I try to support a lot of shows, but I certainly don’t get to everything. I missed the Savannah Stage Company’s recent production of The Turn of the Screw, which ran on a couple of really busy weekends around town, and I missed last weekend’s shows of Hedwig and The Angry Inch at Bay Street Theatre.

But I did see BST’s Hedwig production a couple of years ago. That take on John Cameron Mitchell’s dark musical comedy also starred Christopher Blair — and it was one of those productions that signaled that the Bay Street Theatre was truly a force to be reckoned with on the local scene.

So here I just want to pass along the word that Hedwig will be performed one more time. The 7:30 p.m. show on Friday, Nov. 29, will benefit Stand Out Youth.

Click here for more info or click on through the Facebook embed below. Highly recommended.

The Sunday show was open to all ages, so no surprise that a large number of the young people were seeing Rocky for the first time. I wonder how many of them would have admitted that if they knew they were going to get called on stage for a few antics before the show?

Of course, there were plenty of “sluts” on hand too, including one particularly amazing guy who sat right beside the stage and seemed to know every traditional audience callback. I’ll bet there were at least half a dozen times he yelled, “Castles don’t have phones, asshole.”

Chris Stanley tackled the role of Frank-N-Furter (that’s the Tim Curry part from the movie), the maestro of the aliens who have mysteriously set up their perverse house in the castle stumbled upon by Brad and Janet on a dark and stormy night. Stockily muscular, Stanley moves with both grace and energy. He’s filling the big shoes of Christopher Blair, who has played Frank in previous BST productions, but Stanley was really strong — and I have a feeling he’ll be even stronger as he feels and fills the character out in front of audiences into the second weekend.

And that was an impression that I had about other aspects of BST’s Rocky. Each night’s mood and energy will be different depending on the audience; there’s a give-and-take that just can’t be mimicked in rehearsals.

On Sunday, Thomas Houston as the narrator had some especially comic moments when he paused or ad libbed in response to audience reactions and distractions.

Director Jeffrey DeVincent made a really interesting and successful choice with the staging: almost all the action takes place on and around the catwalk that extends from the stage. So the audience is basically divided in two by that catwalk, and the design eliminates the problem from other BST productions of views occasionally being blocked by the line of structural columns that bisect the big room.

The only drawback to this arrangement is that the lighting is not optimized for it.

By putting the action in the middle of the audience, however, DeVincent and assistant director JinHi Soucy Rand were able to put musical director Warren Heilman and his ensemble on the stage. That meant the music was dispersed evenly through the space — that had been another challenge of staging musicals in the almost-historic drag showbar.

The new discovery for me at Rocky was Emily Updegraff, who has the perfect voice and look for both the Usherette and Columbia.

Leonard W. Rose and Valerie American Lavelle (real names!) are hysterical as Brad and Janet, and Travis Harold Coles and Ford Fatale get creepier and creepier as Riff Raff and Magenta. Juliet Marie Salazar crossdresses to play both Eddie and Dr. Scott — she was especially good in the latter role.

As Rocky, Reece Thomas is just what he needs to be: hunky, dumb, ripped, and gold-speedo clad.

The four phantoms (Kia Pantaloni, Jack Wagner, Matthew Gunnells, Kevin D. Santana) are especially decadent and entertaining in their black lace stockings and tight tops with exposed but tape-covered nipples.

The strong performances, excellent voices, and inventive staging help overcome the awkward transitions and even dead spots in Richard O’Brien’s bizarre, disjointed musical, which was first staged 40 years ago.

But who cares about any of that unevenness? The songs are awesome, the characters sharply drawn, the gags over-the-top. BST’s production features, at it should, lots of bare skin, exaggerated gestures, and absurdly funny moments.

Given the near-sellout on Sunday, I’d strongly advise buying tickets in advance if you want to go this weekend or for the final show on Halloween. Click here to buy tickets. I had so much fun that I just might try to go back for the midnight show on Halloween night.

The event, which is being produced by Jim Reed’s Knocked Out Loaded Concerts, will finish with DJ KZL spinning punk records.

There’s more on the Facebook event invitation.

Legs McNeil is best known for 1997’s Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, co-founded Punk Magazine and was an editor at both Spin and Nerve. He’s also published a couple of other full-length works: The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, with Jennifer Osborne and I Slept with Joey Ramone: A Family Memoir with Mickey Leigh.

Please Kill Me has a great website and blog. Highly recommended.

