Always operatic in scope and the singing required, it’s a production graced with best-in-class showstoppers: greatest mean comic villain song (“Master of the House”); greatest rousing drinking song (“Drink With Me to Days Gone By”); best poignant mourning song (“Empty Chairs”) and surely the best Act 1 summing-up song ever written (“One Day More”) — all sung with verve and skill.

Despite tour producer Nederlander’s dubious practice of using Norfolk’s first night to give understudies a workout (for instance, putting David Andino in the part of comic villain Thénardier in the Tuesday night performance), Andino held his own, along with the show’s excellent regulars Nick Cartell as Jean Valjean, Preston Truman Boyd as Javert, and Victoria Huston-Elem doing Madame Thénardier, Thénardier’s long-suffering but co-villainous wife.

This restaging abandons the revolving stage of early productions in favor of projections. Not an improvement in many shows, here somber but evocative computer-generated sets do work inspired, in part, by Victor Hugo’s paintings. Other theatrical moves from the original staging (the students’ marching in place, Javert’s leap into the Seine), are retained and even enhanced by the new stagecraft. Designer Matt Kinley’s projections for the Paris sewer scene are a total knockout.

But rest assured, it’s still Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables,” full of sentimentality, moral quandaries and philosophical musings, born of Hugo’s own larger-than-life life (1802-85), itself full of contradictions. Hugo went from conservative royalist to liberal radical. He was a feminist but, in the words of show historian Edward Behr, “also a rake” with “prodigious sexual appetites.” He had a wife, a permanent mistress and innumerable stand-ins for both. He was both a political exile and a member of parliament. Literally millions attended his funeral in Paris. “Les Miz” is centered on the abortive student uprising of 1832 (the show’s famous barricade scenes), though it’s easily confused with much earlier events of the 1789 French Revolution, and particularly the later 1871 Commune uprising (more barricades).

If the French history is confusing, so is the musical’s production history, starting with its 1980 fully French forerunner version by Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Claude-Michel Schönberg. The much-modified English version features lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, with “adaptation” by the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Trevor Nunn, John Caird and Cameron Mackintosh. The Chrysler production is directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell and features a company of 42(!).

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Here’s a quick reminder of what it’s all about: The show includes a pre-title prologue. Jean Valjean (Cartell) has stolen a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving child, earning five years in prison plus 14 more for attempted escape. There he first tangles with Javert (Boyd), who warns and taunts Prisoner 24601 on releasing him. Once out, Valjean sees that his prison-marked identity papers label him as a criminal and impulsively rips them up. He steals silver from a bishop (a minor role admirably executed by Randy Jeter). The bishop forgives him and gives him the silver, declaring, “I have bought your soul for God!”

We jump eight years to 1823, a span during which Valjean has parlayed that silver into owning a factory. The familiar songs begin, “At the End of the Day” suggesting the discontent and meanness of some of Valjean’s workers. One of them, Fantine (the fine Haley Dortch), unbeknownst to Valjean, is being sexually harassed by her foreman and taunted by fellow workers. The hits continue with Fantine’s account of first love, “I Dreamed a Dream.” Unfortunately, that love ended in her lover’s desertion and a child, Cosette, whom she supports. Fantine’s only recourse now is to join the “Lovely Ladies” of the night. Valjean rescues her from violent abuse by a john and takes responsibility for her fate (she’s dying) and that of her child: “Come to Me.”

We then jump locations to Montfermeil, where Cosette is being likewise abused by her purported caretakers, the Thénardiers who (comparatively speaking) dote on their child, Éponine. Talented child actors play the young Éponine (this night, Azalea Wolfe), young Cosette (Ava Buesing), the ill-fated Gavroche (Leo Caravano) and little Gervais (also Caravano). Little Cosette sings her fantasy “escape” song, “Castle on a Cloud.” Her oppressors, the Thénardiers, sing their irresistibly gross and comic theme “Master of the House,” explaining M. Thenardier’s innkeeping philosophy: “Charge ’em for the lice,/ Extra for the mice,/ Two percent for looking in the mirror twice./ Here a little slice,/ There a little cut,/ Three percent for sleeping with the window shut.” His wife, singing the same tune, then exposes her husband: “Cunning little brain/ Regular Voltaire./ Thinks he’s quite a lover/ But there’s not much there.” Lest we miss her diss of her husband’s physical “gifts,” she takes a long, phallic baguette of bread and tears off a much shorter piece to show us. Valjean blessedly rescues little Cosette from this sordid mess.

We jump ahead nine years to 1832 Paris, where we meet students and the poor on the edge of revolt. The volatile conditions are described in the song “Look Down.” Javert sings his philosophy-of-life song, “Stars.”  Valjean and Javert will constantly encounter each other throughout the play, leading to agonizing decisions on Valjean’s part. They always boil down to “save yourself” or “save others.”  Valjean does the right, selfless thing. Javert, for his part, suffers from what we might call “idées fixes,” mindless moral certainties that he doesn’t bother to question.

The Parisian students we meet also debate justice. Led by Enjolras (Devin Archer), they include our young hero Marius (Jake David Smith), who encounters the now-grown Cosette (Delaney Guyer, good except for breaks in accent). They immediately fall in love, with Marius oblivious to the fact that a grown-up Éponine (the also fine Mya Rena Hunter) loves him. We get musical hit after hit: “Red and Black,” “Do You Hear the People Sing?” “In My Life,” and the unwitting love triangle’s “A Heart Full of Love.” Act 1 culminates in that ultimate plot resumé song “One Day More.”

Act 2 continues the love triangle and Valjean’s sometimes secret ministrations to his adopted children Cosette and soon Marius (whom he saves after the barricade slaughter). We have more poignant deaths and the aforementioned great drinking songs, and the now-affluent Thénardiers continue their lowdown ways. Having determined his whole life was misguided, Javert departs, with dramatic stage effects.

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Hey, it’s “Les Miz,” in an excellent production! Don’t miss it. As my very American father used to say, “It’s worth every last sou” you spend on a ticket.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

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If you go

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $40

Details: sevenvenues.com

Mortimer (the critic): “Are these plays fair to me?” …

Jonathan to Dr. Einstein, his cohort in crime, “This must really be an artistic achievement. After all, we’re performing before a very distinguished critic.”

True, that … though, of course, Jonathan (Arthur Lazalde) and Einstein (Steven Minow) could be referring not to Yours Truly but Jonathan’s estranged critic brother Mortimer (Michael Raver), whom they’ve trussed up to torture to death.

