One fortunate aspect of living in a town like Los Angeles is the constant access to theater; whether through interpreted performances via Project D.A.T.E., or direct theater through Deaf West, we have the opportunity to attend plays every so often. I first encountered Deaf West during its very first play, “The Gin Game,” and I was pleased recently to have the chance to see their latest, “Sleeping Beauty Wakes.”

The play was in Culver City, in the Kirk Douglas Theatre, which is located in the renovated Culver Theatre, the area’s former popcorn palace. The stage is just across the street from Sony Entertainment Studios (which occupies some of the acreage that was once the renowned M-G-M studios), and is in the midst of downtown Culver City. The venue is a good fit for Deaf West and this particular play– it’s not as large and imposing as the Taper Forum or other larger stages, yet it’s not as small and intimate as Deaf West’s home in North Hollywood. Like Goldilocks, it’s “just right;” add in stadium-style seating, and you have a good auditorium for a mixed audience of hearing and deaf playgoers.

This is Deaf West’s first big production in the wake of “Big River,” (it has also staged “One Act Plays: Krapp’s Last Tape and Zoo Story,” and “Open Window”– both are significant in their own ways, but Deaf West and the Los Angeles Times have both played up “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” as the successor to “Big River”), and I suspect the director, if not also Deaf West, hoped that lightning would strike twice and “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” would become as big a show as “Big River” was. However, this isn’t the case here. “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” is not of the same caliber, nor does it have as outstanding a cast. But at the same time, “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” has quite a bit going for it, and because of this, has deservedly been extended another week. As of this writing, it’s closing date has been extended from May 13 to May 20.

The story, as you might deduce from the title, is about the fairy tale princess, Sleeping Beauty. We encounter her in two different settings and eras: a modern-day story of a comatose woman in a sleep clinic, who is undergoing treatment along with fellow sufferers under the direction of a physician and her staff, and the back story we are all so familiar with– the young princess suffering under a curse, heading unmindfully towards her destiny. The two stories collide as the princess, under a centuries-old spell, awakens from her “once upon a time,” only to be forced to deal with the realities of the present.

As the play opens, the first thing you notice isn’t the actors or the play itself, it’s the set. Striking from the beginning, the set designs continue to be both outstanding and appropriate to the play. A “stained glass” background strongly evokes the Middle Ages, and for the remainder of the evening, every scene set in the fairy tale era of “once upon a time” has “stained glass” or similar medieval motifs as part of the background, and it works beautifully. The clinically stark white walls and stainless steel of the modern sleep clinic emerge forcefully through the minimalist set, with its cinder-block walls, its gurneys and medical machines surrounded by nothingness, and bathed in white light.

Just as the sets were simple and effective, so was the lighting. There were no moments of poor lighting, or ill-considered color choices for particular lights. Where the mood needed to be shady and dark, the lights were manipulated effectively. For the scenes set in the present, the harsh lights of a clinic were strong enough to mimic the hospital effect, yet not so strong it overpowered the audience. For the romantic scenes between Beauty and her paramour, the shadows and lights were merged at just the right level to evoke a sense of romance. In fact, the only real drawback regarding the lighting relates to another aspect of the overall theater experience (and one you don’t normally find in most plays these days!): the open-captioning.

According to the program leaflet, “Center Theatre Group would like to acknowledge an anonymous donor who provided support for captioning services…” Some generous soul out there funded open-captioning. I too would like to add my thanks– some hard-of-hearing or deaf people out there who are not well-versed in ASL will definitely appreciate this addition. However, to benefit from the captioning, your seat definitely has to be towards the rear of the theater (although the captioning was visible from my seat, down in front, it’s projected above the main stage, which didn’t facilitate taking in both the captioning and the play itself, at least from my vantage point). Also, while the captioning was visible for most of the play, there were times that red or orange strobe lights were used, and at that point, the captioning nearly vanished. So if you’re going to see this play, and you plan to take advantage of the open-captioning, just be aware there will be a few times that the dialogue isn’t going to be easy to see.

At the beginning of the play, we encounter Sleeping Beauty (Alexandria Wailes), already in her respose, and the Groundskeeper’s Son (Russell Harvard), who admires Beauty and comments on her languor. The story unfolds as we see the already familiar tale in front of us, with the King (Clinton Derricks-Carroll), the Queen (Christia Mantzke), and their court. A twist soon emerges, as Beauty’s compatriots Urashima Taro (Shannon Ford), Rip Van Winkle (Brendan Milburn), and Snow White (Valerie Vigoda) enter and reflect that they too share her predicament, as part of the fellowship of mythological and legendary characters fated to an endless slumber. This part of the script was reminiscent to me of the trend in literature and popular culture of late to take the classic stories we know and love, and view these tales through a different prism. Some examples are “Wicked,” the re-imagining of “The Wizard of Oz” through the eyes of the Wicked Witch of the West, and the recent graphic novel series Fables by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham (which in turn owes a debt to Neil Gaiman and his classic Sandman series– somehow I could see Gaiman doing a story featuring Van Winkle and Urashima Taro; it’s very much in the vein of his body of work. But I digress…).

