Great Lakes Festival’s Heroes, Their Heroics

Monday, September 05, 2005
By Tony Brown, Plain Dealer Theater Critic

Every theater production is a collaboration among many artists who pour heroic effort and passion into what they do.

But the effort and passion displayed by three Great Lakes Theater Festival actors over the weekend qualify them as heroes who must be singled out for recognition: Andrew May, Nick Koesters and Nina Domingue.

May starred in two hilariously over-the-top roles, the jealous Master Ford in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and the fiery Boris Kolenkhov in "You Can’t Take It With You," during Great Lakes’ summer repertory season that ended Saturday night.

Meanwhile, he’s been rehearsing one of the most demanding roles of his career, the envious composer Salieri in "Amadeus," the show that opens the fall rep on Friday, Sept. 16.

On top of all that, May is also associate artistic director of our city’s fully professional classical company. He essentially runs the place when boss Charles Fee is overseeing the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, where Fee is also producing artistic director.

Under such strain, the inevitable happened: May began to suffer symptoms of exhaustion, straining his voice (particularly in the Kolenkhov role, which is loud and performed in a larynx-shredding comic Russian accent).

An actor more concerned with his ego than with his company might have tried to see it through. May wisely bowed out for the last few performances of the summer rep.

Scott Plate, May’s understudy, twice went on in the star’s stead in the final performances of "Merry Wives" last week, and by all accounts did well after some real rehearsal time.

But Koesters, who was not the understudy for Kolenkhov, took it upon himself to learn May’s role and went on for May Friday (after a single one-hour run-through) and Saturday nights.

"I just grabbed the prompt script and watched a DVD of the show, just in case," Koesters said during a short break in "Amadeus" rehearsals Sunday.

Koesters’ performance Saturday, before a near-capacity audience at the Ohio Theatre in Playhouse Square, evinced no sign of hurry-up preparations. He was as big, as crazy and as loosey-goosey as the original.

In fact, Koesters, who has some dance training and is married to a former ballroom-dance teacher, threw in some fancy moves of his own, including a Cossack kick-step perfect for Kolenkhov, a ballet instructor.

Domingue’s heroics came not during the play but in curtain speeches she somehow made through her tears at the end of the last three summer rep shows.

On Saturday, the New Orleans native thanked her hometown for "making me the actress I am today," informed the audience that nine of her family members were missing (and still were Sunday afternoon) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and appealed to the crowd to give cash to actors in the lobby.

Led by Domingue, the cast raised $5,000, nearly half of it Saturday night, when "people were giving us 50s and 20s - amazing," she said Sunday.

The company will continue raising money for the American Red Cross through the fall rep of "Amadeus" and "As You Like It."

And there is talk among the fall rep cast of a benefit performance on a "dark night," an evening when the actors are off, and of giving away the proceeds.

That’s what heroes are made of at Great Lakes Theater Festival.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
tbrown@plaind.com, 216-999-4181
© 2005 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.