Though generally a shy nocturnal species, we theater critics are inordinately fond of plays and films about other theater critics, e.g., “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” “All About Eve,” and, of course, the old chestnut dark comedy kicking off Virginia Stage Company’s 46th season, Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

Perhaps best known for its 1944 film adaptation starring Cary Grant, the show and film feature a third brother, Teddy, played by local descendent of Samuel Clemens and regular VSC cutup, Ryan Clemens. This Teddy Brewster has taken his Christian name too seriously and assumed the identity of Teddy Roosevelt. That’s a nice way of saying he’s bonkers. (Says Mortimer later in the play, “You see, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”)

But the truly disarming Brewsters are the elderly aunts Abby (Actors’ Equity import Linda Slade) and Martha (local talent Kathy Strouse). They have a habit of dispatching elderly gentlemen without families who happen to wander into their Gothic Victorian Brooklyn mansion. (They rent out a room to attract such wanderers.) The old dears consider it a charitable act to serve visitors their recipe: elderberry wine enriched with arsenic, strychnine and “just a pinch of cyanide,” perhaps for body. And that’s precisely what the wine drinker becomes: a dead body.

They then dispose of the corpses in the basement (represented by an upstage door and landing). The only problem is that a fresh corpse, a Mr. Hoskins, is waiting patiently inside the window seat and yet to be disposed of at the play’s start. He’ll soon compete for holding space, courtesy of nephew Jonathan’s ill-tempered shenanigans.

Teddy Brewster (Teddy Roosevelt) generally does his aunts’ burial work, having been told that these are victims of Yellow Fever (a poignant joke for Norfolkians, especially as it coincides with the release of former Virginian-Pilot writer Lon Wagner’s book on the subject.) Teddy believes he’s digging locks for his Panama Canal in the Brewster basement. Actor Clemens has a rather tiresome shtick: repeatedly running upstairs and shouting “Charge!;” blowing a bugle (to the neighbors’ chagrin); and/or disappearing downstairs to “Panama.” Clemens soldiers through with affirmative shouts of “bully!” whenever he’s presidentially pleased.

So let’s review the convention of crazies. The two aunts are friendly homicidal maniacs; Teddy is trapped in his Rooseveltian persona/fantasy; Jonathan has been missing in action from the family for decades, but he, too, is an (unfriendly) homicidal maniac, proud and competitive with his aunts when it comes to his corpse count. (It stands, roughly, at 12 for the aunts and 12 for Jonathan, abetted by Einstein (no relation to Albert).

Einstein sports a (sort of) German accent and a doctor’s bag which he uses to change Jonathan’s appearance before the story begins. Jonathan arrives into the play resembling Boris Karloff. ( Younger playgoers — please consider this unsuitable fare for young children — may need to be informed of who Karloff was, since he played Jonathan on Broadway in 1941 and the play contains multiple references to him.)

In our final tally of the insane Brewsters, it must be emphasized that Mortimer the critic (aside from his dubious profession) is the only sane Brewster. He’s saddled with lengthy double takes of horrified astonishment on learning of his aunts’ depravities. (Even Cary Grant had trouble with these lengthy double takes.) But Mortimer, too, is “crazy in love” with neighbor Elaine Harper (Victoria Alev, another of five Equity leads in the show). There are multiple minor roles filled with VSC local non-Equity stalwarts, such as John Cauthen, (Elaine’s father Rev. Dr. Harper); Ron Newman (Mr. Gibbs, who nearly drinks the elderberry but doesn’t); and Tom O’Reilly (the insane asylum official Mr. Witherspoon). We also have a bevy of Brooklyn cops (Alvan Bolling II, Dan Cimo, Darius Nelson, Scott Rollins) so enamored of the Brewster sisters that they can’t be bothered to check the basement for those silly so-called graves.

Something must have “possessed” Tom Quaintance (VSC’s producing artistic director) when he chose this frantic farce, which, we learn from Mo De Poortere’s dramaturgical notes, was based on an early 1900s case, that of Amy Archer-Gilligan who ran the “Archer Home for Aged People and Chronic Invalids” in Windsor, Connecticut and dispatched her residents with arsenic.

Perhaps Quaintance felt depressed by the election season; perhaps he’d had one too many pumpkin-spice lattes; perhaps he was fantasizing about a Tazewell Avenue season of Howl O’Scream (à la Busch Gardens). At any rate, VSC has a season of ghoulish goodies planned: Next comes “Dracula,” albeit a “feminist take” by Kate Hamill (remember her Jane Austen adaptations at VSC?); “A Sherlock Carol” (can you have Sherlock without murder?) will alternate with the traditional offering of “A Merry Little Christmas Carol.” That’s followed by “Fat Ham,” a loose reworking of “Hamlet” that nicely represents more recent American theater; then there’s a final injection of comic horror in the newer chestnut: “Little Shop of Horrors.”

For folks who like a season with thematic unity, here we have one! Boys and girls, start your engines. Or as Teddy Brewster might say, “Charge!”

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

IF YOU GO

Where: The Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk

When: Through Sept. 22

Tickets: Start at $15

Details: 757-627-1234, vastage.org

If you recognize that  A) the list is composed mostly of the dramatis personae from “Hamlet” and that B) Voldemort sneaked in from a Harry Potter book, you are A) an English major or B) required to attend a raucous evening of Shakespeare spoofing at Little Theatre of Norfolk’s “The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] [Again].”

The show summarizes vast numbers of real and fake Shakespeare titles and lines in the shortest time possible. The Complete Works by the founders of the Reduced Shakespeare Co. (RSC — get it? Its initials are the same as the Royal Shakespeare Company) offers more freedom for pure improv on contemporary and local topics (LTN goes a bit far with said freedom), but first let’s give the cheeky original authors’ names. They are Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield and, yes, there are multiple revisions to the original 1987 show. The authors are so vain and savvy that they name the characters after themselves: Adam, Daniel and Jess.

This offers special (but thoroughly legit) challenges when Hannah Brown plays Daniel; Giuliana Mortimer plays Jess; and Lori Thurman plays Adam. Yes, they are all women underneath those codpieces, but padding resolves that issue, and let’s hear no more about it. Brown is the linchpin of this production — funny, bossy and essential. Mortimer and Thurman hold their own, however, playing women playing men (as men played female roles in the Elizabethan day) for maximum silliness. We never forget that any of our actors are women, even and especially when Brown renders snippets of Polonius’ famous “to thine own self be true” speech in a silly, slipping beard.