Our story progresses, with the emergence of our heroic (and cocky!) prince (played here by Troy Kotsur), who of course will awaken our princess fair. Or will he…? We soon shift from the distant fabled past to the decidedly earthbound here and now, where a sleep disorder clinic is run by the Director (Deanne Bray) with the assistance of her staff, including an Orderly (Russell Harvard). The directors patients include a trio (Christia Mantzke, Kevin Early, and Erika Amato; Amato and Earley appear previously, as members of the royal court), and a sleepwalker (Troy Kotsur).

The story goes back and forth periodically, as we progress through Beauty’s childhood to the moment she first encounters the Bad Fairy (Deanne Bray), suffers the consequences of her encounter, and follows through to the present-day, where she finally awakes, and has to deal with the realities of being a princess out of time and story.

As you may have noticed so far, quite a few of the actors and actresses play double roles. This is not generally a problem, and all those playing dual roles manage at the very least to handle both roles responsibly. While the technical aspects of staging, lighting, and the sets are fantastic, I found myself disappointed at times by the costumes. The clothing worn by the royal family and the court seemed stuck between the kind of costumes you’d find in a college theatrical offering and a professional production in a prestigious theater. I will admit that the costumer cleverly designed the outfits to both evoke royal raiment and modern-day sleepwear; in that sense, it was an ingenious decision. The clothing worn by the doctors and patients in the clinic were nothing special or out of the ordinary, and thus served their purpose.

The acting ranged from outstanding to tolerable. This is in no small part due to the predicament Deaf West has found itself in in choosing to do musicals and plays geared towards hearing audiences. Who are the plays for, who will they attract, and thus, how is the language going to be structured? I found that quite a few of the hearing actors/actresses were doing double-duty, both voicing and signing their parts. This differed markedly from “Big River,” where the director and Deaf West wisely had the voice actors shadow their Deaf counterparts, or remain in one role as the voice actor. For what it’s worth, the National Theater of the Deaf (NTD) faces the same problem: while their core audience of Deaf theatergoers wants and should expect a performance with the best ASL possible, for NTD and Deaf West to remain viable, they must look to a larger, broader, hearing audience that in many cases has little or no exposure to ASL. Couple this with the need to present a commercially successful play with an engaging story, and you have an ongoing dilemma that has yet to be resolved. This is part of the larger difference between sign-language theatre and Deaf theatre; where some of Deaf West’s earlier or smaller pieces such as “The Gin Game” and “Zoo Story” are properly sign-language theatre, in terms of the language choice, the ASL, the flow of the dialogue, etc., they more closely resemble Deaf theatre. Shows such as “Big River” and “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” are most decidedly sign-language theatre, and as such, the deaf audience is only taken along so far as the fact that all the characters sign.

Unfortunately, in “Sleeping Beauty Wakes,” the decision was made to have Amato, Earley, Milburn, Ford, Vigoda, Mantzke, and Derricks-Carroll simultaneously voice and sign their roles. I think this was disastrous for the most part. Milburn, Ford, and Vigoda are musicians, and apparently did very well (in fact, Vigoda played the violin, and earned strong accolades at the end of the play, so I take it she’s a very good violinist!) in this aspect; as actors, they weren’t quite as good.

Vigoda was fine as Snow White, and was appropriately chipper. Amato may be a fine actress elsewhere (her credits in the program attests to this!), and her voice-work may be outstanding, but her ASL skills were competent at best; the same is true of Mantzke in her role as a clinic patient. I would rather have seen them either sign solely in their role and allowed others to voice for them, or for them to voice only, and have others supplant them in signing roles. It’s difficult to sign and speak at the same time, as many people familiar with ASL know; to pretend this is possible here is robbing not only the deaf audience, but also the hearing audience as well, since now the appearance is given that apparently you can both sign and speak at the same time (which is something any student in an interpreter training program is taught immediately NOT to do!). I hope in the future Deaf West remedies this and picks one method or the other, and sticks with it.

Milburn, unfortunately, came across as unbelievable. His sign was reminiscent of a beginning sign student, his beard kept slipping, his makeup wasn’t effective, and he was not believable in the role of Rip Van Winkle. Ford, as Taro, fared somewhat better, but also had fairly basic sign skills (although in his defense, his lines were equally minimal!). Of all the hearing thespians in supporting roles, Early comes across best as capable of signing and voicing simultaneously, and was engaging in his role as a clinic patient. Overall, I enjoyed his performance, and hope Deaf West finds other opportunities for him in future productions.

