Fire on the Mountain - Florida Studio Theatre
'Fire' is a moving elegy to coal miners
By SUSAN L. RIFE [email protected] (excerpted)
Men in twill work pants, or overalls and dusty boots, and women in shapeless cotton dresses gather on a rustic front porch.
The men wipe coal dust from their faces, pick up musical instruments -- a guitar, a banjo, a fiddle, a mandolin -- and commence making a joyful noise to the Lord. It's the sole bright spot in the long workweek of the Appalachian coal miner, whose life, and sometimes untimely and horrible death, is movingly chronicled in "Fire on the Mountain."
Myler directs a stellar cast of both musicians and actors for the production ...heart-rending, as is Kim Crow's description of what seems inevitable in mining families: the death of a husband in a mining accident.
"Fire on the Mountain" has the feel of a group of friends and family gathered on a front porch on a Sunday afternoon, pickin' and singin.' But despite the back-and-forth banter between these miners and their families, they'll touch a deep spot in the soul.
'Fire' is a moving elegy to coal miners
By SUSAN L. RIFE [email protected] (excerpted)
Men in twill work pants, or overalls and dusty boots, and women in shapeless cotton dresses gather on a rustic front porch.
The men wipe coal dust from their faces, pick up musical instruments -- a guitar, a banjo, a fiddle, a mandolin -- and commence making a joyful noise to the Lord. It's the sole bright spot in the long workweek of the Appalachian coal miner, whose life, and sometimes untimely and horrible death, is movingly chronicled in "Fire on the Mountain."
Myler directs a stellar cast of both musicians and actors for the production ...heart-rending, as is Kim Crow's description of what seems inevitable in mining families: the death of a husband in a mining accident.
"Fire on the Mountain" has the feel of a group of friends and family gathered on a front porch on a Sunday afternoon, pickin' and singin.' But despite the back-and-forth banter between these miners and their families, they'll touch a deep spot in the soul.
Travels With My Aunt - Gorilla Theatre
'A Sweet Strange Trip' St. Petersburg Times; by PETER SMITH; (Excerpted)
When you are promised a play based on a work by Graham Greene, you expect intrigue, dark men and darkness of spirit. In this case, you would be only partly right. For Tampa's Gorilla Theatre is presenting Travels With My Aunt, as sweetly bizarre an entertainment as you will run into, featuring as delightful a gang of human Muppets as you'll find anywhere.
It is rare to run into characters you so much want to be. Kim Crow plays Aunt Augusta with a sheer joy in life. For Aunt Augusta, dreams are as real as brushing your teeth. There are spies and questions and music and grand romantic gestures everywhere for those awake enough to notice, and she is determined to waken her nephew Henry.
'A Sweet Strange Trip' St. Petersburg Times; by PETER SMITH; (Excerpted)
When you are promised a play based on a work by Graham Greene, you expect intrigue, dark men and darkness of spirit. In this case, you would be only partly right. For Tampa's Gorilla Theatre is presenting Travels With My Aunt, as sweetly bizarre an entertainment as you will run into, featuring as delightful a gang of human Muppets as you'll find anywhere.
It is rare to run into characters you so much want to be. Kim Crow plays Aunt Augusta with a sheer joy in life. For Aunt Augusta, dreams are as real as brushing your teeth. There are spies and questions and music and grand romantic gestures everywhere for those awake enough to notice, and she is determined to waken her nephew Henry.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane - Banyan Theater Company
In tension, humor
By Jay Handelman Herald Tribune (Excerpted)
From the discomfort of a wooden rocking chair, Kim Crow is preparing for a roller coaster ride in the Banyan Theater Company production of "The Beauty Queen of Leenane." She plays Mag Folan, who leads a bitter existence in a small Irish town, where she is cared for by her daughter, Maureen, who feels trapped in their rundown cottage. Some might call Mag crotchety or a curmudgeon. Crow is more blunt. "She is a mean old bitch with an Irish lilt. She is so cunning, incredibly selfish, manipulative and so base." While such a description has the makings of an intense drama, Martin McDonagh's international hit is really a black comedy, with an emphasis on the humor, as the two women fight for control and Maureen worries that caring for Mag has caused her to miss the last chance for romance and marriage. "He immediately engages the audience with this incredible dialogue and his structure as a playwright is just terrific," Crow said of McDonagh. "There is so much suspense that it is almost like a whodunit, and yet it is very funny. These people are tearing at each other and the way they communicate is funny. You laugh one minute and you gasp the next."