Costumes (by Meg Murray) and props are everything in designed-to-be-silly shows, and director Patrick C. Taylor must have given props manager Lori Dunn access to a credit card. She gives us remarkably ridiculous items such as a sword gun, an oversized thumb (“Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?” in “Romeo and Juliet”), a rubber Yorick’s skull, and a feeble (intentionally so) moon, raised and lowered sort of on cue for several scenes. Did I mention the glittery codpieces? Does everyone realize a cod (in this case) is not a fish, but instead a “baloney pony,” according to this script? I can say no more uncensored. So how do Little Theatre artists summarize Shakespeare’s 37 (or 38 or 39 — there’s controversy) plays and 154 sonnets in about 90 minutes?

They use the time-honored method of “embedded spoofing strategies.” (I just made up that term.)

English teachers and pompous literary critics (watch out there) are being teased big time. But, at the same time, famous interpretations by, say, Freud, are rendered more or less correctly. Here are some samples: “Hamlet is playing out sublimated childhood neuroses, displacing repressed Oedipal desires into sexualized anger toward Ophelia.” Well, yes. That is what Freud implied in his writings on Shakespeare.

Our locals also added a lot of shtick (a bit too much) about TV’s recent hit “Bridgerton.” Other TV-inspired embedded spoofing strategies include something modeled on “The Great British Bake Off,” perfect for explaining the gory plot of “Titus Andronicus,” which makes “Sweeney Todd” (next show up at LTN) look like a Disney children’s special. (The mentions of “Sweeney Todd” during this show become a tad excessive.)

There’s the embedded spoofing strategy on technology — good for mentions of cellphones, including the priceless “T-Mobile Kinsmen” (in place of “Two Noble Kinsmen”). There’s a sports spoof used to summarize all of Shakespeare’s history plays as a super-fast football game played in the theater’s center aisle with a soft crown being passed and fought over instead of a football. “Julius Caesar” is done as “Mean Girls;” the Scottish Play is done with burred speech, kilts and golf clubs. (Yes, there’s a real “Complete Works” on my knee for reference.) There’s an ongoing spoof on diversity, equity and inclusion — DEI — with frequent mentions of patriarchy, racism and injustice (especially good for our three females playing males-who-sometimes-played-females). That helps in covering comedies and tragedies.

Although the local references need tightening (speed being of the essence), what’s being done at LTN is just what the authors intended with sharp satire coming from a place of love and not pure anger. The more you know Shakespeare, the more you’ll laugh at his older, dragon-less version of “Game of Thrones” (a local script addition). Shakespeare haters need not apply. Just remember to join in or duck when everybody else laughs.

Bring it on home, Will: “Though this be madness, yet there’s method in it.” (Hamlet.)

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 25

Where: Little Theatre of Norfolk, 801 Claremont Ave.

Tickets: $18, advance; $20 at the door

Details: 757-627-8551, ltnonline.org

Such is the emcee’s favored greeting at the London drag club temporarily transplanted to the Little Theatre of Virginia Beach through Aug. 11.

It’s where the elite (and effete) meet and greet — not to proselytize audiences but to humanize us. You may already recognize this as the high-stepping musical version of “Kinky Boots” (book by Harvey Fierstein; music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper).

Based on the 2005 film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as drag queen Lola and chameleonic Joel Edgerton as the young factory owner Charlie Price, “Kinky Boots” tells the mostly true story of a Northampton, England shoe factory just a thinning sole’s breadth from closure. Charlie (played in VB by fresh-faced charmer Zack Kattwinkel) develops a purely economic fetish for kinky boots, hoping to market them to drag queens and other fearless fellows who can finally stand on stilettos reinforced with steel to bear their manly weight. (See and hear songs such as “Sex is in the Heel.”) The British setting calls for accents (uh-oh), executed only sporadically by this cast.

It’s a formulaic musical in composition and structure, including corny rhymes and forgettable tunes by Lauper, who nevertheless won a 2013 Tony for Best Original Score. This LTVB production is additionally hampered by Kattwinkel’s tendency to stray off-key. But the trite tunes and off notes matter little when the lessons are taught so sweetly and joyfully. It’s a satisfied and well-instructed audience that gleefully exits the theater at evening’s end. It helps that the last number is a showstopper set at a fashion shoe show in Milan overrun by a hoard of remarkably costumed drag queens. Costuming credits go to Pamela Jacobson-Bowhers, Connor Payne and production director Kobie Smith.

How is this degree of final audience satisfaction possible?

Step aboard the arc/ark of this life-affirming, irresistible plot steeped in the remarkable similarities between dedicated longtime factory coworkers and those dedicated volunteers who produce and act in community theaters wherever they may flourish.

The first act of soleful/soulful plotting genius was to delve briefly into the childhoods of our two protagonists: young Charlie, the ill-equipped shoe factory owner and drag queen Lola aka. Simon (here wonderfully played by lean and lanky Norfolk State University-trained Lance Hawkins). Note: Three other actors involved in the show hail from James Madison University. Younger versions of our main male characters appear briefly onstage to establish that Charlie was blessed with a father (Brian Sheridan) who adored him. At the same time, Simon (soon to be Lola) had a father horrified by his son’s early proclivities towards gender-bending. (Young Simon likes to wear women’s shoes and dance around.) Charlie’s father dies unexpectedly, leaving Charlie a factory sinking in debt. Lola’s father disowns him, but we’re later shown hope for a reconciliation.

Charlie is also blessed with women in his life: first his rising realtor girlfriend Nicola (suitably high-toned Grace Altman) and then worker Lauren (winsome and loyal Olivia Florian). Nicola proves more interested in place (London) than person (Charlie, constrained to be in Northampton). Lauren’s real talents eventually get her promoted to management. Other male factory figures prove crucial, especially peacemaking shop foreman George (Sandy Lawrence) and trouble-making Don (well acted by James Bryan). Don movingly changes from homophobe to loyal Lola supporter, partly due to Lola’s boxing skills but more due to Don’s ability to develop humanistic ones). Hawkins’ Lola, surely the longest, lankiest Lola yet to tread the boards, is 6-foot-3 in his bare feet, but 6-foot-9 once he dons stilettos and wig. And boy, can Hawkins wear a glittery red costume!