Here are the last couple of Favorite Videos entered on the site — Cheetah Chrome (whom I called “Mr. Chrome” when I met him on the sidewalk on Congress Street) and the Ramones:

Actor Peter Vack plays McNeil in the upcoming CBGB, which shot here in Savannah last summer. McNeil was one of the first chroniclers of the CBGB scene.

It’s sure going to be interesting to hear what McNeil has to say about that production — and about a whole lot of other things. He’s only in his mid-50s, but McNeil’s life has already taken on a legendary quality, for better or for worse.

I’m sure I’ll be there.

Bay Street Theatre has had some stellar productions over the last couple of years, including Rent and Avenue Q (my reviews are here and here).

The old show bar on the 2nd level, above Club One’s dance floor, has some limitations, but there’s a wonderful, somewhat aging intimacy to the space, with every seat close to the stage.

The next production is in 2012:
The Eight: Reindeer Monologues by Jeff Goode
December 20, 21, 22, & 23

Here’s Bay Street Theatre’s 2013 season, which looks challenging, edgy, and fun [all quoted from Facebook tonight]:

Shel’s Shorts by Shel Silverstein
January 24, 25, 26, & 27

Lauded poet, songwriter and author of children’s books, the incomparable Shel Silverstein also wrote dozens of short plays, which are deeply infused with the same wicked sense of humor that made Silverstein famous.

A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, & A Prayer by Various Authors, edited by Eve Ensler
February 15, 16, & 17

This groundbreaking collection, edited by author and playwright Eve Ensler, features pieces from “Until the Violence Stops,” the international tour that brings the issue of violence against women and girls to the forefront of our consciousness.

Reefer Madness by Kevin Murphy & Dan Studney
April 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, & 28

Inspired by the original 1936 film of the same name, this raucous musical comedy takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the hysteria caused when clean-cut kids fall prey to marijuana, leading them on a hysterical downward spiral filled with evil jazz music, sex and violence.

Speech & Debate by Stephen Karam
June 27, 28, 29 & 30

Three teenage misfits in Salem, Oregon discover they are linked by a sex scandal that’s rocked their town. When one of them sets out to expose the truth, secrets become currency, the stakes get higher, and the trio’s connection grows deeper in this searching, fiercely funny dark comedy with music.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Stephen Soundheim & Hugh Wheeler
August 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, & 25

Sweeney Todd’s wife was abducted by the Judge and his daughter abandoned, while he himself was deported on a false charge. He returns to avenge his family, setting up with Mrs. Lovett, the pie maker, and providing her with fillings for her pies. He proceeds with his vengeful plans but the outcome is bitterly ironic.

The Rocky Horror Show by Richard O’Brien
October 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, & 31

A newly engaged couple, Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, get caught in a storm and find themselves at the castle of a Dr. Frankenfurter just as he and his minions are about to unveil his masterpiece… Rocky.

Hedwig & The Angry Inch by John Cameron Mitchell & Stephen Trask
November 21, 22, 23, & 24

A transexual punk rock girl from East Berlin tours the US with her rock band as she tells her life story and follows the ex-boyfriend/bandmate who stole her songs.

The Santaland Diaries & Season’s Greetings by David Sedaris
December 19, 20, 21, & 22

The Santaland Diaries is based on the outlandish, and true, chronicles of David Sedaris†experience as Crumpet the Elf in Macyâ€s SantaLand display. Season’s Greetings follows Jocelyn Dunbar, a housewife who tries desperately to hang onto her holiday traditions.

Bookmark the Bay Street Theatre website for future reference.

I knew very little about Avenue Q before Sunday night. I knew there were puppets. I knew there were songs. I knew the show had been a big sensation when it was first launched.

So I had few expectations on Sunday, but the Bay Street Theatre’s relatively recent production of Rent was still fresh in my mind — the great voices, the live music, the inventive staging, the youthful vigor in every element of the show.

And those traits were all in Avenue Q too. Under the direction of Jeffrey DeVincent and the musical direction of Brandon Kaufman, the play features great production values and an unpredictable juxtaposition of the absurd, the bawdy, the silly, and the surprisingly moving. The excellent live ensemble keeps the pace moving appropriately fast.

Maybe I was just in a sappy mood, but I found a lot of genuine emotion in the play’s themes revolving around the search for identity and the needless barriers that separate us from the people we care most about. Even when the characters doing the singing are just Muppet-like hand puppets being controlled by black-clad actors.

There are regular human characters too living on Avenue Q — and they’re often sillier and more stereotypical than those portrayed by puppets.