The Banyan Theater Company serves up a dark comedy with The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
By Kay Kipling (Excerpted)
The darkly comic, often violent plays of Irishman Martin McDonagh may not be everyone’s cup of “tay.” But for those who appreciate his skill in shifting tone and mood back and forth without losing any of his characters’ uniqueness or authenticity, a production of a McDonagh play is a welcome arrival. McDonagh’s earliest play to receive critical and popular attention, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, is now onstage in a Banyan Theater Company production at the Cook Theatre, and it should send a chill down your backbone to help cool you in these dog days of summer. Set in a small town near Galway in the west of Ireland, in the early 1990s, Beauty Queen revolves around a 40-ish spinster, Maureen (Jessica K. Peterson), and her 70-something mother, Mag (Kim Crow), whose sparring relationship is evident from the first words of the play, which is set in the kitchen of an old rural cottage. The back and forth of their dialogue is amusing and quick, and at first we may wonder if some affection lies behind it. It soon becomes apparent, however, that this mother-daughter relationship is one for the books. Mag is a selfish, exasperating old hag who has made her unmarried daughter’s life miserable, and Maureen has all but given up hope of getting out from under—until an old neighbor, Pato Dooley (Derry Woodhouse), returns for a brief visit from his exile in England. Is there a chance of these two lonely people kindling a love affair that will last? Or will Mag doom the future to repeat the past? It’s intriguing to watch McDonagh’s ever-changing battleground throughout, and to try to ascertain who is more the victim here, the often cruel Mag or the equally tough Maureen, who has a history of mental illness to boot. Both Peterson and Crow have strong presences, and as the tension builds to an inevitable confrontation, they are totally believable as two people locked in a life-and-death struggle.
In tension, humor
By Jay Handelman Herald Tribune (Excerpted)
From the discomfort of a wooden rocking chair, Kim Crow is preparing for a roller coaster ride in the Banyan Theater Company production of "The Beauty Queen of Leenane." She plays Mag Folan, who leads a bitter existence in a small Irish town, where she is cared for by her daughter, Maureen, who feels trapped in their rundown cottage. Some might call Mag crotchety or a curmudgeon. Crow is more blunt. "She is a mean old bitch with an Irish lilt. She is so cunning, incredibly selfish, manipulative and so base." While such a description has the makings of an intense drama, Martin McDonagh's international hit is really a black comedy, with an emphasis on the humor, as the two women fight for control and Maureen worries that caring for Mag has caused her to miss the last chance for romance and marriage. "He immediately engages the audience with this incredible dialogue and his structure as a playwright is just terrific," Crow said of McDonagh. "There is so much suspense that it is almost like a whodunit, and yet it is very funny. These people are tearing at each other and the way they communicate is funny. You laugh one minute and you gasp the next."
The Banyan Theater Company serves up a dark comedy with The Beauty Queen of Leenane.
By Kay Kipling (Excerpted)
The darkly comic, often violent plays of Irishman Martin McDonagh may not be everyone’s cup of “tay.” But for those who appreciate his skill in shifting tone and mood back and forth without losing any of his characters’ uniqueness or authenticity, a production of a McDonagh play is a welcome arrival. McDonagh’s earliest play to receive critical and popular attention, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, is now onstage in a Banyan Theater Company production at the Cook Theatre, and it should send a chill down your backbone to help cool you in these dog days of summer. Set in a small town near Galway in the west of Ireland, in the early 1990s, Beauty Queen revolves around a 40-ish spinster, Maureen (Jessica K. Peterson), and her 70-something mother, Mag (Kim Crow), whose sparring relationship is evident from the first words of the play, which is set in the kitchen of an old rural cottage. The back and forth of their dialogue is amusing and quick, and at first we may wonder if some affection lies behind it. It soon becomes apparent, however, that this mother-daughter relationship is one for the books. Mag is a selfish, exasperating old hag who has made her unmarried daughter’s life miserable, and Maureen has all but given up hope of getting out from under—until an old neighbor, Pato Dooley (Derry Woodhouse), returns for a brief visit from his exile in England. Is there a chance of these two lonely people kindling a love affair that will last? Or will Mag doom the future to repeat the past? It’s intriguing to watch McDonagh’s ever-changing battleground throughout, and to try to ascertain who is more the victim here, the often cruel Mag or the equally tough Maureen, who has a history of mental illness to boot. Both Peterson and Crow have strong presences, and as the tension builds to an inevitable confrontation, they are totally believable as two people locked in a life-and-death struggle.
Parallel Lives, The Kathy and Mo Show - Gypsy Productions
'Kathy & Mo' will make you chuckle and cringe
BY HANNAH MARIA HAYES (Excerpted)
Press & Sun-Bulletin
ENDICOTT,NY -- No stone is left unturned in Parallel Lives: The Kathy & Mo Show.
