FringeNYC 2004 Reviews - Page 8

Young Zombies in Love
reviewed by Maggie Cino

Young Zombies in Love lets us know that people can be just as apathetic as zombies sometimes, and that even zombies can live happily ever after if they have true love. But the theme, as with most things about Damian Hess's script, is mostly a vehicle for a whole lot of fun—something everyone involved in this musical realizes. The dancers are acrobatic masters of spatial awareness (there are a lot of them on a reeeaaallllyyy small stage) and the choreography gives them lots of opportunities for leaping and kicking.  The script also provides outlines for bold comic characters that the cast explodes. The show’s tribute to Beavis and Butthead are Jimmy and Jamie Fodder, identical twins who look nothing alike. Jeffery Doornbos and Graham Stevens have as much fun playing these parts as we do watching them. Kevin Townley steals the show as Professor Itsucolt, Tombtown High's manically intense Professor of Popular Metaphysics. His song, "Flee! (A Brief History of Zombieism in Western Thought)" is the show stopper, with ten dancers flipping and flying around the tiny stage. And all this by the third scene!

Unfortunately, after this point things begin to flatline. They pick up again whenever the Fodder brothers are onstage, especially during their big number "Zombie King." Another high point is "Ballad of a Lonely Commando," sung by Justin R.G. Holcomb as the S.W.A.T. King. But once the basic zombie facts are established, we’re willing to skip the problems of Nick and Lu, the ingénue couple, who are having trouble getting it on because Nick is afraid they won't be together forever. True love is hard when one of you is undead, but we want to see what happens with the zombies. I won’t give away the ending, but I will tell you Nick finally gets what he wants, and really, so do we—an hour and a half of genuine entertainment.

The Only Thing Straight is My Jacket
reviewed by Sharon Fogarty

Rarely do we appreciate the fact that many romantic love songs from musicals were written by gay male composers and lyricists to their lovers, only to show up on stage sung by a woman. Imagine if you dare, the cumulative rage of these numerous lovers of Andrew Lippa, Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim and others, snowballed into one complete nut case, Micah!, portrayed pathologically by Micah Bucey. The Only Thing STRAIGHT is my JACKET, written by Paul Hagen, is a musical review of ten well-chosen songs, complete with hilarious monologues expressing their homosexual inspirations. Under the Hitchcockian direction of Paul Mazza, Micah! enters screaming, flinching, choking, and twitching, complete with straight-jacket, guards, and a psychiatrist. His fierce, head-to-toe-clenched, explosive energy lasts for almost the entire play. Accompanied by the sweet mute Drew? (Andrew Edwards) at the piano, whose musical comebacks are astonishingly understandable, Micah! proclaims himself as a "Homosexual Immortal" who has suffered for eons the heart-ripping thievery of women who has stolen songs that were meant for him.

Bucey keeps the audience riveted—like rodents pinned to electrodes and forced to watch bad TV—with one eye on the nearest exit. Although the text is, well, hysterical, I felt the audience was heavily concerned as to the well-being of this actor, who actually draws blood from his own neck with his fingernails while serenading an audience member. This might have been an accident but, when splashed, it looked and felt like real blood, sweat, and tears—oh, and enough hair goop to hold the moon in orbit.

About two-thirds into the play, Micah! gets a welcome shot in the ass by his shrink, performed to perfection by Briana Mandel, and once he is sedated, we finally see the beauty that is Micah Bucey. An angel of gayness with an endearing high baritone voice, a compassionate and generous solo performer, particularly in his dreamy rendition of Menken and Ashman’s "Somewhere That’s Green."

If you don’t mind the schizophrenic presentation and the basic danger involved in being nuzzled by a psycho, you’ll enjoy the demonic "Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)" by Cole Porter, a virtuoso "Losing My Mind" by Stephen Sondheim, and the supernatural "Tom" by Michael John LaChiusa.

Perhaps there's a more sugarcoated way to relay this social dilemma than this Liberace-on-acid approach, but if Bucey has the calories and arteries to run this show beyond the Fringe, I could see a handsome following of similarly jacketed rebels. It's very funny and the audience really bonded, especially out of fear for the poor, sweet girl in the front row of the audience who Micah! pretended to strangle during one of his more out-of-control moments.

Comedeus
reviewed by Ross Chappell

In Comedeus, Andy Ross has created a manic, playful nightmare. This one-man performance is as bizarre and frenzied as it is funny. The audience repeatedly looked at each other while they were laughing as if to say, “Is this actually happening, or I am going to wake up soon?” I’d ask that the show be twice as long, but I fear poor Andy Ross would have a coronary before the end.

