciturn Petey (John Rowe) and his wailing nitwit of a wife Meg (Athena McElrath). Their one guest is Stanley (Stefan Kay) a failed pianist who has been hidden away in a house for a year with only Meg’s suffocating ministrations.

Then one evening two gentlemen arrive for “a short holiday,” and the pair obviously harbors some sort of vaguely threatening intention toward Stanley. The silver tongued, villainous character Goldberg is completely enthralling thanks to the commanding performance of David Hudkins. His sufficiently menacing strong-arm man McCann (John Bangs).

While the play’s spectacular text and the stronger performances (including Suzanne Owens-Duval as the neighbor Lulu and the amusing idiocy of Ms McElrath’s Meg) make this production thoroughly entertaining, there are some weak spots in the acting—namely, the failed attempts of several cast members to maintain dialect consistency—that detract from an energy that could be better applied to depth of character and range of emotion. This is an English drama, after all, and in order to accept either the reality or absence of any “Britishness” in the setting and characters, the audience needs an affirmative decision to latch onto. But the simple truth is that neither faltering accents nor other trivialities should keep anyone from seeing an otherwise respectable production of a truly great play at The Main Street Theatre.

Arts Equity ups ante in its second season

Tuesday, July 18, 2006
BRETT OPPEGAARD Columbian staff writer

Clark County's first professional theater to have its own home, Arts Equity, is about to start its second season in downtown Vancouver.

Despite attendance so far that has been well below original estimates, founder Llewellyn J. Rhoe wrote in a recent e-mail that his troupe did "survive the startup phase" and is now looking to turn curiosity about the company into a solid subscription base.

Instead of the world premieres and relatively obscure selections of the first season, Rhoe has decided this time to program established work by some of the most prominent playwrights, such as Harold Pinter, Eugene O'Neill and Paula Vogel.

Arts Equity will start the season Saturday night, though, with the abstruse one-man musical "Herringbone," featuring local actor Taylor Askman. Askman has played major roles in most of Arts Equity's shows so far.

In this piece, continuing through Sept. 1, Askman will portray 10 characters over two hours in what Rhoe characterizes as "the scariest piece of theatrical writing I have ever read." It's a story about a young boy whose parents push him into a performance career as a way to bring them fortune. Instead, he's possessed by a murdered vaudevillian, intent on revenge as well as getting another chance at stardom.

The other shows in the season:

"The Birthday Party," Harold Pinter, Sept. 21 through Oct. 29, about a man named Stanley, staying in a dilapidated boarding house, who suddenly is being persecuted by a couple of menacing strangers for reasons that remain unclear.

"Hot 'n' Throbbing," Paula Vogel, Jan. 19 through Feb. 25, a piece about pornography and domestic violence that, Rhoe writes, isn't pornographic or violent. The story is told from the perspective of a woman who writes feminist erotica while suffering from the failings of her relationship with her estranged husband.

"The Long Voyage Home," Eugene O'Neill, March 15 through April 22, about the lives of the crew on a British steamer -- delving into their loneliness, suspicion and camaraderie -- as they wander the waters of the world.

"Picasso at the Lapin Agile," Steve Martin, May 20 to June 17, creates a fantasy meeting in a bar between scientist Albert Einstein and artist Pablo Picasso before they became famous.

When asked about the potential controversy of Vogel's play, in particular, Rhoe wrote, "Frankly I hope this entire season pushes audiences beyond anything we've produced yet. Each play for different reasons and always because of the quality of the writing and the acting."

He commented that virtually every one of his ticket buyers in the first season were either new to Clark County or from Portland, acknowledging that "most people still don't know we are here."

At the end of his e-mail, Rhoe added that a person in the mayor's office once remarked to him, "Where will you be moving when (you're) successful?" His retort: "It won't be success that causes the (theater) to look elsewhere."

Brett Oppegaard writes about the arts for The Columbian. He can be reached at brett.oppegaard@columbian.com, 360-759-8028.

If you go

What: Arts Equity begins its second season with "Herringbone," a one-man musical with story by Tom Cone, music by Skip Kennon and lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh.

When: Saturday through Sept. 1, with performances at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, plus additional shows at 2 p.m. July 23 and Aug. 13 as well as 7:30 p.m. July 27 and Aug. 3, 17, 24 and 31.