The off-Broadway hit, created by comedians Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy, is part of the Cider Mill Playhouse's alternative season. The play involves a series of vignettes during which two actresses play numerous male and female characters who are trying to cope with modern life. Parallel Lives: The Kathy & Mo Show is a comedy that is definitely not afraid to poke fun at some controversial topics including religion, sex, menstruation, death, homosexuality and marriage. It also makes light of male-female relationships, stereotypes and family relations. Actresses Kim Crow (Mo) and Mardie Schaefer (Kathy), both from Florida, create the worlds of about 15 people in the nearly three-hour-long show. One minute they are a dating collegiate couple -- a ditzy blonde and frat boy -- who eat dinner at a restaurant frequented by cross-dressers and homosexuals. The next minute they become gossiping socialites. One whispers to the other to ask for a tampon; the other giggles and says, "Oh you mean 'A lipstick?'" to hide the meaning of a "taboo" object. That's followed by a piece on what it would be like if women were to talk about their periods as if they were men -- slapping each other on the back and bragging about who has the worst cramps. If it's appropriate during the course of the play, Mo or Kathy may yell at or toss a comment toward an audience member or even swipe a drink from someone's table. Crow and Schaefer each had moments when they owned the stage and commanded the audience's attention. Their ability to quickly transform into myriad personas was impressive and kept the audience guessing. They both stole the show with their take on an over-the-top lesbian performance duo. Even those audience members who appeared more conservative than others got a chuckle out of Crow and Schaefer's obvious glee at representing the feminist worship of women and their reproductive organs. Parallel Lives: The Kathy & Mo Show brings a different brand of humor to the stage. But even though laughing isn't a sin, don't expect your local pastor to endorse some of the play's more controversial messages.
Variety is the spice of 'Lives'
A two-person show at the Suncoast Resort features a deftly acted collection of comedy sketches with a broad appeal.
By LORRIE LYKINS
(Excerpted) ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
Kim Crow and Jill Jackson have the chops and comedic timing to pull off this material, which also demands versatility and physical endurance. Crow deftly directs herself and Jackson in multiple male and female roles that include drunken Southerners, eager children, senior citizens and a disgruntled streetwalker named Candida. The two morph smoothly through the characters and scenarios with little to aid the onstage transitions, save wigs or minor costume pieces, some catchy cover music and lighting changes, clicking especially in their roles as Sylvia and Madeline, bewildered widows on a field trip with a college gender studies class, attempting to navigate feminist art and a vegan lunch. Another high point is a scene in a honky-tonk with Jackson playing Hank, a barely coherent inebriate, and Crow as Karen Sue, a middle-aged barfly who flirts dispassionately with Hank, bathed in the neon glow of a Budweiser beer sign. Laughs aside, the pain and hopelessness of the two characters, peeking out as the two discussed leftover chili, "sissy drinks" and marriage, was poignant.
New Company's `Parallel' Lives In The Past
By JOANNE MILANI [email protected]
ST. PETERSBURG - Seeing "Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show,'' presented by newly formed Gypsy Productions Inc., is a little like entering a rickety time machine that whisks you to the 1980s. This production is from a company taking up the mantle of the defunct Central Stage in aiming to present "alternative-lifestyle productions,'' Gypsy's mission statement says. Its other goal is quality, as is evidenced by casting of Kim Crow, a fine actress seen in many regional productions who could be devastatingly funny as a clueless high school jock, and Jill Jackson, who is capable of capturing your heart in some of her solo scenes, as Mo.
'Kathy & Mo' will make you chuckle and cringe
BY HANNAH MARIA HAYES (Excerpted)
Press & Sun-Bulletin
ENDICOTT,NY -- No stone is left unturned in Parallel Lives: The Kathy & Mo Show.
The off-Broadway hit, created by comedians Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy, is part of the Cider Mill Playhouse's alternative season. The play involves a series of vignettes during which two actresses play numerous male and female characters who are trying to cope with modern life. Parallel Lives: The Kathy & Mo Show is a comedy that is definitely not afraid to poke fun at some controversial topics including religion, sex, menstruation, death, homosexuality and marriage. It also makes light of male-female relationships, stereotypes and family relations. Actresses Kim Crow (Mo) and Mardie Schaefer (Kathy), both from Florida, create the worlds of about 15 people in the nearly three-hour-long show. One minute they are a dating collegiate couple -- a ditzy blonde and frat boy -- who eat dinner at a restaurant frequented by cross-dressers and homosexuals. The next minute they become gossiping socialites. One whispers to the other to ask for a tampon; the other giggles and says, "Oh you mean 'A lipstick?'" to hide the meaning of a "taboo" object. That's followed by a piece on what it would be like if women were to talk about their periods as if they were men -- slapping each other on the back and bragging about who has the worst cramps. If it's appropriate during the course of the play, Mo or Kathy may yell at or toss a comment toward an audience member or even swipe a drink from someone's table. Crow and Schaefer each had moments when they owned the stage and commanded the audience's attention. Their ability to quickly transform into myriad personas was impressive and kept the audience guessing. They both stole the show with their take on an over-the-top lesbian performance duo. Even those audience members who appeared more conservative than others got a chuckle out of Crow and Schaefer's obvious glee at representing the feminist worship of women and their reproductive organs. Parallel Lives: The Kathy & Mo Show brings a different brand of humor to the stage. But even though laughing isn't a sin, don't expect your local pastor to endorse some of the play's more controversial messages.
Variety is the spice of 'Lives'
A two-person show at the Suncoast Resort features a deftly acted collection of comedy sketches with a broad appeal.