Those cast in more major roles did fine, although I think the Deaf actors/actresses as a whole were best (not simply because I’m biased, but also because they were very good in their roles). As King, Clinton Derricks-Carroll (whom many may know best from the TV show Sliders. He also won a Tony for his performance on Broadway in “Dreamgirls.” ) did an outstanding job. His sign skills were good enough that even though I wished he was either signing only or voicing only, I could understand his part of the dialogue. His performance was even better; his skill at timing, his presence as a king was evident, and he clearly was engaged with the actors opposite him.

As his wife, the Queen, Christia Mantzke also shone– it was clear she enjoyed and was more involved with her role as the Queen, and her ability to sign was far more evident here. I can’t vouch for her voice or her singing, but the audience around me didn’t seem to have any problem with her performance as well.

The lone disappointment among the Deaf members of the cast was Russell Harvard. While Harvard’s professional experience has been largely limited to Gallaudet University productions, as well as an apparent stint with the roadshow Rathskellar, I was looking forward to seeing a new talent emerge. Unfortunately, I didn’t see that. Harvard’s ASL is impeccable, to be sure, but his acting seemed forced at times, almost as if he was conscious of the fact that he was acting in a cast of veterans and wanted to be on par with his fellow performers, but ended up trying too hard. This affected his performances as the Groundskeeper’s Son and the Orderly; while he didn’t do so poorly that he stood out, he also didn’t do as well as he could have. However, I did see a few instances where I began to understand why Deaf West chose him for this role, and these moments occurred during the duets he had with Wailes, the first of which was “Trouble” and then “Drifting” (both were excellent during this particular number). Each time that only he and Wailes were on stage, Harvard seemed to feel comfortable enough on stage to truly inhabit his role. Harvard’s youth was to his advantage, because both of his characters were young– I found myself wishing he had let himself naturally fall into the role, rather than working so hard to be the role. For this reason, I’d have to say the jury is out on Harvard’s acting ability (or lack thereof) and any future he might have; I hope to have the opportunity to see him again in another play before I can definitively state whether we should see more of him or not.

As always, Troy Kotsur is a delight, but he seems to be stuck in supporting roles– while I greatly enjoyed him as Pap in “Big River” (and some of his legwork in this play reminded me of Pap!), I also found him capable of carrying off a lead role when I saw him as Krapp in “Krapp’s Last Tape” and as Peter in “Zoo Story.” While he was most effective as the Prince and as the Sleepwalker in “Sleeping Beauty Wakes,” I hope Deaf West will find a piece that best showcases Kotsur’s talents.

As Sleeping Beauty, Wailes at first puzzled me. I found myself slightly bored and nonplussed by her performance, and began to wonder just why she was cast in the role. However, given that she was largely asleep for the first third of the show, I suppose I reacted a bit too soon; beginning with the first of her duets with Harvard, Wailes truly awoke, and from that point on, she was very engaging as the title character, allowed an air of youthfulness to permeate her role without completely overtaking it, and evoked the appropriate emotions when confronted with the immediacy of her return to the waking world. Although she started slowly, she ended up fully being Sleeping Beauty.

Some plays are ensembles; others are star- or role-driven vehicles. This particular play is more ensemble than role-driven, but if there’s one character/performer who stole the show, it’s Deanne Bray, as both the Director and the Evil Fairy. As the Director, Bray was quite effective and believable, with all the stubborn righteousness that doctors have; in a moment that was both an inside “joke” of sorts for the Deaf audience members and a reminder to the hearing viewers of deaf people’s capabilities: at one point in the play, Bray states she’ll call the authorities. She does so via a pager, rather than using an actual cell phone- a stark reminder that deaf people certainly have the capability to do such a job as directing a sleep clinic.

As the evil fairy, Bray is in her element– her costume is reminiscent of Disney’s Malificent, complete with dual horns. She is both malevolent and weary, human and inhuman, and her performance in this role was absolutely compelling. I hope Deaf West will find a show that is worthy of Bray’s talents.

Overall, it is a satisfying cast and an enjoyable story. Despite the fact that it is clearly intended for hearing audiences (many of whom no doubt will leave with a sense of, “Oh, that was beautiful! Isn’t ASL so pretty?”) , both deaf and hearing audiences will leave the theater pleased, with a sense of having spent an enjoyable 2 and 1/2 hours of their evening at the theater. If you’re in the mood for a pleasant story, an evening of ASL married to music, and a couple of outstanding performances, then I urge you to try to obtain tickets in the next couple of weeks if at all possible. [For a MUCH briefer review of this play, see Tayler Mayer’s perspective on “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” here.]