Where: Arts Equity Fine & Performing Arts, 606 Main St., Vancouver.

Cost: Tickets range from $8 to $23, with season tickets available in various packages ranging from $24 to $150.

Information: 360-695-3770. or www.artsequityinc.com.

THEATRE REVIEW
By Steven Walling

Zaney

Zaney, the new work underway at Arts Equity OnStage, falls into that most often useless genre of theatre about theatre (written for theatre insiders) but delightfully, Zaney is mighty entertaining. In accordance with the company’s goal of showcasing new works of local theatre, this is the premiere of the most recent work by native son Connor Kerns.

Zaney revolves around the fictitious Randee Repertory theatre troupe and their comic attempt to make it to the big-time with the first work of a budding playwright. The humor of the play falls within two areas: dirty jokes and irony. The low brow needs no explanation, but the irony needs highlighting. First off, it’s packed with send-ups of the “sex sells” variety; funny because the plot is basically a sex farce. Second is the “booze on stage sells” variety, ironic because Arts Equity does in fact provide its patrons with drink. The most prolific involve the vanity and foolishness of actors and directors, such as a literal toss-up (as in, into the air) when choosing the play within the play. Last and most important is the general thrust of the play’s conclusion, which is that little city theatre artists looking to make it big have got the wrong idea in idolizing Broadway as the be-all-end-all of theatre. Not exactly a surprising message from Kerns, who directs a Portland company.

Concerning the particulars of the production, the cast is bright and eager in their roles and have reached their stride now that they’re well into Zaney’s run. Ladawn Sheffield showed energy and potential as Sonng, who spouts pop lyrics constantly (not as annoying as you think it might be). Rosalie Miller slinks about as Honkers, who uses her great big artificially augmented, um…eyes to get attention. Add to the mix the playwright Hermione Lane (Sharon Mann), and the womanizing of the director/star actor Zaney (Taylor Askman). Mr. Askman possesses enough skill and pizzazz to drive the production along at a hearty pace, and I have to say that it seems that he is visibly growing in stature with each production at Arts Equity. Set design and direction by Llewellyn Rhoe demonstrate that the company has really settled in to the Main Street Theatre and can work well with the limited space. Costumes by newcomer Maggie Peeples add a more believable realism to Equity’s production and enhance the slightly ‘80s feel.

Zaney is a pleasant surprise with consistent laughs from curtain to curtain. With the current lack of big screen comedies that fail to prevent excessive vomiting, I suggest you ditch the Regal Cinemas and make a date with Randee Repertory.

Performances through the end of April. For tickets call Arts Equity OnStage at (360) 695-3770

"ZANEY" Theater review
Author’s wit wraps around theaters, egos

By Holly Johnson
SPECIAL TO THE OREGONIAN

In Portland Playwright Connor Kerns absurdist romp premiering at Vancouver’s Main Street Theatre, “Zaney,” a hyperactive, hypersexual artistic director in Seattle with delusions of grandeur tries his hand at producing and directing an original script. He’s selected it by throwing a bundle of them in the air and grabbing the one that lands face up.

The opus belongs to one Hermione Lane (Sharon Mann), whom Zaney (played by Taylor Askman) bars from the rehearsal hall when he decides to take the lead role himself. The name of the play in the play, “Infidelity,” reflects what’s going on with group of characters, who, like those in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” all seem to be lusting after the wrong people, the wrong dreams.

Some of Kern’s funniest, most daring writing to date shines in this slightly surreal, witty and farcical satire on struggling theater companies and the looming egos that propel them. There’s Sonng (the wonderful Ladawn Sheffield) who speaks only in pop tune lyrics and Clement Stoutt (Andrew Hickman at his finest) who visited England once and can’t shed his East End accent. But Kerns’ star player is Zaney, and Askman, with his razor-sharp face, infuses him with farcical energy, fueled by vanity and self-importance.