By LORRIE LYKINS
(Excerpted) ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
Kim Crow and Jill Jackson have the chops and comedic timing to pull off this material, which also demands versatility and physical endurance. Crow deftly directs herself and Jackson in multiple male and female roles that include drunken Southerners, eager children, senior citizens and a disgruntled streetwalker named Candida. The two morph smoothly through the characters and scenarios with little to aid the onstage transitions, save wigs or minor costume pieces, some catchy cover music and lighting changes, clicking especially in their roles as Sylvia and Madeline, bewildered widows on a field trip with a college gender studies class, attempting to navigate feminist art and a vegan lunch. Another high point is a scene in a honky-tonk with Jackson playing Hank, a barely coherent inebriate, and Crow as Karen Sue, a middle-aged barfly who flirts dispassionately with Hank, bathed in the neon glow of a Budweiser beer sign. Laughs aside, the pain and hopelessness of the two characters, peeking out as the two discussed leftover chili, "sissy drinks" and marriage, was poignant.
New Company's `Parallel' Lives In The Past
By JOANNE MILANI [email protected]
ST. PETERSBURG - Seeing "Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show,'' presented by newly formed Gypsy Productions Inc., is a little like entering a rickety time machine that whisks you to the 1980s. This production is from a company taking up the mantle of the defunct Central Stage in aiming to present "alternative-lifestyle productions,'' Gypsy's mission statement says. Its other goal is quality, as is evidenced by casting of Kim Crow, a fine actress seen in many regional productions who could be devastatingly funny as a clueless high school jock, and Jill Jackson, who is capable of capturing your heart in some of her solo scenes, as Mo.
Ghosts - Mad Cow Theatre Company
Actress: Ibsen is like 'going over the falls'
By Elizabeth Maupin | Sentinel Theater Critic (Excerpted)
Kim Crow wants to talk about Niagara Falls.
She's an actress sitting in the middle of a theater set on the second floor of an old Victorian building in downtown Orlando. But in her mind, and yours, you're both on the Canadian side of the falls - the pretty side, Crow says with a grin. On the Canadian side, she says, in the park above the falls, the river is peaceful. But there's a strong sense of the current pulling you downstream. You have a hard time resisting. You almost want to jump. It's the same thing, she says, with Ibsen - that sense of "relentless inevitability," she calls it, as if you've got to throw caution aside and take the plunge. "You don't know you're going over the falls," she says, "until you're there." Speaking with Kim Crow is a little like going over the falls: Before you know it, you're swept up in talk of earth elements and Arthur Miller, potluck dinners and purification and watercolor portraits of cats. Crow is about to play Ibsen, and intensity like hers might be just the thing.
When Mad Cow Theatre's production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts opens tonight for a 3*-week run, Crow will be Helene Alving, a widow with everything going for her. An orphanage in her small rural town is about to be dedicated to her late husband. And her beloved son Osvald, who has spent many years abroad, has left Paris to come home. But tragedy is about to strike. Mrs. Alving's pastor condemns her beliefs. Her son's health is questionable. Her maid is eager to take off for more cosmopolitan surroundings. And the ghosts of the choices she has made have moved in to stay. Crow comes to perform Ghosts from Sarasota, where she lives with her husband, cat watercolor artist Drew Strouble, and five controlling felines. But Mad Cow Theatre, which she says takes "very bold chances with very great writing," seems to Crow like her kind of place. And Mrs. Alving - intelligent, passionate and courageous - seems like her kind of woman. "I know this woman," Crow says. "I wanted to tell her story, and I knew I could." She corrects herself. "I know I can." Crow's father was a rocket engineer and her mother what Crow calls a "psychic" teacher of exceptional children, so she grew up thinking anything was possible. As her family moved around, she discovered theater in the eighth grade, at a Bucks County, Pa., school with a strong theater program. She loved the people. She loved the intensity. And she loved telling stories. After graduating from Catholic University and training in London, she moved to Huntsville, Ala., and started a theater company on a federal grant, part of a 1970s-era federal job-training program. A year and a half later the grant ended, and so did her first marriage: "It happens," she says. She was in Atlanta, working as an extra on a movie with Burt Reynolds, when he told her to get herself down to Florida. Moviemaking there, he told her, was about to explode. "I had just turned 30, I had gotten my ears pierced, and I needed a tan," she says. So off she went. Florida has been good to Crow. She met and married Strouble, her husband of 17 years. And she built a career as an actor, director and voice-over artist, doing the voices for hundreds of commercials, working frequently for theaters in Sarasota and Fort Myers and most recently playing the lead, Dr. Vivian Bearing, in back-to-back productions of Wit in Fort Myers and Jacksonville. She feels blessed, she says. She has found work, she has gotten to tell stories, and she has been able to play "the most fascinating women ever written." To Crow, Mrs. Alving seems to belong in that group - way ahead, in fact, of Ibsen's more famous tragic heroines, Nora in A Doll's House and the title character in Hedda Gabler.After all, Crow points out, Nora flees an oppressive household. Hedda