Academy should spend money on acting coaches, not sets

I went to the special performance of “Sweeney Todd” at the Las Vegas Academy of International Studies, Performing and Visual Arts last week (prior to the group’s opening at a thespian festival in Nebraska) as a cheerleader. I already had seen the show in November, had some major reservations, and went back to see if it had, as I had been assured by others, improved. I was ready to be impressed.

But what I saw was even more disturbing than the first time around. And it begs discussion.

I am always disappointed when I hear people say, “Las Vegas Academy actors are pretty good for a high school,” because when they are on the top of their game, they are much more than high school. They sometimes rank with the best of local amateur entertainment.

They often understand the basis for good acting. As characters, they tend to listen to what is being said to them, and to honestly respond. There’s a lot more to it, of course, but listening and responding is the core of what acting is all about.

In small-scaled productions, we see a lot of this skill. But something frequently happens when the Las Vegas Academy goes big. I often suspect that the director, whomever he may be, becomes distracted by the big-budget designs for musicals such as “Sweeney Todd” and simply doesn’t have the time to properly coach his students. How else to explain the extraordinary difference in performance quality?

In “Sweeney Todd,” for example, lead actor Philip Cerza gave no indication that he understood the explosive anger of this serial killer. He shouted a lot to indicate he was ticked off. It might have been helpful for him to have several rehearsals where he wasn’t allowed to shout — perhaps then he might have found his anger in a more organic place than just his throat.

You could never tell what Rebecca Stewart was thinking as his love interest, Mrs. Lovett. Stewart apparently decided her character was loony, and so she played loony over and over again. Nothing anyone said to her seemed to register, and as a result, she had not a single honest moment the entire evening.

Julian Crider, as an evil judge, brought forth no suggestion that he had any idea how a man of power walks, talks and thinks of himself. Crider postured and preened with such exaggeration that you could plainly see he hadn’t found the character within himself.

Sure, this sort of stuff is fine for a typical high school. It shouldn’t be fine for the Las Vegas Academy.

Maybe all that budgeting should go to acting coaches instead of technical hocus-pocus. The students deserve the attention a lot more than the sets.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.