One of Lola’s “Angels” (here meaning backup dancers) also deserves special acclaim. Besides playing a backup queen of the highest order, Payne contributes hair and makeup design serving, in his term, as “Dragaturg” [sic], an apt neologism based on the fancy theatrical title of dramaturg. A dramaturg is a sort of in-house literary expert for a theater. “Dragaturg” may well be Payne’s linguistic invention since Google doesn’t yet recognize it.

There are a lot of shoe/sole/soul-based remarks in the show, e.g., Charlie’s tender line to his newfound love Lauren: “I was a loose shoe but you need two to make a pair.” But is it, again, the general sense of kindness promoted by the show that impresses? Towards the finale, the musical’s creators Fierstein and Lauper come up with something they liken (a bit unwisely) to a 12-step code of conduct. They claim to “do it in six,” but their numbering trails off towards the end. Though they’re common sense, their dicta bear repeating (from the sheet music score): “Pursue the truth, Learn something new, Accept yourself and you’ll accept others too—Let love shine, Let pride be your guide, You change the world when you change your mind. Just be who you wanna be. Never let ’em tell you who you ought to be. Just be with dignity. Celebrate your life triumphantly. You’ll see it’s beautiful.”

The code’s not tight, but it’s surely right.

So, “Ladies, gentlemen, and those who have yet to make up your minds,” it turns out you can indefinitely postpone any such decision. Just be human.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 11

Where: Little Theatre of Virginia Beach, 550 Barberton Drive

Tickets: Start at $22

Details: 757-428-9233, ltvb.com

How often have you heard spouses of all genders introduce one another that way?

But do you recall that the notion of a loving couple as one body dates back to Plato’s “Symposium” (about 400 B.C.)? And let’s not forget Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s “Man and wife is one flesh” 2,000 years later. The trope is, of course, also mentioned in many religions’ marriage ceremonies.

Plato envisions each human as two males bound back-to-back (Children of the Sun), two females likewise bound (Children of the Earth) or one male bound back-to-back with a female (Children of the Moon). Zany Zeus eventually zaps these round entities into halves, starting each of us on a quest to find his, her (or their) missing half to complete him/her/them.

That’s “The Origin of Love,” according to the song in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” now in a ribald but well-rounded production by ROŪGE Theatre at the also-unconventional restaurant/bar venue of 37th and Zen in Norfolk.

Why is this 1998 hit rock musical by John Cameron Mitchell (book) and Stephen Trask (music and lyrics) so perfect for Hampton Roads’ newest theater company, led by Patrick Mullins? It also stars Steven Pacek; the director and star recently gave us “Rathskeller — A Musical Elixir” at Zeiders American Dream Theatre. For one thing, it’s Pride Month and this is a proudly gay play; and, for another, it’s the mission of ROŪGE to make theatre “universally accessible” and to “break down perceived barriers of class, culture, and content,” according to the playbill. Mullins also shares in his notes: “Musicals made me queer. Sort of.”

He gives special credit to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” which involves a thoughtful, even erudite, story about an East German teenager named Hansel (Pacek) who is willing to undergo a transition operation to escape East Germany by marrying an American GI. This is when the Berlin Wall divided East from West. The operation is botched, however, leaving Hansel with an “angry inch” of flesh where his genitals used to be.

She takes on her mother’s name, Hedwig, and leaves with her husband, Luther (a dark figure because of his pederasty). Luther leaves Hedwig high, dry and forced to turn tricks in a Midwest trailer park. Hedwig eventually marries again; actor Leila Stephanie, adroitly plays almost all the important people in Hedwig’s life: mother Hedwig, husband 1, Luther, and husband 2, Yitzhak, who likes to dress up as a woman. But Hedwig churlishly forbids him from doing it lest, perhaps, he might compete with her.

Hedwig has been turned against men in general by a young man she initiated into sex while Hedwig was babysitting him. (Again, we have troubling suggestions of underage sex). He is Tommy (whom she also initiates into rock music and renames Tommy Gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge). We’re told Hedwig and Gnosis enjoyed a brief time of artistic and sexual bliss, but that Gnosis stole Hedwig’s songs and abandoned her. There’s an amusingly adapted plot point in which Gnosis is said to be playing a concert at the nearby Chartway Arena on Hampton Boulevard. Hedwig keeps opening an exterior door of 37th and Zen hoping that Gnosis will mention her in his amplified remarks to his fans. He never does. However, at evening’s end, Gnosis does pop into our musical for an appearance (played by — surprise—a buff and wigless Pacek, stripped down to his underwear). Mullins notes in the playbill that the roles of Gnosis and Hedwig were played by separate actors in Mitchell’s 2001 film “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” But Mullins prefers the stage version where one actor plays “the naïve Gnosis and the hardened Hedwig —the man, the woman, the gay, the straight and the entire spectrum of everything that lies between …”

Mullins also guides us to his belief that the musical’s theme of division is ultimately resolved. Hedwig later says, “There ain’t much of a difference/Between a bridge and a wall.” Mullins also believes that we (not Zeus) have “divided ourselves.” It is therefore unlikely that another person can ever complete us. That, we must learn to do for ourselves.

The other creatives on and offstage at 37th and Zen help us along. There’s an onstage band. For the lurid “Sugar Daddy,” no pole in the restaurant is left unembraced and microphones are suggestively placed between legs. The poignant “This Wicked Little Town” is delivered by Pacek with the despair only an accomplished actor/singer can provide.

However, nothing matches the show’s showpiece— the Platonic “Origin of Love.” Mullins’ version has Hedwig reading from a children’s storybook. The audience can see the childish renderings of the Children of the Sun, Earth and Moon getting split because a cameraman is there to film the “reading” and other parts of the show projecting them up on wall screens.

Recall the lyric, “They had two faces peering/ Out of one giant head/So they could watch all around them/As they talked, while they read…” Mitchell and Trask’s show invites such innovation and Mullins accepts. Literalizing becomes a master trope of the show combining erudition and raunchiness in a way others rarely master.

There are allusions to philosophers wedged into contemporary pop song lyrics. Classics scholars have taken this show seriously, writing articles about the types of Platonic love being illustrated (Holly Sypniewski’s “The Pursuit of Eros in Plato’s Symposium and Hedwig and the Angry Inch”). Sypniewski quotes another scholar (H. Christian Blood) discussing “super-queering Plato” (!). How do you combine allusions to Gnostic Gospels and Milton’s “Paradise Lost” with lines such as “My sex change operation got botched … Now all I got is a Barbie doll crotch”?