shoots herself. But Mrs. Alving keeps on keeping on. "She tries to keep all the balls in the air, she really does," Crow says. "It takes its toll on her." Mrs. Alving has put responsibility and duty ahead of her heart, and she has done the so-called right things for the wrong reasons. If you do the right things for the wrong reasons, Crow says, there's a price to pay. In some ways, Ghosts is a creation of its time, the 1880s, with that era's fear of public opinion, its horror of scandal and its strict rules about what women should be. But Ibsen didn't share those views, and Crow thinks the play will ring true to today's audiences.Some things haven't changed. "1881 to 2002, and we're still human beings," she says. "I don't really know how much we've learned. So Crow is digging into Ibsen. She's looking at Norse mythology, and she's examining his reliance on the element of fire, and she's thinking about the fact that Hel, the first three letters in her character's name, was the Norse goddess of death. And she's talking about Ibsen and his tragic heroines as if she and they are one of a kind. "We like the edge," she says. "Probably because we've been living on it our entire lives. Heroines of one sort or another have been with her all her life: Crow talks about her Irish grandmother and her opera-singer, rattlesnake-shooting aunt, who encouraged younger people to be all they could. Crow wants to do the same. Check out her web page, she tells you - it has all the info on her career, and it also has pages and pages of musings about acting and life. She did it for "the little girls coming up," says Crow, before tearing into Mrs. Alving for the rest of the night. She wants to say to them, Look, you have choices. You can do it all. Life is good.
GHOSTS - Mad Cow Theatre
June 2002 - Mary Jo Caruso (Excerpted)
It's no easy feat to interest a modern Florida audience in a 19th century Norwegian family run askew, but the Mad Cow Theatre Company richly succeeds with its production of Henrik Ibsen's drama, Ghosts. Even those of us who barely want to spend a minute with our own dysfunctional families will be drawn to the Alving family as Ibsen depicts them spending a winter afternoon digging skeletons out of their closet. (Not they really dig for them; they kind of just fall out on their own.) The glue of the Alving household and the magic of the production is Helen Alving, as played by Kim Crow. Crow embodies Ibsen's tragic heroine so completely that often with a mere glance, a nod of her head, even an intake of breath, she draws the audience out of its twenty-first century reality and into her stifling Norwegian sitting room. And despite the tragedy inherent in Ibsen's writing, Crow never ventures into melodrama or plays Helen as a victim or a martyr. When Crow is onstage, no one shifts in a seat, fumbles with a program, fidgets with a candy wrapper or even stops to scratch an itch. By the time the Mad Cow performance was done, I felt truly immersed in the world of the play. Of course, this led me to thank my stars that the "ghosts" in my life are of a more bearable magnitude. But most importantly, Mad Cow gives audiences a renewed appreciation for Ibsen's writing - a record of human dynamics that transcends Norway in the 1800s and reaches Florida in the millenium. No easy feat indeed.
Spirit of Ibsen's play holds lessons for us
(excerpts) By Elizabeth Maupin Sentinel Theater Critic (Excerpted)
Ghosts is a play of our time. And it's a play of another time altogether. Henrik Ibsen's drama about duty and guilt and free thinking in 1880s Norway doesn't quite make the leap to the 21st century. But if you're willing to journey back in time to meet it, Mad Cow Theatre's handsome little production will take you on a thought-provoking ride. Theatergoers may recognize Ibsen as the father of two distinctively modern women: Hedda Gabler, who kills herself rather than adjust to a bourgeois life, and Nora Helmer, who escapes a stifling marriage in A Doll's House by walking out the door. Far fewer know Ghosts' Helene Alving, who refuses to run away from tragedy and instead stares it straight in the eye. In Ghosts, Mrs. Alving's prison is apparent from the moment you see her comfortable little conservatory (designed by the masterly William Elliott), with its Oriental rug, its wrought-iron garden furniture, its chaise and its orchids and the pretty white bars that keep all of it protected from the cold and the fog and the rain. There Helene Alving (Kim Crow) is planning to celebrate the happiest of days: An orphanage she has paid for is about to be dedicated to her illustrious late husband, and her beloved artist son Osvald (Stephen Middleton) is home from bohemian Paris for a good long stay. Mrs. Alving is prepared to stand up to the warnings of her old friend and adviser Pastor Manders (Rick Stanley), who disapproves of Osvald'sfreewheeling lifestyle and even of the books she keeps on her table. She's willing to admit to Pastor Manders that her celebrated husband was not the man he appeared to be. Only when Mrs. Alving discovers that the sins of the father have been passed on to the son does her carefully constructed shell crack open and her world turn to dust. Kim Crow, a Sarasota-area actress brought in to play Mrs. Alving, makes a matron with intelligence and crust, a woman with enough fortitude to do what needs to be done and enough self-knowledge to be bemused by doing it. ... There's no question that modern sensibilities may find Ghosts a strange brew, with its society frozen by convention and tied down by its sense of what it ought to do. Still, Mrs. Alving remains singular among Ibsen's extraordinary women. Maybe it's hard to imagine yourself facing long-forgotten crises in the damp Norwegian cold. But strip away the 19th-century trappings, and Helene Alving stands tall.
