James A. Skiba, Margot Moreland_and D’Jamin Bartlett in Confessions of a Retired Witch
By Britin Haller
Confessions Of A Retired Witch hit the ground running at The Studio at Mizner Park this past weekend, and despite the small number of attendees, the cast of four (and two musicians) gave it their all. Hopefully they weren’t dismayed by the size of the audience, because everyone with a dream has to start somewhere, and even Andrew Lloyd Webber put on shows at home with his younger brother in a toy theater Andrew built.
Even with a crowd of one, if it’s the right one, that’s all that matters in this work written by and featuring experienced theater hands D’Jamin Bartlett and Mark Bornfield.
There’s a modern witch trial going on at the Sunny Smiles Retirement Home in Miami because their new resident, Angelina Max, has been acting true to form, riding her broomstick around and just generally wreaking havoc.
Angelina was once part of a large coven and married to T.C., a powerful warlock who “vanished,” as did her daughter Celeste who lost her powers when she married a mortal. Now Angelina finds herself sad, alone, and homeless. All from a woman who used to ride on the backs of alligators in the Everglades.
So, how do they solve a problem like Angelina? Psychiatrist Dr. Bragen thinks she’s crazy and wants to get her off his back by shipping her to a psych ward. The retirement home’s director, Ms. Sternberg, while much nicer and sympathetic to Angelina, doesn’t have much of a backbone and does what the doctor tells her to do.
To up the stakes, in order to reunite with her beloved husband in another realm, Angelina must give her powers to a deserving mortal. And the clock is ticking before Angelina ends up stuck on Earth forever.
D’Jamin Bartlett stars as Angelina Max, the witchy woman with a heart of gold who is living in the past and doesn’t understand why no one understands her. Bartlett brings such an impressive resume with her that we’d be remiss not to mention the highlights. She won a Theater World and Drama Desk Award (Most Promising Performer for playing Petra and singing “The Miller’s Son” in the original A Little Night Music.)
She co-starred with Eddie Bracken, Lanie Kazan, Gene Barry, Burt Convey, and Elliot Gould. Barlett has been directed by Martin Charnin, Harold Prince, Jerry Zaks, and Bob Fosse, and has appeared with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. And besides all that, she tap dances!
Performing the parts of the other female characters is popular South Florida triple-threat, and multiple Carbonell winner, Margot Moreland. She was one of the meddling mothers (with the always wonderful Jeni Hacker) in last year’s The Fantasticks at Island City Stage, and Moreland doesn’t disappoint here either. And she taps too!
Whether she’s offering advice and concern to Angelina as her best friend and fellow witch Selena, or as the retirement home administrator Ms. Sternberg, or as Sadie, the mother to Angelina’s daughter’s boyfriend, Moreland shines. There’s never a dull moment when Margot Moreland is around.
Performing the parts of the male characters (mostly) is James A. Skiba who delights us as a devil-may-care rascally warlock, a rule-following doctor with zero bedside manners, and a sympathetic and understanding husband to Angelina.
Cody Lyle is making his debut as both a retirement home employee who wields a mean flashlight and Angelina’s potential son-in-law who visits a psychic for guidance on marrying a witch. To paraphrase Angelina (and Spencer Tracy), Lyle learned his lines and didn’t bump into the furniture. Hope he enjoyed his first time out.
Mark Bornfield accompanies the actors on keyboards and horn while Chris Bonelli plays bass guitar. Much more about Bornfield later.
Despite the book’s clever premise, the music takes center stage here. Personal fun favorites are “Tap Into The Power,” where Bartlett and Moreland get to show off their tap-dancing skills; “We’re Doin’ It For The Kids,” where Bartlett and Moreland meddle; “Whatta We Gunna Do With Mrs. Max?” where Moreland and Skiba ponder their options with great harmonies; “Nobody Sings To The Moon Anymore,” where Bartlett, Skiba, and Moreland give us a lesson on today’s society, and “Sadie’s Seder” with Bartlett, Moreland, and Skiba, where Moreland makes us hungry, all except for that kosher alligator part.
Bartlett has an elegant Broadway-trained high soprano that she shares with us on the mesmerizing “Dreaming On A Star,” which could also be named “A Mother’s Love.” With an image of a sparkling lake scattered with sunbeams behind her, Angelina is something out of a Disney movie. She also radiates in “The One In Love With You” and “I’ll Have It All.”