Answer: You get director Mullins to do it, starring Pacek, with outrageous wigs by Ryan Ward. As one of the show’s songs says, “You, Kant, always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you Nietzsche.”

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

If you go

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays through June 9

Where: 37th & Zen, 1083 S. 37th St., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $25

Details: rougeva.org

“Six million have left the theater.”

How can one not stop to listen to such words in a play, especially with the distinguished Rabbi Michael Panitz of Temple Israel in Norfolk as its dramaturg, the production’s expert on stage history and theory?

Generic Theater’s last production of its season, “Indecent,” is a splendid, morally challenging work of sometimes breathtaking beauty and horrible, all-too-timely poignancy. Anti-Semitism, anyone? Anti-immigrant animus? Homophobia? Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel (“How I Learned to Drive”) and co-conceiver Rebecca Taichman created “Indecent” through a long process that eventually brought it to Broadway in 2017. The indecency in question, however, happened long before, in the actual 1906 play that “Indecent” references.

The 1906 play (titled “The God of Vengeance,” by Yiddish writer Sholem Asch) was actually banned on Broadway in 1923, as an already bowdlerized (i.e., sanitized) form because it contained a passionate kiss between two young women. Most of us learned the concept of a “play-within-a-play” when we studied Hamlet’s “Murder of Gonzago” a.k.a. “The Mousetrap,” a brief show in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” intended to snare old Hamlet’s killer.  But “Indecent” is a full-on “play-about-a-play” (critic Miriam Chirico’s term) that coexists and constantly switches off with its source material.

If the quotations at this review’s start conjure Auschwitz and the Holocaust, how can this evening possibly be considered entertainment? Well, “Fiddler on the Roof” it is not —though God of Vengeance/Indecent does contain musical numbers and dancing. They share another similarity: Both are highly instructive and entertaining. It’s just that “Indecent,” with its additional theme of homophobia and its actors playing multiple parts, perhaps requires more work on the part of its audience.

It additionally contains a moral quandary for Jews and gentiles. Yes, good liberal Americans in 2024 decry censorship. But those Orthodox and Reform Jews who shut down “God of Vengeance” on Broadway were not entirely to blame for their fears. As Panitz notes in his playbill essay, “Antisemitic slander on both sides of the Atlantic promoted the fantasy of Jews as sexually depraved. In the idiom of the insecure Jewish immigrant community of the day, could such a production be ‘good for the Jews?’ ”

The Generic’s production, astutely and lovingly directed by Maryanne Kiley, begins with an apt stage image she devised: the establishment of a minyan, i.e., a quorum of 10 Jewish adults (all males in Orthodox tradition but not here) necessary to hold prayers. Ten of her actors/musicians quietly enter the upstage area and sit patiently on chairs. The character representing “God of Vengeance” playwright Asch (played by the gentle but intense Greg Dragas, the lynchpin of the show) later quips, “Do you know what a minyan is? It’s 10 Jews in a circle accusing each other of anti-Semitism.” But not here, not yet.

Minyan established, we are introduced to the troupe by their stage manager (nod to Thornton Wilder) named Lemml, the also gentle but equally intense Ed Palmer. The cast is divided into Ingenues (the younger players), The Middle (-aged) and the Elders. But here’s a troubling sign: everyone’s apparently dead (!) as indicated by the dust and sand pouring out of their clothing on cue when they stand and move forward. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes, with those horrible implications.

We’re soon treated to a more heartening scene: Asch, age 23, waiting for his wife to finish reading his new work “The God of Vengeance.” She helpfully (for critics!) summarizes the whole play, which I’ve included from the script:
“My God, Sholem. It’s all in there. The roots of all evil: the money, the subjugation of women, the false piety … [sic] the terrifying violence of that father … [sic] and then, oh Sholem, the two girls in the rain scene! …You make me feel the desire between these two women is the purest, most chaste, most spiritual—”

The greedy, violent father is Otto, who subjugates his wife (well played by Dorothy Shiloff Hughes, whose parents were Holocaust survivors), his virgin daughter and a stable of whores in his basement. Otto’s hypocrisy extends to commissioning a Torah to impress his community and win a suitable husband for his daughter Rifkele (nicely done by Margo von Buseck). He gets irate, however, when he learns that Rifkele is in a nascent lesbian relationship with one of his employees, a prostitute named Manke (played by the accomplished Rebecca Weinstein). Old pro local Clifford Hoffman also takes the stage with his usual panache, playing several minor roles. The doubling and tripling of roles present a host of characters to keep track of, but also some clever (on Vogel’s part) ironic cross-commentary. Dragas, our Asch, for instance, sprouts a silly, obviously fake mustache briefly to portray another playwright: Eugene O’Neill.

Finally, all praise deservedly goes to the three-piece klezmer-style band: Governor’s School for the Arts student Velkassem Agguini on violin; the fantastic Jason Gresl on clarinet and more; plus Ben Blanchard on accordion. Vogel deserves accolades for uniting two volatile topics, anti-Semitism and homophobia; for comparing religious and sexual transgressions (or perceived transgressions); and for uniting two languages, Yiddish and English, with ease and courage. The play is, in the words of critic Jennifer Scott-Mobley, “at once archival and prescient.”

There’s a marvelously theatrical surprise at this production’s end  — simple yet thrilling. But we also see our now-beloved acting troupe returning to the dust from which they came. The dust and ashes, falling again from their clothing, remind us of the 6 million who indeed “left the theater” before us.

This play is, in other words, a painful but pertinent memento mori.

Lest we forget.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through June 2

Where: Generic Theater, down under Chrysler Hall,  215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk

Tickets: $18, advance; $20 day of show

Details: 757-441-2160, generictheater.org

Heavy existentialist traffic didn’t stop Brianna Kothari Barnes from writing and composing a hot 2021 purgatorial rock musical, in its third production. It is now at Zeiders American Dream Theatre in its first fully staged production with live music. It’s called “Rathskeller — A Musical Elixir,” rathskeller being German for an advice-dispensing cellar tavern. Rath, or rat in its contemporary spelling, doesn’t mean rodent. It’s what we call a false cognate, a word in one language that sounds like it ought to mean the same thing in yours but, irritatingly, does not. More on that to come.

The hero of this noteworthy, if a bit raunchy production is, to make things trickier, a definite rat (meaning “lowlife”). His name is John Casey and he’s played by gifted actor/singer (and Virginia Stage Co. familiar) Steven Pacek, the hot glue of this production. He’s directed by glue-meister Patrick K. Mullins, a gifted 15-year veteran of VSC and the executive producer of ROUGE: Theater Reinvented.