Actress: Ibsen is like 'going over the falls'
By Elizabeth Maupin | Sentinel Theater Critic (Excerpted)
Kim Crow wants to talk about Niagara Falls.
She's an actress sitting in the middle of a theater set on the second floor of an old Victorian building in downtown Orlando. But in her mind, and yours, you're both on the Canadian side of the falls - the pretty side, Crow says with a grin. On the Canadian side, she says, in the park above the falls, the river is peaceful. But there's a strong sense of the current pulling you downstream. You have a hard time resisting. You almost want to jump. It's the same thing, she says, with Ibsen - that sense of "relentless inevitability," she calls it, as if you've got to throw caution aside and take the plunge. "You don't know you're going over the falls," she says, "until you're there." Speaking with Kim Crow is a little like going over the falls: Before you know it, you're swept up in talk of earth elements and Arthur Miller, potluck dinners and purification and watercolor portraits of cats. Crow is about to play Ibsen, and intensity like hers might be just the thing.
When Mad Cow Theatre's production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts opens tonight for a 3*-week run, Crow will be Helene Alving, a widow with everything going for her. An orphanage in her small rural town is about to be dedicated to her late husband. And her beloved son Osvald, who has spent many years abroad, has left Paris to come home. But tragedy is about to strike. Mrs. Alving's pastor condemns her beliefs. Her son's health is questionable. Her maid is eager to take off for more cosmopolitan surroundings. And the ghosts of the choices she has made have moved in to stay. Crow comes to perform Ghosts from Sarasota, where she lives with her husband, cat watercolor artist Drew Strouble, and five controlling felines. But Mad Cow Theatre, which she says takes "very bold chances with very great writing," seems to Crow like her kind of place. And Mrs. Alving - intelligent, passionate and courageous - seems like her kind of woman. "I know this woman," Crow says. "I wanted to tell her story, and I knew I could." She corrects herself. "I know I can." Crow's father was a rocket engineer and her mother what Crow calls a "psychic" teacher of exceptional children, so she grew up thinking anything was possible. As her family moved around, she discovered theater in the eighth grade, at a Bucks County, Pa., school with a strong theater program. She loved the people. She loved the intensity. And she loved telling stories. After graduating from Catholic University and training in London, she moved to Huntsville, Ala., and started a theater company on a federal grant, part of a 1970s-era federal job-training program. A year and a half later the grant ended, and so did her first marriage: "It happens," she says. She was in Atlanta, working as an extra on a movie with Burt Reynolds, when he told her to get herself down to Florida. Moviemaking there, he told her, was about to explode. "I had just turned 30, I had gotten my ears pierced, and I needed a tan," she says. So off she went. Florida has been good to Crow. She met and married Strouble, her husband of 17 years. And she built a career as an actor, director and voice-over artist, doing the voices for hundreds of commercials, working frequently for theaters in Sarasota and Fort Myers and most recently playing the lead, Dr. Vivian Bearing, in back-to-back productions of Wit in Fort Myers and Jacksonville. She feels blessed, she says. She has found work, she has gotten to tell stories, and she has been able to play "the most fascinating women ever written." To Crow, Mrs. Alving seems to belong in that group - way ahead, in fact, of Ibsen's more famous tragic heroines, Nora in A Doll's House and the title character in Hedda Gabler.After all, Crow points out, Nora flees an oppressive household. Hedda shoots herself. But Mrs. Alving keeps on keeping on. "She tries to keep all the balls in the air, she really does," Crow says. "It takes its toll on her." Mrs. Alving has put responsibility and duty ahead of her heart, and she has done the so-called right things for the wrong reasons. If you do the right things for the wrong reasons, Crow says, there's a price to pay. In some ways, Ghosts is a creation of its time, the 1880s, with that era's fear of public opinion, its horror of scandal and its strict rules about what women should be. But Ibsen didn't share those views, and Crow thinks the play will ring true to today's audiences.Some things haven't changed. "1881 to 2002, and we're still human beings," she says. "I don't really know how much we've learned. So Crow is digging into Ibsen. She's looking at Norse mythology, and she's examining his reliance on the element of fire, and she's thinking about the fact that Hel, the first three letters in her character's name, was the Norse goddess of death. And she's talking about Ibsen and his tragic heroines as if she and they are one of a kind. "We like the edge," she says. "Probably because we've been living on it our entire lives. Heroines of one sort or another have been with her all her life: Crow talks about her Irish grandmother and her opera-singer, rattlesnake-shooting aunt, who encouraged younger people to be all they could. Crow wants to do the same. Check out her web page, she tells you - it has all the info on her career, and it also has pages and pages of musings about acting and life. She did it for "the little girls coming up," says Crow, before tearing into Mrs. Alving for the rest of the night. She wants to say to them, Look, you have choices. You can do it all. Life is good.