Bartlett and Skiba give us the wonderful duet “Listen To The Nightsong” about the first time their characters met, while Skiba gets to show off in two solos, “There’s No Disputin’ The Rasputin In Me,” where he sounds like Dan Aykroyd and ends with some ever-popular leg kicks, and “My Wife Is A Witch,” with perfect double entendre lines like “I burned my tongue upon her bubbling brew.”
If we had to choose a least favorite, it would be “There’s A Place In Miami,” because the scene drags, and the song is just so-so. As a big salsa dance number, it could be cute though.
Director Barry Zieger has a career boasting more than sixty years in the theater. Noted singer, dancer, actor, teacher, and choreographer Judi Mark has created dance numbers sure to please. Kevin Dean as stage manager brings with him a wealth of experience.
Sound effects like thunder by Bornfield are fun, and Omar Robau is credited with set design, but there really isn’t a set unless they mean the projection screen. Robau is also on props, (we can’t help but covet that witch’s caldron) and did a great job on the eye-catching poster art.
Liam Regan and Gerry Regan are on lighting and sound respectively. The lighting was very dark. We get that it’s about a coven of witches, but we need to be able to see what’s happening on stage, although the colored spotlights were fun at one point. A backdrop screen produces some light as well as some fantastical images of a black cat, a full moon through shadows, and a witch riding her broomstick across the night sky.
The costuming by Bartlett is clever. We loved the color-coordinated robe set for Angelina and T.C., and Angelina’s black cape with its purple lining, black hat, and that nifty silver broom standing on its own. And yes, we’ve seen those broom viral videos.
Bartlett and Bornfield are a real-life couple who have traveled the globe for decades, performing at high-end nightclubs/restaurants, country clubs, and hotels, including in-house at Las Vegas’s Lake Las Vegas Resort and The Stirling Club. They made regular appearances at the Turnberry Isle Resort & Spa in Aventura where this critic used to enjoy listening to them entertaining guests in the luxurious lobby lounge. Now South Florida snowbirds, they summer on Cape Cod.
They met when Bartlett was in A Little Night Music, and Bornfield, an Emmy-winning composer, and a pianist who once accompanied Whitney Houston, has a legacy that includes performances at Boston’s famous Copley Plaza Oak Room.
In addition, Bornfield plays four instruments, five if you count his voice. As Bornfield tells us, despite all his other musical successes in life, he had a dream to one day create and produce a Broadway musical, and luckily for him, Bartlett supports that dream, so much so she conceived the original idea for Confessions Of A Retired Witch and wrote the book around his beautiful songs. Bornfield has a way to go to reach the culmination of his dream, but he mustn’t give up because all it takes is one person in the right place at the right time.
Confessions Of A Retired Witch is not going to be for everyone. It needs work. The title feels wrong since Angelina is still casting spells and turning into a black cat, so is she even retired? And other than meddling into her daughter’s love life, did she do anything needing confessing? What mother doesn’t meddle? It’s how they show their love.
Some of the jokes fall flat, and it’s this critic’s opinion that Angelina’s soliloquies could be revamped, or even 86d entirely, despite some theater icons reportedly thinking differently. Personally, we could have done with more of the showing and less of the telling, and less of the jumping around flashbacks.
But … if there is one take-away from attending this show, it’s that Bornfield’s delightful score and lyrics (with an assist by Dan Pardo) are the real deal. Like good enough for Broadway real deal. Like Broadway would be lucky to showcase this music real deal. One can imagine (and dare even hope) to see Confessions of a Retired Witch with a new title, forty additional minutes, a bigger budget, a cast of thirty-five including Jeni Hacker and Margot Moreland together again, and someone like the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s Producing Artistic Director/Chief Executive Andrew Kato at the helm.
Because given a book that rivals the absolutely glorious, and we do mean glorious, music and lyrics by Mark Bornfield, this show has legs.
Britin Haller is a mystery author and an editor for Turner Publishing. Her recent short story “So Many Shores in Crookland” can be read in the 150th issue of Black Cat W6eekly. Britin’s latest edit, a cozy mystery novel called Dumpster Dying is by Michelle Bennington and available where books are sold. Find Britin across social media.
Confessions Of A Retired Witch plays through March 8 at The Studio at Mizner Park, 201 Plaza Real, 2nd Floor, Boca Raton, Wed. @ 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sat. at 2 p.m. Running time approx. 80 minutes with no intermission. Tickets starting at $49.50 with the discount code WITCHY includes all fees. Visit https://thestudioatmiznerpark.com/
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