Here’s the set and set-up: “Rathskeller” joins the crowded ranks of plays set in bars, e.g., this past season’s “The Weir” at Norfolk Generic Theater. This thrust-stage set features a handsome u-shaped wooden bar with a cleverly wrought pull-out section in the center (set design Dasia Gregg). All else needed is a few tables and chairs, easily manipulated by the bar staff/dancers (Alexandra Fleshman, Moriah Leeward and the charismatic community theater veteran Tré Porchia.) The Z’s thrust stage with steps doesn’t lend itself to much dancing although Jennifer Kelly-Cooper choreographed some smooth moves.

This special bar serves only one main patron at a time (e.g., Casey) in a trial-like examination of his life on earth. One either “passes” this exam or is consigned to the bar for eternity. “The only way out is through,” explains the Bartender/quasi-judge, played by the formidable Kristy Glass, like Pacek, a highly experienced equity actor. The Bartender presides over and participates in a review of Casey’s life, beginning with the day he graduates from Virginia Tech (!) with an exciting, but low-paying prospective job in Nashville, writing copy for ads and songs. His sweetheart Becca (strong singer/actor Alexandra Shephard) is dumping him for a rich guy and adventures in Italy. Casey still has his close female friend, Ty (Janae Thompson) who cares for him but not romantically. She and we soon witness the unhealthy dynamic of Casey’s nuclear family: a mother (Kathy Hinson) who adores her son and an abusive, alcoholic father (James Manno, who, once finally reformed, plays a mean guitar). Pacek strums a bit himself, but the real music is supplied by an upstage, rock band of seven (Jeffrey Russo, leader) who faltered a bit on one number (“Ghost”) but generally prevailed.

We witness Casey’s first major error in judgment, i.e., being bullied into drinking for the first time (he teetotaled through Tech) by his obnoxious father, determined to “make him a man.” This begins Casey’s slow but sure descent into alcoholism and addiction, a process Pacek depicts with exceptionally nuanced acting and singing.

His next big bad decision is to fall prey to Ty’s flashy, back-in-town-to-gloat sister Tasha (Kai Brittani) who gives the singing performance of the evening with her seductive, serpentine “Take One Bite.” It’s Tasha who convinces Casey to ignore Ty’s warnings and accept her diabolically good job offer in, we assume, New York City. Casey is motivated, in part, by his desire to get enough money to rescue his mother from her abuse. (Casey’s most appealing character trait is this desire to save his mother.) The scene soon switches to his hot new life in NYC where he boozes and schmoozes his way to even more power, soon outdoing Tasha herself. But for a man who loves his mother so much, Casey is overbearing to other women, especially Becca (who has returned from Italy and eventually marries Casey), plus his much-put-upon office assistant Peyton (Jessi DiPette). The ladies in Casey’s life unite in their complaints against him in songs such as “Loyalty.” Becca then sings her most moving solo, “Ghost,” to lament the gradual loss of love in their marriage.

“In your perfect planet, where am I?” she queries. Should I keep “dancing with the devil,” she asks, “or should I run?”

The clearest sign of Casey’s decline is his constant drinking, even on the job. Most alarmingly, he loses contact with his mother whom he now neglects. We track her suffering and decline via Ty’s pleas to him. There’s even a song sung to Casey by his mother, after he comes, much too late, to see her. This impossibly poignant “Dying Mother Song” is beautifully executed by Hinson, playing the wheelchair-bound, still-loyal mother.

The most memorable songs in the show, the opener “Deadly,” “The Tale of Rathskeller” and “Take a Bite,” are familiar rock musical fare, but well designed for their purposes. Casey’s late-in-the-show song “What Do I Deserve?” is most useful for stating the show’s radically ambiguous stand on justice and mercy: “If I can’t tell the blessing from the curse/Tell me what do I deserve? … Aren’t we all living in between?”

Here’s some good rath/rat (“advice,” you’ll recall, in German). Don’t be a rat in your life (like Casey), and do chug down this ambitious, well-mixed elixir of a play.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 7:30 p.m. Friday; and 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Zeiders American Dream Theater, 4509 Commerce St., Virginia Beach

Tickets: $30 with discount options available

Details: 757-499-0317, thez.org

“Blues for an Alabama Sky”  is so good that VSC is doing a rare second production, the first in season 1999-2000. And this production is so good that it, again, epitomizes what regional theatres can accomplish with a stellar all-equity cast (masterfully directed by Jerrell Henderson), even in a play replete with third-rail topics: sexual orientation, race, abortion, feminism. All of these were part of 1930 Harlem, and remain, as we see, flaming hot potatoes.

How does Cleage, an avowed feminist and advocate for Black justice, make these topics not just palatable but exhilarating?

She creates fresh characters with universal and specific needs and dreams, setting them down among the famous and near-famous of the period. Langston Hughes and Josephine Baker are mentioned enough to rate as full-fledged offstage characters. (There’s also a wall-hung picture of Baker that our male lead touches for luck, like a mezuzah.) The show’s linchpin character is Angel Allen (sweet and tart Tarina J. Bradshaw). She belies her name by being a boozer, former hooker, now-unemployed showgirl and sometimes gangster’s moll. She specializes in bad decisions but she’s a survivor and loveable (to the audience and the friends she frequently abuses). Chief among them is Guy Jacobs (small but mighty James T. Lane, in a supernova acting turn).

Jacobs is a confident “notorious homosexual” (his own epithet). He and Allen were childhood friends in Georgia before migrating North. He, too, has been desperate enough to turn tricks, but he has now parlayed his costuming talents into a better career in Harlem and, as he dreams, soon in Paris (working for Baker, his idol). When Allen cusses out her gangster at his Cotton Club (he’s had the nerve to marry a fellow Italian woman), Jacobs also loses his job there, straining his and Allen’s finances. “You gonna save me again, Big Daddy?” asks Allen. “Every chance I get,” he replies.

But Allen decides to guarantee her future by taking up with Leland Cunningham (Kendrix Brown, particularly good at silent reactions). He’s the aforementioned Alabaman who happens by to help Jacobs carry a dead-drunk Allen home at the play’s start. Cunningham is fascinated by her because she resembles his wife who died during childbirth, and the son did, too. It takes Cunningham forever to figure out that Jacobs is gay and then begins a stream of insults against him. Cunningham is, to put it mildly, no suitable partner for Allen, but he asks her to marry when he learns she is pregnant with their child. Brash decisions will ensue, especially when Baker finally responds to Jacobs’ overtures for work in Paris.