GHOSTS - Mad Cow Theatre
June 2002 - Mary Jo Caruso (Excerpted)
It's no easy feat to interest a modern Florida audience in a 19th century Norwegian family run askew, but the Mad Cow Theatre Company richly succeeds with its production of Henrik Ibsen's drama, Ghosts. Even those of us who barely want to spend a minute with our own dysfunctional families will be drawn to the Alving family as Ibsen depicts them spending a winter afternoon digging skeletons out of their closet. (Not they really dig for them; they kind of just fall out on their own.) The glue of the Alving household and the magic of the production is Helen Alving, as played by Kim Crow. Crow embodies Ibsen's tragic heroine so completely that often with a mere glance, a nod of her head, even an intake of breath, she draws the audience out of its twenty-first century reality and into her stifling Norwegian sitting room. And despite the tragedy inherent in Ibsen's writing, Crow never ventures into melodrama or plays Helen as a victim or a martyr. When Crow is onstage, no one shifts in a seat, fumbles with a program, fidgets with a candy wrapper or even stops to scratch an itch. By the time the Mad Cow performance was done, I felt truly immersed in the world of the play. Of course, this led me to thank my stars that the "ghosts" in my life are of a more bearable magnitude. But most importantly, Mad Cow gives audiences a renewed appreciation for Ibsen's writing - a record of human dynamics that transcends Norway in the 1800s and reaches Florida in the millenium. No easy feat indeed.
Spirit of Ibsen's play holds lessons for us
(excerpts) By Elizabeth Maupin Sentinel Theater Critic (Excerpted)
Ghosts is a play of our time. And it's a play of another time altogether. Henrik Ibsen's drama about duty and guilt and free thinking in 1880s Norway doesn't quite make the leap to the 21st century. But if you're willing to journey back in time to meet it, Mad Cow Theatre's handsome little production will take you on a thought-provoking ride. Theatergoers may recognize Ibsen as the father of two distinctively modern women: Hedda Gabler, who kills herself rather than adjust to a bourgeois life, and Nora Helmer, who escapes a stifling marriage in A Doll's House by walking out the door. Far fewer know Ghosts' Helene Alving, who refuses to run away from tragedy and instead stares it straight in the eye. In Ghosts, Mrs. Alving's prison is apparent from the moment you see her comfortable little conservatory (designed by the masterly William Elliott), with its Oriental rug, its wrought-iron garden furniture, its chaise and its orchids and the pretty white bars that keep all of it protected from the cold and the fog and the rain. There Helene Alving (Kim Crow) is planning to celebrate the happiest of days: An orphanage she has paid for is about to be dedicated to her illustrious late husband, and her beloved artist son Osvald (Stephen Middleton) is home from bohemian Paris for a good long stay. Mrs. Alving is prepared to stand up to the warnings of her old friend and adviser Pastor Manders (Rick Stanley), who disapproves of Osvald'sfreewheeling lifestyle and even of the books she keeps on her table. She's willing to admit to Pastor Manders that her celebrated husband was not the man he appeared to be. Only when Mrs. Alving discovers that the sins of the father have been passed on to the son does her carefully constructed shell crack open and her world turn to dust. Kim Crow, a Sarasota-area actress brought in to play Mrs. Alving, makes a matron with intelligence and crust, a woman with enough fortitude to do what needs to be done and enough self-knowledge to be bemused by doing it. ... There's no question that modern sensibilities may find Ghosts a strange brew, with its society frozen by convention and tied down by its sense of what it ought to do. Still, Mrs. Alving remains singular among Ibsen's extraordinary women. Maybe it's hard to imagine yourself facing long-forgotten crises in the damp Norwegian cold. But strip away the 19th-century trappings, and Helene Alving stands tall.
Invasion of Privacy - Florida Studio Theatre
- Bradenton Herald: Barbara Molloy: 'Crow plays Marjorie from the heart, employing a great reservoir of feeling along with some light touches of humor (also demonstrating an impressive ability to split wood!)'
- Pelican Press; Jean Reed :'Kim Crow's portrayal of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is rich in subtle shadings, as well as brightly colored with wit and warmth.
- Eclipse: Performance: 'Kim Crow as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is charmingly complicated, combining a loving, sentimental manner with a dangerous complacency that's always bordering on the edge of smugness.'
- Herald-Tribune; Jay Handelman:'Kim Crow ... shows us Rawling's hard-drinking, tough-talking spirit'
- Longboat Observer: Jeffrey Smart: 'As Rawlings, Km Crow keeps pushing against the boundaries to provide a rich portrait.'
