Performer: Noel Williams as Captain Melisande Blue
Written by: Noel Williams and Sue Morrison
Directed by: Sue Morrison
Original Music by: Mike Datz
Sound Effects by: Mike Datz & Miles Polaski
Props Design & Construction by: Douglaas Jarard & Simon Lashford
Lighting Design Assistance Tabitha Rodman
Costume Consultation: Tamara Mullen
Technician: Richard Keyser
Produced by: Noel Williams
Noel Williams is an excellent performer and you feel like anything can happen at any moment and she will go with it. Her little journey deals with real universal issues (or issue) that one feels and is moved by and is funny, sad, sexy, erotic, crazy and insane. Here again we find another strong female clown in the festival doing great work. The transitions in the show between clown and bouffoon are seamless and it works beautifully. She uses all of her props and costumes on stage completely. The people and places she studied with shows in how she performs and plays with the audience and takes that wonderful theatrical leap into the void. Which so many performers do not do. If there is one reason to see this show and there are many - it is seeing Noel Williams jump into that theatrical void. She was lucky enough to study with the late master Carlo Mazzone-Clementi, as well as do work with the respected Chicago’s Second City Conservatory.
Sue Morrison directed and is a co-writer of “Party of One”. This is the best directorial work by Sue that I have seen. It is leaps and bounds over anything she did last year and is a pleasure to see her growth as a director. Talking with Sue after show she agrees it is one of her best-directed shows and talked about how wonderful it is to work with Noel Williams. Seeing Noel Williams after she was completely finished – she looks like you should look after a show. Completely drained of all energy. That is how a performer should leave the theatre completely drained. She left everything on stage.
Only one show left!!! Sunday September 21st at 3:30 PM
*****
One criticism of this 2008 Clown Theatre Festival is most show are only doing three show that are packed together and not spaced out. This results in little chance of building a word of mouth, audience, press reviews or for shows to be picked up. Next year where possible, (and yes we know some performers can only be here for a few days), it would be good to space shows out and the shows that will be around all month have them do one show a week for the four weeks or something in that spirit. This will be good for the shows, performers, audience and the festival.
One more criticism: On another note I found out, what I consider one of the worst shows of the festival "Chalk it Up" flew here and put their show together in two days and it looked like it. Why are they in the festival on the same night as three other well rehearsed polished shows? If your going to do that have a night of shows that people threw together at the last minute. But I would rather have the time dedicated to shows like "Party of One".
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