Across the hall from Jacobs and Allen lives Delia Patterson (the endearing Rachel Fobbs), a social worker determined to improve Harlemites’ lives via family planning. In Cleage’s feminist world, there are admirable “race women” as well as “race men.” Patterson is fated to be mated with Dr. Sam Thomas (the prodigiously talented Gregory Warren), a “race man” physician who spends every waking moment delivering babies or repairing gunshot wounds and every half-sleeping moment carousing. His motto for the latter is “Let the good times roll!” said often (perhaps to excess) in Cleage’s script.

There were minute issues at the April 19 preview performance. The tricky timing of the climactic violence (blackout/sound of a shot fired) still needs work and there were slight wardrobe malfunctions such as Allen’s hunched-up skirt revealing her slip. But these are infinitesimal issues within an exquisite rendition of this admirable play. The set — a colorful mural painted above and below the door-free, side-by-side apartment spaces — provides more magical names from the era: Cotton Club, the Apollo, Cab Calloway. These are names to conjure with, as is the show’s soundtrack, of the ever-evolving blues.

It is the least poetic figure, Cunningham, who conjures the play’s title: “I was missing that Alabama sky where the stars are so thick it’s bright as day. So, I looked up between the buildings and I thought I was dreaming. Didn’t even look like Harlem. Stars everywhere, twinkling at me like a promise.”

But the denizens of heartbreaking Harlem are both displaced (i.e., migrants) and misplaced. Black ghosts abound, created back South and/or in Harlem. Jacobs says wistfully, “Harlem was supposed to be a place where Negroes could come together and really walk about, and for a red-hot minute, we did.” He thinks the moment has passed and, like other Black artists, he will seek it out in Paris.

Don’t miss this contemporary chance to time travel.

As Jacobs might say, “Bon voyage, mes cheris!”

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If you go

When: Various times through May 5

Where: The Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $12

Details: 757-627-1234, vastage.org

(That advice will prove important later.)

There’s “vicious and delicious” fun to be had in “Hadestown” through Sunday evening at Chrysler Hall. (That’s playwright/composer Anaïs Mitchell’s smack-on pair of adjectives for her three singing Furies, played on opening night by Marla Louissaint, Hannah Schreer, and Cecilia Trippiedi.) You may want to pack your old copy of Edith Hamilton’s 1942 “Mythology” since you’re bound to meet a bunch of Greek gods and mortals, none wearing their usual togas.

Look, instead, for a flashy three-piece suit and some feathered feet on our guide-in-chief Hermes (delightfully hammy Will Mann, in a role made famous in the 2019 Broadway production by André De Shields). Hermes’ job is emcee, maître d’ and overall friend to lost souls. He says things such as “I’ll tell you where the real road lies:/ Between your ears, behind your eyes/ This is the path to paradise/ Likewise the road to ruin.” And folks in Hadestown (or in transit there) need advice, with King Hades (Matthew Patrick Quinn) overwhelming us with his kingly boffo bass and insatiable lust for environment-wrecking wealth.

Reluctantly sharing his throne in Hadestown is Persephone (luscious Lana Gordon displaying her dancer’s training and actor’s wiles), the daughter of Ceres, the goddess of corn and the seasons. I mention Ceres in passing (she’s not in the show) only because the world nearly froze to death until she and Hades struck a deal to share Persephone, each getting her half the year. She spends fall and winter in Hades, blessed spring and summer on Earth.  Hades and his main squeeze Persephone form our older now-not-so-loving couple, suffering marital malaise.

But do meet their younger counterparts: Eurydice (wonderfully gamine, almost feral Amaya Braganza) and Orpheus (tenor-to-falsetto John Krause, equally adept at guitar work, our contemporary version of a lyre). Our younger couple is hot-to-trot in love until the always-hungry Eurydice grows tired of Orpheus’ constant composing and is seduced by Hades’ promises of steady (sex) work. 

Credit for cleverly re-spinning these related love tales goes to Mitchell, who is also responsible for clothing her ancient figures for the streets of a vaguely modern New Orleans and relating them to our current political scene.

Hades as a lascivious Donald Trump? It’s really not that broad a jump. There’s even a song “Why We Build the Wall,” sung by Hades and Co. Note the circular logic:

Hades: Why do we build the wall?/ My children, my children/ Why do we build the wall? …
Persephone, Fates and workers: We build the wall to keep us free/ That’s why we build the wall …
Hades: How does the wall keep us free? …
Persephone, et al.: The wall keeps out the enemy/ and we build the wall to keep us free …
Hades: Who do we call the enemy? …
Persephone, et al.: The enemy is poverty/ And the wall keeps out the enemy/ And we build the wall to keep us free …
Hades: Because we have and they have not!
Persephone, et al.: Because we have and they have not/ Because they want what we have got …

Mitchell and her creative team, especially scenic designer Rachel Hauck, carry through the circle theme in other ways, including a revolving turntable in the floor for walking hellishly long distances, and light tricks galore: e.g., swinging circular lamps that come perilously close to beaning the actors. Hauck’s design to distinguish the Earth from Hadestown below includes a portal created when the New Orleans-style bar morphs into a freight-style elevator — just right for marking the all-important gate between realms. Band members sit onstage, completing a semicircle of musicians (and actors) with impressive, even memorable musical skills.

Nearly every character in this story about Earth’s ultimate musician (Orpheus) plays an actual instrument, sings and/or dances. Krause as Orpheus excels in singing and playing guitar. (Dancing, as in his “punishment” dance in Hadestown, is not his forte.)

But step aside when Persephone (Gordon) starts to move. Formerly a dancer for Alvin Ailey and other companies, she does a back bend that almost closes a circle and brings the audience to rapt attention — all this while believably acting as a woman who drinks (and worse) to excess.

There’s nothing like mythological material to remind us of — forgive me, Lion King — the circle of life. Great Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye has explained how myths tend to relate to seasonal and human cycles: birth, growth, maturation, decline, death. Literary genres have evolved to feature various points and movements on the circle: from fall and winter (tragedy and bitter satire) to spring and summer (comedy). Christianity’s Easter celebration of rebirth and renewal is notable this week with Jesus of Nazareth also completing his destined eternal circle.