Playing for Time - Theatre Works
The Longboat Observer' Arts & Entertainment, Jeffrey Smart 'Playing for Time.' (Excerpted) The actors mime the playing. Time passes on the Theater Works stage without definition - the next day? The next week? Its lasting spell can be attributed to the bravura performance by Kim Crow. Crow seems an open wound, a pulsating victim of her emotions. They flicker across her face - eating a small bit of food brings joy, ecstasy, then tears. Her rich, deep voice is connected to heart, not lungs. She breathes through her nose as if she were on fire. She walks like a petulant schoolboy. She stands in the frozen gaping idiocy of an imbecile. Her hands flicker over her shaven head in spastic waves. She leans, both accusing and pleading, into the face of another. She grimaces. She sings Puccini arias like the French cabaret singer she portrays - skilled, yes, but not a polished voice, possessing instead a raw emotional connection. She has so many emotions she seems to be feeling for the other person n the scene, channeling the entire experience of the Holocaust. Is it too much? It starts unwarranted by her surroundings and far outweighs the performances of the others, but it remains a commanding performance, one that rivets your attention and commands your respect... The success of 'Playing for Time' rests on Kim Crow's shoulders ... the emotional impact is great.'
Pelican Press: Jean Reed 'Playing for Time' will leave you limp - but you won't forget (Excerpted)
The Jewish women, rounded up by the Nazis and sent to the hell of Auschwitz to die, did not make it a heaven, but somehow survived. Milton wrote, ' The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of a hell ...'Playing for Time' is the story of the human spirit and celebration of life. It's based on the autobiography of Fania Fenelon, a popular Parisian singer and member of the Resistance, who was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. She was ordered to become part of an orchestra made up of prisoners forced to play for German officers. On occasion they were made to play for new prisoners' arrival to enhance the vicious and evil deception that civilized treatment, not gas chambers, was to be their fate. Kim Crow's Fania dominates the stage . .. Remarkable vocal expressiveness, intensely shiny, expressive eyes and silent gestures all combine to produce a memorable characterization.
Playing for Time: Sarasota Herald-Tribune : Jay Handelman: (Excerpted) Arthur Miller has always been known as bold and unafraid of tackling real-life problems in his plays. That's certainly the case in 'Playing for Time,' which opened Friday at Theater Works in Sarasota. Director Jay Strauss does have a leading actress in Kim Crow, who is as daring and brave as the playwright. Crow, who shaved her head for the production, plays Fania as determined, headstrong and proud, constantly questioning the motivation that keeps them all alive ... (she) dominates the production, and gives a full portrait of her character's constantly shifting emotions.
The Longboat Observer' Arts & Entertainment, Jeffrey Smart 'Playing for Time.' (Excerpted) The actors mime the playing. Time passes on the Theater Works stage without definition - the next day? The next week? Its lasting spell can be attributed to the bravura performance by Kim Crow. Crow seems an open wound, a pulsating victim of her emotions. They flicker across her face - eating a small bit of food brings joy, ecstasy, then tears. Her rich, deep voice is connected to heart, not lungs. She breathes through her nose as if she were on fire. She walks like a petulant schoolboy. She stands in the frozen gaping idiocy of an imbecile. Her hands flicker over her shaven head in spastic waves. She leans, both accusing and pleading, into the face of another. She grimaces. She sings Puccini arias like the French cabaret singer she portrays - skilled, yes, but not a polished voice, possessing instead a raw emotional connection. She has so many emotions she seems to be feeling for the other person n the scene, channeling the entire experience of the Holocaust. Is it too much? It starts unwarranted by her surroundings and far outweighs the performances of the others, but it remains a commanding performance, one that rivets your attention and commands your respect... The success of 'Playing for Time' rests on Kim Crow's shoulders ... the emotional impact is great.'
Pelican Press: Jean Reed 'Playing for Time' will leave you limp - but you won't forget (Excerpted)
The Jewish women, rounded up by the Nazis and sent to the hell of Auschwitz to die, did not make it a heaven, but somehow survived. Milton wrote, ' The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of a hell ...'Playing for Time' is the story of the human spirit and celebration of life. It's based on the autobiography of Fania Fenelon, a popular Parisian singer and member of the Resistance, who was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. She was ordered to become part of an orchestra made up of prisoners forced to play for German officers. On occasion they were made to play for new prisoners' arrival to enhance the vicious and evil deception that civilized treatment, not gas chambers, was to be their fate. Kim Crow's Fania dominates the stage . .. Remarkable vocal expressiveness, intensely shiny, expressive eyes and silent gestures all combine to produce a memorable characterization.
Playing for Time: Sarasota Herald-Tribune : Jay Handelman: (Excerpted) Arthur Miller has always been known as bold and unafraid of tackling real-life problems in his plays. That's certainly the case in 'Playing for Time,' which opened Friday at Theater Works in Sarasota. Director Jay Strauss does have a leading actress in Kim Crow, who is as daring and brave as the playwright. Crow, who shaved her head for the production, plays Fania as determined, headstrong and proud, constantly questioning the motivation that keeps them all alive ... (she) dominates the production, and gives a full portrait of her character's constantly shifting emotions.