His bio touts that he “has been battling traditional theatre” for quite some time. If this show is representative of his work (and it seems to be), then he has been fighting the good fight. The performance is loosely his story of Comedeus (god of laughter) being exiled by Trutheus (god of realism). The story is only half the point of the performance, perhaps not even half the point. His riotous comedy—including meditating bunnies and interpretive dance to Debbie Gibson—is the real star of the show. He plays multiple roles and is fabulous as both comic and straight man. Granted, his straight-man moments are only seconds long, but he is incredible as his own foil.

Extemporaneous humor is evident throughout, as are Ross’s occasional ad lib and improv moments. He invades the audience several times during the show; sometimes hyper, sometimes disturbingly quiet. He also delivers his own interpretation of the Creation myth (licking the rib and tossing it aside after it has been pulled from his body). In one moment of over-acted despair, he asides “My Meisner training is showing through,” then proceeds to mock-cry as he repeats “My mother is dead; my mother is dead; my mother is dead” to motivate the mock tears.

The soundtrack for the show includes Madonna, B52’s, Marvin Gaye, and Michael Jackson. The Creation music? “Eye of the Tiger,” of course. Through it all, he uses nothing more than a bottle of water, a folding chair, a scarf, and a black spandex suit that covers everything but his face. I could recount more, but the humor just doesn’t translate. You have to see it in person.

Though special lighting really isn’t necessary, the spectacle they have put together is phenomenal, and it supports the show wonderfully. The sound is also executed quite effectively.

This type of high-energy show generally requires a large audience to really work. I was astounded that he pulled the show off beautifully with an audience of no more than 15 or so. Add to that a single point (a death scene) when he portrays an incredibly human moment. This entire performance is a testament to just how talented Andy Ross is.

Martha & Me
reviewed by Joe LaRue

The mere words “Martha Stewart” and “musical” are enough to pique an audience’s curiosity, as evidenced by the already sold-out run of Martha & Me: A Musical. While overlong, the show features a talented cast, witty songs, and a simplistic but cute story.

Rather than deal with Martha herself, the writers (book by Sunny Dahlia Turner, music and lyrics by Robert Rokicki) instead focus on one woman’s obsession with Martha, and how that obsession wreaks havoc on a family who just wants to eat something on Thanksgiving. We get the standard family: son home from college with a “big secret,” crotchety old uncle, outsider teenage sibling, and dad who just wants to watch football. Add into the mix the neighbor kids and a black couple who seem tossed in only to punctuate a couple second act jokes.

As Betsey, Jennifer Allen finds endless comic variety in her nearly psychotic portrayal of a mother whose only source of stability is Martha’s enduring guidance. Allen has a stellar voice, and begins the show on the perfect note as she asks Martha to bless the potatoes that will be mashed into her Thanksgiving dinner.

The press notes bill the show as “a dark satire,” but only Allen’s performance matches that description. She is so strong in her comic mania that the other actors do not seem to be in the same play—they flit about her in what amounts to a domestic sitcom’s “very special episode.” Perhaps with stronger choices, director Adam Levi could have infused the show with a clearer tone.

Martha & Me provides only enough engaging material to warrant a one-act chamber piece. The second act loses its focus on Betsey in order to give each of the dinner guests their own song. While each song is tuneful and well sung, especially those performed by Bobbi Owens and Eric Millegan, they take us away from the core of the story. The best songs are those that tap into and skewer our fascination with the Cult of Martha. Allen provides a comic powerhouse finish in which she wails “Where are you now, Martha?” It is a moment that nearly restores the evening’s previous meanderings.

Odysseus Died from AIDS
reviewed by Tim Cusack

AIDS is so terrible and the ravages it visits upon the body so incomprehensible, that it’s wholly understandable that artists would be tempted to clean it up a little for public consumption: Show too much and the artist risks being accused of exploitation; show nothing and the artist is telling a lie. Stephen J. Svoboda valiantly struggles with this task in his play Odysseus Died fromAIDS. That the virus ultimately gets the best of him is yet one more reminder that, twenty-plus years into the epidemic, the reality of AIDS can still do an end run around our best attempts to turn it into art.

Elliot Hayes (John Bixler), once a promising literature student at Columbia University, was diagnosed with HIV, and in a panic, left school and moved back in with his domineering mother, Margaret (Ariana Shore). Now ten years later he has suddenly begun to exhibit signs of brain damage. He obsessively writes down every word he hears, and his speech has become afflicted with a type of aphasia. The diagnosis: a brain lesion, giving him just a short time to live. He is admitted to the hospital and quickly becomes part of the community of AIDS patients who live there full-time.