Continues
7:30 pm Thursdays
8:00 pm Fridays and Saturdays
2 and 7 pm Sundays
through April 30th

Arts Equity Onstage at The Main Street Theatre
606 Main Street, Vancouver
$8 to $24
360-695-3770

THE OREGONIAN A&E

Theater review Surprising if uneven revelations flop out from 'Ice Fishing Play'

Tragicomedy - Arts Equity's awkward staging slightly lessens the play's darker ruminations


Saturday, January 28, 2006
RICHARD WATTENBERG

Kevin Kling's "The Ice Fishing Play" is not just about ice fishing. Offered by Vancouver's Arts Equity Inc. at The Main Street Theatre, this piece showcases Kling's Garrison Keillor-style humor, but it also toys with metaphors and explores the nature of life and love. In fact, a lot's happening in this little play -- perhaps too much.

Set in a secluded ice-fishing house (cleverly conceived for this production by director-designer Llewellyn J. Rhoe), the play focuses on Minnesotan Ron Huber, who has come to this out-of-the-way spot to fish and to ponder his life. As the "storm of the century" blows outside the flimsy cabin, Huber passes time with the ghosts of loved ones and old acquaintances.

The tension between a troubled present and a comfortable past is important here but could have been more sharply drawn. In this regard, the production might have deepened our sense of the icy coldness that threatens the isolated Ron after he discovers that his link to the present world, his Chevy, has broken through the ice and sunk to the bottom of the lake.

But problems aren't just production related. The comic and tragic elements of the play don't always cohere well. The play's laughs are grounded in the folksy, country ways of northern Minnesota locals. The eccentric characters provide the smiles, but coordinating the broad regional humor with the deeper existential questions posed, especially in the touching conclusion, is no easy task for any production. This one still does have some rough edges.

Still, despite awkward sound and light cues and somewhat uneven acting, this production has strengths. The cast has mastered the upper Minnesota lilt, and the leads -- Andrew Hickman as Huber and Ariel Aver as his wife, Irene -- are solid. Hickman sensitively portrays this thoughtful, not-so-articulate man, who seeks respite from a world nothing like the one in which he once felt so at home. Aver ably catches the understated, dry playfulness that colors Irene's affection for Ron." Rich Wattenberg

THE VANGUARD WEEKLY

"The Ice Fishing Play is full of the classic themes of the middle class end-of-life dilemma: loneliness and alienation, the value of our chosen life's work, the depth and purpose of relationships with family and friends, the nature of God and the afterlife (though this particular subject is treated lightly) with a healthy bundle of laughs.

Arts Equity's run of The Ice Fishing Play is without doubt their best production to date; with good technical work, serviceable material, believable acting, all culminating in a much more professional onstage storytelling than is common in Vancouver.

The company is to be appaulded for continuing to grow and mature in a noticeable way." Steven Walling.

OREGONLIVE.COM

"The Ice-Fishing Play": Kevin Kling has been a solid, underrated American playwright for a good 20 years; his "Lloyd's Prayer" remains a hilarious cultural artifact.

In this one, a man keeps trying to fish through a hole in the ice, but his family and memories keep interrupting him.

VANCOUVER'S EQUITY IN THE ARTS

Tucked away behind a small Main Street storefront in downtown Vancouver may be one of the best kept artistic secrets you have never heard about until now. Behind the traditional storefront façade at 606 Main Street is Arts Equity Inc and The Main Street Theatre.

Founded by Llewellyn J. Rhoe and Helene M. Rasanen, Arts Equity Inc began remodeling the old storefront in February of 2005 into an intimate theatre space that seats 127. The theatre is so intimate that no seat is more than fifteen feet from the stage and the action is so up close and personal that you can see a bead of sweat and feel the goose bumps. Rasanen and Rhoe worked for two years drawing plans and running the financials on no less than six other possible spaces before settling on the 5800 square foot facility that houses their theatre, an art gallery and all of the support facilities.

The storefront received an extensive makeover including a complete seismic upgrade, plus creature comforts like plush seats and a new heating and air-conditioning system. To round out the artistic experience they added all the essentials required for theatrical production.

The Main Street Theatre opened in June with Cover Shot (originally commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival written by Tad Savinar) a play about “urban gentrification” and recently finished a ten week run of Road Rage, an over the top musical satire about the frustrating freeway characters and foibles we all encounter everyday on the roadway.

Rhoe who originally founded Arts Equity Inc in Washington DC thinks of the theatre as an “artistic think tank” dedicated to the R&D work of developing new works for the stage. He has had ample opportunity to hone his skills while spending 40 years plying his craft in the professional theatre.

