Stephen Caffrey's latest play just opened and I will try and post some of the reviews as I find them: (I am going in 15 days...NOT that LM would count them down or anything )

A lot to like about 'Victoria Musica'
Theater review

By Jackie Demaline • jdemaline@enquirer.com • October 2, 2009


Playhouse in the Park opens the Shelterhouse season with the world premiere of “Victoria Musica,” Michele Lowe’s meditation on making art, passionately loving art and the frailty of the 20th century American psyche that rationalizes dishonesty into integrity.


In terms of production, “Victoria Musica” is pitch-perfect.

“Victoria Musica” is about music critic Jeremy Lenz (Tommy Schrider) who becomes obsessed with the idea that more than two dozen recordings by a celebrity cellist, recently died, are fakes.

The play follows his investigation, and in flashback follows the story of the cellist, Victoria Wedlan (Mariann Mayberry), who is, of course, suffering from a heart disease that will take her life at 56. I say of course, because playwrights seem to love killing off artistic women slowly and painfully. (Another recent example is “33 Variations” at Ensemble.)

While I wholeheartedly applaud making a critic heroic and embattled by the forces of the classical music establishment, to say nothing of glamorizing him into a detective of sorts, “Victoria Musica” feels a little – aloof.

The performances are terrific, and I’ll start with Drew Cortese, Judith Hawking (supported by wonderful wigs) and Evan Zes in truly nothing roles who, with director Ed Stern, flesh these walk-ons into fully dimensional characters with clear inner lives.

The old truism, the devil is in the details? This is what it means.

On the tiny Shelterhouse stage, set designer Joseph Tilford whisks us around to locations in the U.S., U.K. and Europe, always with a lit display case of three cellos in the background to keep us grounded.

Mayberry turns a near-cliché into a wonderful dramatic arc, as a fine but anonymous musician who gets her big break and is then diagnosed with a debilitating (and probably fatal) disease.

Stephen Caffrey is Victoria’s supportive husband, both in life and in memory; Thom Rivera and Peter Van Wagner are part of Victoria and Jeremy’s larger musical world.
The playwright positions Lenz as the poison-pen critic we love to hate. The problem is it makes us less likely to care about him. He’s also surprised by the push-back he gets, a level of oblivion that says he doesn’t care about any reality beyond his own.

It’s not that that isn’t interesting – but the playwright has to own it.
Schrider’s been given some heavy dramatic baggage to haul, and he’s persuasive as Lenz.

The frustratnig thing about “Victoria Musica” is that Lowe has created two complex characters and put a big question out there – how is it some people are willing to lie their way to fame? What is the driving force?

Lowe’s script has such a soft first-act landing the audience doesn’t even know it’s over; less globe-trotting and deeper characters would have helped. Lowe also fudges the answer to her own central question so it doesn’t really have to be answered.

“Victoria Musica” has a solution, so I can’t say more without interfering with Jeremy’s mystery. I will say a solution to a problem and an answer to a question aren’t the same thing.

“Victoria Musica,” through Oct. 25, Thompson Shelterhouse, Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park. 513-421-3888 and www.cincyplay.com.