Another effect of the lesion, however, is to make him impulsive. So now, after a lifetime of careful behavior, he begins to act out in ways he never would have before. He courts the cute boy (Adam Perabo) dying in a near-by room, and he conspires with this mother to break the hospital rules so that he can give one of his fellow patients, Maha (Maha McCain), a trip to McDonald’s on her birthday. Paralleling all of this is Homer’s tale of Odysseus and his journey home. Elliot is the Greek hero, and his mother, fellow patients, and healthcare providers take turns filling the roles of his crew and the gods and monsters they encounter.

Svoboda, unfortunately, falls down on two fronts. First, it’s hard to swallow the given circumstances of the world he’s created. Because no one in the play actually appears ill or debilitated, and they all seem to have free run of the hospital, one can’t understand why they haven’t all been discharged. Secondly, and more importantly, Odysseus is the ultimate survivor. Elliot’s mission, as we’re told several times, is to lead his “crew” to death. The wily Greek of legend would have been perplexed by this submission to fate.

Still, as a director Svoboda gets some lovely performances out of his cast, most notably Perabo, McCain, and Brett Friedman, as a straight guy slowly going blind and in denial about his condition. At the end, when the entire cast assembles in white to sail off into the unknown on a hospital bed, it would take a heart far more calcified than mine not to be moved.

Two Johns
reviewed by David DelGrosso

(Note: As no program was provided at the performance, and there has been no reply to my request for one since, I can only refer to the actor in this play as “the actor”.)

There is an intriguing play to be had in the dramatic pairing of John Wilkes Booth and John Brown. Each holds a theatrical resonance—the abolitionist Brown used terrorist tactics in his war against slavery, the assassin Booth sought regime change. Unfortunately, Michael Dempsey’s Two Johns is not that play.

This one-man show presents a young John Wilkes Booth trying to escape the shadow cast by his older and more successful brother, Edwin. Booth speaks not to us, but to himself in front of us, in a tirade of complaints. The expository style reminded me of an animatronic Hall of Presidents character coming to life: we are given facts and tidy summations as Booth reminds himself of important names and events. The script is entirely vernacular—Booth refers to his acting engagements as “gigs,” calls Philadelphia “Philly,” and once enters (as if coming offstage from a performance) shouting, “Thank you Richmond! Good night!”

After a great deal of time about Booth’s career anxiety, the second John enters the evening. Booth witnesses the execution of John Brown and, well, becomes possessed by his spirit. And so the evening takes a turn. John Brown now speaks to us through Booth. Like the actor’s portrayal of Booth there is no attempt at a Southern accent, but instead a kind of affected, Jacob Marley ‘I AM DEAD’ sound which will differentiate the two characters. And, being dead, Brown has gained the power to see into the future. This allows Brown to start with some details of his life and times but then proceed to sound off on contemporary issues. Brown does not say much about slavery—the issue that he gave his life to oppose—before it is time to talk about irregularities in Florida, 41 shots, and “Mission Accomplished.” In the flurry I missed how John Lee Malvo and John Walker Lindh are involved, but I know they were mentioned. Like a Sunday morning news pundit, there doesn’t seem to be a single topic that the spirit of John Brown isn’t ready to discuss.

After being possessed by John Brown, Booth becomes inspired to write and perform a John Brown play. When no one wants to produce the play, another visit from John Brown’s spirit seems to provide Booth with the courage he needs to shoot the President. Though the evening ends with Booth’s miming his assassination of Lincoln, we have not heard Booth say much of anything about that president or his politics. After listening to so much railing against the present administration (by details though not by name) it makes me wonder which President Booth is meant to be shooting.

The actor struggles valiantly with this script. Though I would have been more impressed if the script were not actually in his hands.

How to Draw Mystical Creatures
reviewed by Neal Utterback

Are you afraid of the big, bad wolf?

Watch Ellen Margolis’s How To Draw Mystical Creatures and you might be. Margolis creates a vibrant portrait of two generations of parents as they discover the limits of faith, the frailty of love, and the power of love to heal and destroy.

Using a nonlinear structure, the play masterfully builds to a frightening climax, twisting and turning all the way. The script is dense with evocative imagery that explores the secret and sometimes dangerous fears of children and their parents. The text merges the real and the imaginary and shows us that most of us live somewhere precariously in the middle. It jumps through time and space; it introduces us to saints and sinners—all of whom are looking for a little peace. To give you any more of the plot details would compromise the wonderful job Margolis has done in layering this tragic mystery.

Directed with care by Michael D. Holmes, the staging does well to keep us on track as we leapfrog through the various story lines. With the help of Jonathan Barsness's scenic design, Holmes makes simple, economical use of the actors who, through well-executed minimalism, pare down the storytelling to its most essential.

All of the actors do a noble job with Margolis’s rich, poetic text. There are times when the performances are a tad presentational to my taste but they're nevertheless worthy of compliment. Special merit goes to David Michael Roth, whom we see grow from a sweet, mother-smothered child to a father himself who must undergo what no parent should.

