'Alabaster:' CAST resurrection yields a small miracle
'Alabaster' runs through March 16 at the Mint Museum Randolph
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on February 28, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. And check out this link for Toppman’s archive of reviews in the Ledger.
A decade after going dark, CAST theater company aptly returns its experiential theater to the stage with ‘Alabaster’
Carolina Actors Studio Theatre immerses the audience in the distressed Alabama world of the main character, making use of areas outside the main stage, including the hall in the Mint Museum Randolph as well as crannies in the museum’s circular Van Every Forum auditorium. (Photo by Jeff Cravotta)
by Lawrence Toppman
The appearance of a new theater company happens once a year in the Charlotte area, usually fueled by maximal optimism and minimal cash. But the re-appearance of a stone-dead, closed-the-building-and-sold-the-props theater company happens roughly on the Twelfth of Never.
So Carolina Actors Studio Theatre’s return after 11 years brings a joyful jolt of emotion to the local scene, this time in Van Every Forum at the Mint Museum on Randolph Road. Joni Mitchell famously sang, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” It’s equally true to say you don’t know what you’ve missed ‘til it’s back. The band of loyalists who attended the opening night of “Alabaster” Friday will attest to that.
Another company would have grabbed attention first with something splashier — say, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which won the 2013 Tony for best play — and then tackled something more obscure. CAST does things the other way ‘round. It will produce Christopher Durang’s Chekhov-themed comedy in November but has opened with Audrey Cefaly’s darker drama.
The Mint won’t let producer Michael Simmons replicate the “experiential theater” he presented on Clement Avenue and later in NoDa. There the lobbies, the bathrooms, even the tickets themselves helped create a mood for whatever was on the boards. But Tim Baxter-Ferguson’s set, which makes use not only of two levels at one end of the hall but crannies in the circular auditorium, immerses us in the distressed Alabama world of the main character.
June (Zoe Matney), scarred physically and psychologically by a tornado that killed her family and tore up her body, paints endlessly with only two goats, feisty Weezy (Kelly Mizell) and doddering Bib (Debbie Swanson), to talk to. And to listen to, as Weezy expresses her unbridled thoughts to her embittered, agoraphobic owner.
Into this closed circle comes Alice (Cynthia Farbman Harris), a photographer who has given up celebrity shots for a book revealing the inner beauty of women who have gone through hell — and, perhaps, their outer beauty. That’s in the eye of the beholder, and she feels drawn romantically to June. Alice has a painful secret, too, and needs healing of a different sort. (Cefaly has said, “The two questions I ask of all my characters: How did you get so stuck? What is the full cost of leaving?”)
This sort of thing was core material for the old CAST, and Simmons put the cast through months of rehearsal as director to make sure it would resound. Matney and Harris challenge us to like their combative, frightened, angry characters, yet we ultimately do. Mizell delivers Weezy’s wisdom with apt bluntness, and Swanson makes us empathize with the nearly wordless Bib.
The show delivers the right atmosphere on all levels, from the scarred face and body makeup (designed by Simmons, applied by assistant director Dee Abdullah) to Simmons’ sound design. The tornado in June’s memory, whistled up from the depths of a private hell, does give us the old experiential sensation for a moment.
You may wonder, as I did, why Cefaly titled her play “Alabaster.” There really is an Alabaster in central Alabama, her home state; it takes its name from the white stone people mined, and tornadoes touch down there at twice the average rate for the U.S.
Yet it’s also mentioned in the New Testament in three places, where women pour oil from alabaster boxes over Jesus as a sign they’re giving up control of their lives. The Gospel of Mark quotes him as saying “She is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying,” in hope of a joyous resurrection. In light of CAST’s comeback, that idea resonated with me.
If You’re Going: “Alabaster” runs through March 16 at the Mint Museum, 2730 Randolph Road. Shows are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, plus 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Parking is free.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews about two times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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