Champ and His Four Women - now playing

Whatever gets you in the door to see Champ and His Four Women...depth of subject, forceful performance, incredible music selection, parking access...whatever. Go the first time for yourself and then go back with your special friends. The ones who need to have this experience.

Playwright /producer Art Shulman, Director Stan Mazin and Sound Designer Steve Shaw bring together a powerful cast of five anchored by Anthony Backman's lead role as Champ...a lead he shares throughout with a woman who does not exist, embodied exquisitely on stage by Rebecca Westberg.

This, Champ's most intimate relationship, is continually interrupted by other women, including the noteworthy return to the stage of Leah Bass as Champ's neighbor Esther. Leah is Esther, bringing a presence to the role that leaves you hanging on her every word and waiting breathless through her thoughtful pauses. Surely this woman is going to fix Champ's failing, flailing, useless life.

But if there's saving to be done, Esther won't be doing it alone. Pretty soon the once very personal space of Champ's condominium is full of feminine energy with the entrance of Cheryl (played opening night most seductively by Caroline Westheimer) and the very over-the-top Annie (Shelby Janes).

All of this emotional turbulence takes place to the accompaniment of a musical journey that will catch you from the very first note and bring you over and over into your own personal world of memories and moments. You will know the words and the melodies. You will be transported back and forth from your own reality to the world on stage, the familiarity of Champ's living room and the knowingness of his experience that eventually touches every life. The music. The music of our lives.

The end is a bit of a surprise. But then life is like that, isn't it?

And in the end, there's a strong chance you will have taken a walk through the darkness and the light of your own life journey, your own deepest, darkest secrets, your worst pain, and your emergence over time from that grief, from your seat in the theatre. If you are in the throes of that walk now, you may come away with some small (or maybe not so small) bit of strength, solace, hope. And surely, most certainly, you will know someone...perhaps many someones...who should see Champ and His Four Women.

I know I do.

Corina Roberts
Curator - Highway 2 - The Journey and the Destination
Founder, Redbird
www.RedbirdsVision.org