Though Mitchell ends her version of the Orpheus myth with a suggestion that the young folks will get another try at overcoming wily old Hades, the rest of the original Greek myth is more unsettling. After Eurydice returns to Hades (presumably forever), the original Orpheus is distraught. He wanders into the wrong woods and gets his head ripped off by the maenads (worshippers of Dionysus who did dreadful things when drunk). The head was eventually recovered and buried by the muses. Edith Hamilton, the scholarly doyenne of Greek mythology, continues: “His limbs they gathered and placed in a tomb at the foot of Mount Olympus, and there to this day the nightingales sing more sweetly than anywhere else.”

Well, that’s some compensation.

Do see this sweet and raucous, delicious and vicious show — so much like real life.

May the (mythic) circle be unbroken. / By and by, Lord, by and by.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

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If you go

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $30

Details: sevenvenues.com

If you stand with the three current good guy musketeers — Aramis (covert female NSU actor Brooklynn Jacobs), Porthos (NSU’s very funny Brandon Bradley) and Athos (VSC pro hire Shad Ramsey) — your mission is “to defend the king and protect the queen.” It’s because, as young D’Artagnan (impossibly athletic and charming NSU junior Adam E. Moskowitz) notes, “the cardinal is their enemy.” He means, of course, evil genius Richelieu (suitably sleazy local Equity pro Scott Wichmann). Richelieu is aided and abetted by one of the meanest chicks in world lit: Milady (also an Equity professional, Meg Rodgers), played in Richard Lester’s marvelous 1973 and 1974 film versions by Faye Dunaway.

The director of this stage production, Tom Quaintance (also the producing artistic director of VSC), readily admits his fondness for the Lester film version, in both its irreverence and manic pacing. But the actual author of “The Three Musketeers,” initially a serialized novel, is, of course, Alexandre Dumas (père), 1802-70, not to be confused with his writer offspring Alexandre Dumas (forever to be labeled fils, or son).

Aside from the father/son confusion, opportunities for musketeer mix-ups are rife, given  that nearly 100 adaptations of “The Three Musketeers” now exist. The last scholarly count, by Hervé Dumont, was 91, but that was back in 1997 (cited by scholar Roxane Petit-Rasselle). It’s hard for anyone to keep up when spinoffs include such “classics” as “Zorro and the Three Musketeers” (1963).  There’s even, I swear it, a “Barbie and the Three Musketeers” (2008 video).

In short, these long swords have been clicking since the earliest days of film (1911 and 1921 shorts, and a 1914 full-length version). And we haven’t even mentioned the Mouseketeers, the video game or the candy bars.

Credit for our NSU-VSC script (published in 2006) goes, however, to Ken Ludwig, best known for his megahit comedy, “Lend Me a Tenor” (1986). Presumably as an odd nod to contemporary feminist feelings, Ludwig has given D’Artagnan a sword-fighting sister named Sabine (delightfully rendered by NSU senior Lauren Wilkerson). Ludwig is also responsible for the play’s breakneck pacing usually seen in film.

Director Quaintance pulls off the constant scene changes by avoiding blackouts and working on a handsome uniset (designed by Shane K. Stelly) that serves for all geographic locations. A balcony stage right also enables the first impossible gymnastic feat by young D’Artagnan (Moskowitz): a full-body handstand, flip and drop over the second-story-high railing. Later, Moskowitz climbs down a rope anchored in a high theater box, then casually leaps his full height from the floor of the Wells to the stage. This young man (character and actor) richly deserves his initiation into the Three Musketeers at play’s end. Add in sister Sabine, and we’re potentially up to Five Musketeers.

The exact number of musketeers and their individual characteristics as heroes have long been topics of discussion for scholars, as have Dumas’ characterizations of royalty and women. The novel and play are based on two conflicting sides or, in modern parlance, “teams.” Team Church can also be called Team Richelieu; Team State is Team (King) Louis.

Richelieu, as we know, and his followers are bad to the bone. The predations of his favorite covert agent Milady include casual murder by poison and/or stabbing. (One of her poisonings gone awry leads to a great comically overwrought death scene by the Innkeeper — NSU junior Gabriel Mensah.) Richelieu’s minions also include Rochefort (Jason Paul Tate), Ravanche (Joey Cassella) and others. Team Louis XIII includes the king himself (played by pro Jeff Davis); the Musketeers themselves, led by Treville (NSU alum and Equity pro Christopher Marquis Lindsay); and, of course, Queen Anne (Meredith Noël, also Spartan-trained and now an Equity pro). Noël shows her usual versatility, triple cast as the queen, mother superior and Adele. She’s been in half a dozen VSC shows but works nationally at other regional theaters.

Queen Anne’s character leads to one of the play’s moral dilemmas. Though one of the “good” people (Team Louis), Anne is, after all, also an adulteress, having messed around with England’s Duke of Buckingham (NSU’s Derion Felton) and foolishly given him a priceless necklace as a souvenir. This sets up the frantic efforts of D’Artagnan and musketeers to get it back in time to fool the cuckolded king. Louis’ lack of appeal for his wife appears to be his slow wit and/or his appetite. It’s to the credit of Noël as Anne that we forgive her indiscretion and accept her return to the straight and narrow (at least French style). The queen’s servant and confidante Constance (well and sweetly rendered by NSU’s Chandler Alston) is D’Artagnan’s love interest, though all does not necessarily end well there, either.

Athos (Ramsey), Porthos (Bradley) and Aramis (Jacobs) don’t have time to distinguish their own personalities very effectively. Porthos is roguish; Athos is a dark-spirited drinker; Aramis is torn between a religious spirit and desires of the flesh. D’Artagnan, their apprentice figure, is good-hearted but just learning. Critic Petit-Rasselle believes none of the musketeers alone makes a complete hero, but combined they make “un héros quadricéphal complexe” (“a four-headed complex hero”). The combination of NSU young talent and VSC professional expertise likewise creates a kind of two-headed complex theater entity.

This production has minor flaws: Audience confusion caused by double-casting could be mitigated by more distinctive costuming or wigs for folks like Christopher Lindsay in his two similar roles, and a dialect coach might help with pronunciation of the occasional French words. But, sometimes, two theaters (a two-headed entity) really can be better than one.

Monsieur Dumas put the phenomenon more memorably:

“All for one, and one for all.”

Cue the sound of raised swords clicking.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

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If you go

When: Various dates through March 24

Where: Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $15

Details: 757-627-1234, vastage.org