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In the living room of a Stuart Ave home in Richmond’s Fan District, the world’s worst opera singer comes to life… and this unique comedy play heads into its final weekend.

Into the Woods Productions invites you to the living room of a Fan District home for its latest theater production, Stephen Temperley’s Souvenir, starring Gabrielle Maes and Levi Meerovich and directed by Chelsea Burke. A ticket to the show promises a night of heartwarming friendship, over-the-top humor, and the ear-splitting voice of the world’s worst opera singer. You might want to bring some ear plugs.

Gabrielle Maes, founder of Into the Woods, stars as Dame Florence Foster Jenkins from the comfort of home. Maes has transformed the large double living room of her historic Stuart Avenue house into a set for Florence’s private music room, complete with framed portraits of the infamously untalented songstress, marble statuettes, and the obligatory grand piano.

“When you walk in, you really feel that you’re being transported back into a drawing room from the 1920s,” said Maes. The front room can only accommodate an audience of around 40; Levi Meerovich plays Cosme McMoon, Florence’s accompanist, as Maes’s only co-star. It’s sure to be unlike a traditional theater experience. “That’s the feeling,” said Maes. “It’s a truly intimate production.”

This isn’t the first time Maes has opened her home to an audience for the endeavors of her production company. Since Maes founded Into the Woods, she’s produced many theater performances and salon concerts using her own living room floor as a stage.

Into the Woods also puts on Voice Club in Maes’s Stuart Avenue home, an intimate monthly gathering for showcasing any — and truly any — style of vocalized performance. Voice Club has hosted burlesque, flamenco, poetry, spoken word, drag, and stand-up comedy, among other voice-related talents. “It’s a lot of work, having to frequently move and rearrange the furniture,” said Maes. “But the acoustics in my house are great.”

Maes founded Into the Woods in an attempt to raise industry standards in Richmond by ensuring that performers and artists are paid for their work. “There’s so many talented people here, and such a vibrant music and theater scene,” said Maes. “But the thing is, musicians and artists don’t really get paid. Which seems unusual to me, because I’ve always lived in places where we do.”

Maes has lived in a lot of places — she grew up in Montreal, studied vocal performance in Jerusalem, lived in Paris and Milan as the mother of five children, and taught at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. She has lived and performed in a total of nine different countries, and it was in Malaysia that she first played the role of Dame Florence Foster Jenkins. She won the Boh Cameronian Award for best actor in her performance.

She now takes her award-winning Souvenir performance to the Fan District of Richmond, with an obvious affection for the role. Dame Florence was a wealthy New York City socialite and a dedicated patron to the arts, who then rose to infamy with an opera career of her own in the 1920s. “She was an absolutely horrific singer, and an incredibly eccentric person,” said Maes. “She liked to pose for these things they used to call ‘tableaus,’ but she was rather homely — big boobs, overweight, hook nose — but she didn’t care.”

“She was extremely theatrical and entertaining; she’d get dressed up in wigs and weird hats. People would go watch her sing to laugh at her, and she had no idea they were laughing, so it’s kind of tragic in a way,” said Maes. “But they kept paying to see her perform, and they loved her — her singing was ridiculous, but there was also something so genuine about her.”

Into the Woods’ production of Souvenir focuses on the more innocently heartwarming narrative in Florence’s life: the genuine, platonic love that she shared with her pianist, Cosme, a gay Mexican immigrant. As these are the only two roles billed, the singular drawing-room set of the venue inevitably leaves Florence’s public life up to the audience’s imagination.

Maes asserts that there’s quite a rich story to tell of these two. Cosme accompanied Florence’s vocals for 12 years, from early obscurity to the pinnacle of her career, when she sold out Carnegie Hall. Cosme was not deaf, and therefore well-aware of her glaring lack of talent, and he saw the ridicule that she was so oblivious to. “He tries so desperately to protect her, and they end up becoming very good friends,” said Maes. “It’s a love story, really. It’s very poignant.”

According to Maes, it’s also hysterically funny, with much of the humor derived from Florence’s obliviousness to Cosme’s exaggeratedly obvious homosexuality. “He hints at it constantly throughout the play,” said Maes, “yet she teases him relentlessly about the young ladies.”