Before moving back to the Pacific NW in 1990, Rhoe spent time learning producing at two of the nations most prestigious venues. He developed the subscription sales stategies for The Arena Stage, (the very first non-profit theatre) before moving on to do the same work at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. During this time he had the chance to learn first hand from the likes of Zelda and Thomas Fichandler (Arena Stage/NEA), producer Cameron MacIntosh (Les Miserables) and actress Lily Tomlin (The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe). It was Tomlin who engrained in him that “They don’t call it show art, they call it show business!”

Rhoe teamed with Rasanen to re-incorporate in Vancouver after deciding that there was a cultural void that needed to be filled north of the Columbia. Part of their business philosophy (they are a for profit business) is that SW Washington deserves top shelf artistic efforts and many patrons are just plain sick and tired of crossing the bridge for all things cultural. Recently their efforts were singled out and highlighted by Will Macht in his “Quayside Development” presentation (9/1/05) to the Columbia River Development Council at the Heathman Lodge as an example of what the “creative class” could do for the redevelopment of the downtown core. Rhoe has been a pioneer before. When he and Rasanen first met, Rhoe’s theatre company in Portland rented 8000 square feet (two full floors) in The Pearl District at 14th and Glisan for $400 a month. Before that his theatre in Seattle was in Pioneer Square just before the urban gentrification started there.

So being the first theatre in downtown is nothing new to Rhoe who sees this as an opportunity to be in on the ground floor of the downtown redevelopment. “The arts are good for business…and the business community hopefully will embrace the idea that we all operate on the same two-way street. I like doing business with businesses who do business with us.” Rhoe agrees with Will Macht that “Vancouver needs to believe that they deserve it!” He goes on to say that: “Without this belief it will be hard to stop the flow of artistic dollars south of the Columbia. It might as well be a welfare check that citizens of Clark County write out and send our neighbors to the south.”

Together Rasanen and Rhoe have hewn out an artistic niche in the downtown core amongst the ever changing and ongoing redevelopment just two blocks away from the new Hilton Hotel and Esther Short Park. It has been the usual hard work of any startup business with some exciting results and intrinsic rewards. One reviewer wrote recently: “There is no other group north of the Columbia that would produce this type of material, which makes it refreshing and intriguing.” Which for Rasanen and Rhoe is as good an endorsement as you can ask for to date.

The Main Street Theatre’s current offering (November-December) is a mix of music, comedy and dance. Headlining the revue of musicians booked for the Holiday Season is Michael Conley known the world over as “Shoehorn” a tap dancing saxophone player extraordinaire. “We wanted to offer an alternative for those people who just can’t stand all the hype and the hoopla of the holiday hordes. It is a fun night full of music and laughter for those of us who have seen one to many versions of The Christmas Carol or The Nutcracker.”

“We view ourselves as a mini performing arts center with provocative edgy offerings for a mature audience. We produce for and play to adults who deserve a night out to themselves.” Rasanen and Rhoe know that you will come away from an evening at The Main Street Theatre saying: “I can’t believe I saw that in Vancouver!”

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Friday, November 04, 2005

"SHOEHORN": Tap dancer and saxophonist Michael "Shoehorn" Conley brings fresh meaning to the term New Age vaudeville. He's a magnetic orchestra of one, a charismatic tapper of tunes, a funky beat-rap poet, a soulful hornist and a dazzling dancer.


His performance last weekend in Vancouver's Arts Equity Inc. Main Street Theatre thrilled a medium-size, responsive audience. What's great is that Conley, who calls New Orleans the city that shaped his performance skills, is well-versed in the harmonica style of Sonny Terry and names Gene Kelly and John Coltrane as other sources of inspiration, so he's honoring and emulating traditions before him and at the same time using them to create his own new bag.


His musical inventions include a device wherein tap shoes meet a platform and create synthesized music; as the tap threads the backbeat across a tune, the sax or clarinet takes care of the melody. Conley is dancing out the music. He seems to have an unending well of energy to blend with his creativity, which also is inspired by global sounds. Still, a little less than two hours without a story is just about enough for a satisfying evening, and Conley quits while he's ahead. Invigorating stuff." Holly Johnson, Special to the Oregonian