The male and female leads Bryan Pridgen and Brittny Hargrove were especially good. Pridgen plays Princeton, the fresh-faced English major looking for his place in the world; Hargrove plays Kate Monster, a young woman with big aspirations handicapped by being, well, a monster. At one point in the show, the two puppets have a wild, alcohol fueled sexual encounter that just about brings the house down.

But as good as they are at comedy and irony, Pridgen and Hargrove are even better with the romantic songs and their occasionally biting dialogue. I see that Pridgen is an integral member of the new Savannah Stage Company — such ambitious theatrical endeavors and fine productions like Avenue Q give lots of reasons for optimism about the local theatre scene.

The rest of the cast (Thomas Houston, Christopher Stanley, Travis Harold Coles, Cecilia Arango, Kamille Dawkins, Matthew Gunnells, Danielle Frazier, Christopher Stanley, Valerie Macaluso) all have some fine moments

Because of largely silly rules governing establishments that serve alcohol in Savannah, Avenue Q is limited to 21 and up guests on Friday and Saturday, and 18 and up on Sunday.

Click here for tickets.

It’s too bad. Even when readers roundly disagree with reviewers’ opinions, there’s a depth of discourse produced that’s hard to match in the exclamation-point-filled world of Facebook.

I’m not going to write a straight-up review of Savannah’s production of Rent at Bay Street Theatre, but I strongly, strongly recommend the show. I’ll have a few comments about the many strengths and the few weaknesses in my rambling comments here.

Early on in Rent, Mark says to his roommate Roger: “Take your AZT.” And at that moment I was back in the 1980s, when the spread of HIV and AIDS was simply horrifying. AZT is still part of a drug regimen today, I think, but back then it sounded like a magic password — one that might work or might not. Or might even make things worse.

The appropriately youthful cast here in Savannah surely doesn’t remember much — if anything — of those days, but that seems right. Yes, Jonathan Larson’s Rent has some tragic moments, but at the end of the day it’s a buoyant, upbeat story. The lone death in the play — staged really movingly in this production — is of the character most marginalized by society.

Frankly, that death struck me as something of a cop-out by Larson — it would have been a much more complex drama if one of the characters from obviously privileged backgrounds had died. On the other hand, the most marginalized Americans were and are the ones most at risk of HIV and other health crises too.

I wasn’t quite satisfied with the play’s resolution of questions of gentrification either. It’s easy to romanticize the lives of those young artists revolting against the status quo and searching for real meaning in their lives, but the embrace of blight and of petty criminality is no way to create a sustainable culture or economy. So I found myself feeling some sympathy for the yuppiefied Benjamin Coffin (get it?), played in this production by the gorgeous-voiced Erik Hauk.

Beyond those social issues and themes inherent in any production of Rent, I was swept along by the core humanity of the characters as they try to reconcile their desires, their dreams, their commitments to themselves and to others. And I was swept along by the sheer talent on display.

I found several numbers especially moving, including “Seasons of Love” and “Without You”, a duet between Roger (Christopher Stanley) and Mimi (Cecilia Arango).

The voices are uniformly excellent in the Bay Street Theatre production, directed by JinHi Soucy Rand and with musical direction by Warren Heilman, who also plays keyboard in the 5-piece ensemble.

Tyrone McCoy’s Angel is in many respects the moral center of the play, his eyes and voice brimming with emotion.

As the narrator Mark, Sam Collura supplies an infectious, impulsive energy.

There were strong moments too from the rest of the major characters: Christopher Blair as Tom Collins, Brittny Hargrove as Joanne, and Jonette Page as Maureen.

But occasionally some of the singing — and therefore the lyrics — got overwhelmed by the instruments. The bigger voices (like Blair and Arango) rose pretty steadily to the top, but others needed a little more amplification or a little less music in the mix. Some of the lines of dialogue lacked clarity too — probably a pretty common issue when actors know that they’re miked.

But the pacing, the blocking, and the use of Club One’s show stage seemed pretty much perfect. Be aware that columns that can obscure spectators’ views, and the sound can be a little jangly in that space. Still, for a variety of reasons the Bay Street Theatre stage seemed especially fitting to me for the show. (Bay Street Theatre’s executive producer Travis Harold Coles is a producer of Rent and a member of the ensemble too.)

I didn’t do a final head count, but it looked like about 30 other theatregoers were there on Sunday evening along with my friend Cindy and me. Sunday nights are tricky, for sure, and the play runs a couple of more weekends. But I was still a little disappointed by the turnout.

This is an excellent production of a demanding play — one that deserves strong community support. My personal thanks to the entire cast and crew for putting this thing on and for pulling it off.

Click here to see the remaining show dates and times and to order tickets.