Souvenir runs for its final weekend on Stuart Ave. from Thursday, March 5 through Saturday, March 7, with all showings at 8 pm. Once the faux marble statuettes imitating 1920s Manhattan have been traded back for Maes’s everyday living room decor, Voice Club will resume and Into the Woods will be onto planning its next production. And while it’s hard to say what that will be, Maes clearly has an affinity for opera. She directed for Capitol Opera about a year and a half ago, then produced and starred in a fully staged, full-orchestra Handel opera. But she’s also known for hosting plays underground (literally), with 15th-century tavern song concerts taking place in a cave-like building below Pump House Park… so expect the unexpected from Into the Woods.

To learn more about Souvenir, find Into the Woods at their website and buy tickets to this weekend’s showings here.

Top Photo by Wolfcrest Photography

Firehouse Theatre’s latest production of “Preludes” is a trippy musical fantasia that takes viewers on a journey through 19th Century Russian history to dive deep into the music and mind of suffering Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, and the three-year writer’s block, hypnotherapy, and psychological collapse that befalls him after his disaster performance of his debut symphony in 1897.

Playwright and musician Dave Malloy, creator of Broadway hit “Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812,” has crafted an artistic piece that signifies the musical geniuses of the composer. The musical takes place in Moscow in 1900 in the hypnotized mind of Rachmaninoff, who is experiencing “creative silence” or writer’s block. It is often normal for writers to go through total silence of creative thinking when writing a piece; however, in Malloy’s musical fantasy “Preludes”, the aforementioned writer is able to turn around his years of artistic silence into something great.

“We’re exploring a lot about taking a step forward and on a very basic level of getting out of bed and breaking free of the things that confines and constrains us.” Firehouse Theatre Director Billy Christopher Maupin said of the musical.

In the musical, Rachmaninoff, played by Travis West, is the concert pianist and simultaneously, the musical incorporates a modern-day “RACH”, played by PJ Freebourn, who is paralyzed by writer’s block and constantly wallows in his own self-pity.

“Rach the modern day version, is the central speaking character of the play and the person whose story we’re following,” Maupin said.

Malloy’s way of driving emotion into this piece really makes people empathetic towards his work. His music and lyrics convey authenticity to the characters, situations, and struggles that they find themselves in.

Rounding out the cast is Natalya, played by Isabella Stansbury, who portrays Sergei’s wife, and hypnotherapist Nikolai Dhal, who Sergei visits to recount his terrible writer’s block and sleepless nights at the request of Natalya. Dhal, who was originally written in Malloy’s musical as a man, appears in Firehouse’s Theatre as a woman, played by Georgia Rogers Farmer. Adding to the stellar lineup of actors and actresses is Jody Ashworth, playing famous Russian opera singer Feodor Chaliapin, and RACH’s best friend along with actor Levi Merovich, who takes on several roles in “Preludes” including Rachmaninoff’s favorite composer influences Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexander Glazunov, and his main role as “The Master. ”

Meerovich, said his character “The Master” sort of exists “out of time.” According to him, he was able to tap into his own personal creativity to make that character come alive and had free reign artistically to develop him and make the part his own.

“It’s a very interesting part because it’s so vague that you can pretty much do whatever you want,” Meerovich said. “And I make him very much me.” Because I have five other characters who are huge, other varying personalities, but this guy gets to just being me, which is nice.”

Maupin described the musical as “very strange, unconventional and gorgeous. It’s very eclectic in the styles and a lot of the music composed by Rachmaninoff, to which Malloy has added a set melodies and lyrics. In the musical, the audience will experience a menagerie of genres from klezmer to punk rock to Russian folk songs and classical music along with some Indian-inspired music. “Preludes” is orchestrated by a grand piano and two synthesizers despite a bit of electronic music that comes into play. The second synthesizer is played by music director Susan Braden.

“It’s also a little fun and different for me,” said Braden. “This is an incredible piece with a bunch of incredibly talented people here from Richmond that’s gonna knock everybody’s socks off. And it’s strange and wonderful.”

Maupin hopes the audience leaves feeling “empowered, feeling and learning to, to move past things.”

Firehouse Theatre’s “Preludes” kicks off tomorrow, May 23, and will run through June 10. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased here.

Step Into The 1920s with Into the Woods’ Souvenir

‘Preludes’ Musical Premieres at Firehouse Theatre Wednesday