In the all-too scary world in which we now live, a world where we are frequently on edge about our personal safety and the safety of our loved ones, Margolis’s beautiful and macabre play reminds us that the biggest, scariest wolf is the one in our heads.

Tomatoes on a Windowsill
reviewed by Pamela Butler

Welcome to Italy in America. Rita Andriello gives us an evening, an hour and twenty minutes of an evening, with her family. Her Nonna who is most comfortable expressing herself in Italian and can find the sweets no matter where they’re hidden; her patriarchal father, arch and commanding, in a melodramatic way; her eccentric aunts, her mother; her sisters; even her stoner younger brother—all are brought to life by Andriello’s memory and her remarkable ability to transform herself into each one of them.

Rita Andriello is an energetic lady from an extended Italian family that carries on the traditions from whence come all the clichés and stereotypes. Endless family arguments, noisy meals, Catholicism, opera, pasta, wine, and of course, tomato sauce. The recipe has been handed down from generation to generation of great women in the kitchen. Rita stirs her own sauce as the evening progresses, until it is perfection as the lights go down.

“Girls are like tomatoes,” she quotes her grandmother, her Nonna. It is the father who puts them on the windowsill, and it is the father who says when they’re ripe and ready to go into the salad of life. It doesn’t always work out that the father wants to admit when the tomatoes are ripe, and there seems to be a lot of push and pull if the tomato thinks she ripe but the father does not. Rita had the classic tough time with her dad, but she survived and did it her own way.

She carries on the vocal tradition of the family. He father wanted to sing opera but became a doctor instead. He wants his daughter to sing opera but she became a wife and mother instead. Now her children are grown and she has found a new mate who shares her love of theatre and music. Andriello’s husband, Patrick Feren, produces and directs this one-woman show, treating us to her fine stage persona and her wonderful voice. Although the show rambles, the way real family life rambles, Andriello is mysteriously captivating and I found myself just enjoying her presence on stage. Tomatoes on a Windowsill is an entertaining evening of pasta, opera, salad and sauce.

Decadance Vs. The Firebird--A Hip-Hop Ballet
reviewed by Tim Cusack

One of the pleasures of FringeNYC is the opportunity it presents to chart the growth of emerging theatre makers. A few years ago, I saw Jennifer Weber and her Decadance company present one of their first pieces in the Fringe. This year, I’m happy to report that they’re back and the work is better than ever. This time she’s chosen to deconstruct one of the iconic dances of the twentieth century: The Firebird. Created by two of the century’s great artistic mavericks, Stravinsky and Fokine, it’s a work that confronts the conventions of classical ballet. How fitting that, at the beginning of this new century, Weber should use it as a springboard for her own confrontation with both dance history and the challenges of being a female hip-hop artist today.

The scenario comes from a Russian folktale, but the setting is decidedly the contemporary streets of New York: While out hunting one day (or in this case graffiti tagging), Iva (Tomoko Onozawa) is led by the Storyteller (Taeko Koji) to the glittering Firebird (Keely Wright). She traps the Firebird and gets her to teach some of her signature moves. In exchange for freedom, the Firebird gives her a magic bandanna that will protect her from harm. She meets an Evil Spirit (Angela Crain) and through her skills (and the help of the Firebird) defeats her and her crew.

Clearly this is not the most sophisticated plot ever devised, but Weber fills the simple story with incredibly sophisticated movement. Venturing beyond the lock-and-pop of the standard music video, Weber creates variety and delineates character by adding ballet, modern, and jazz moves into the mix. Witty touches abound: an intricately choreographed basketball game complete with referee making elaborate hand signals; the Firebird’s wings represented by the kind of Chinese fans club kids like to twirl on the dance floor; a fight where the music slows down every time a punch lands. She also finds in hip-hop hand gestures the perfect update for the pantomime of classical dance. But the most provocative touch is the lack of men on stage. Flipping the script on the usual ballet dynamic involving a handsome prince confronted by an exotic female other, Weber creates a world of tough, competitive women.

Her performers are uniformly terrific, but fittingly the evening belongs to its title character. Wright is a phenomenal dancer, able to smolder with street-level fierceness one moment and flame out into a gorgeous extended line the next. Long may she blaze.

Live Coverage
reviewed by Judith Jarosz

How many Americans know the difference between Muslim and Islamic, and whether we are actually at war with Iraq or not? How far will the media go to put a spin on any subject, no matter how disturbing, for publicity? These are some of the issues addressed by young playwright Sharyn Rothstein in Live Coverage.

The play starts out with an average middle-aged couple, Allison and Bob Martin, watching a newscast on CNN. Allison (Dawn McGee) sees what she thinks may be a woman being raped in the background and, horrified, wonders what she can do. After alerting the media, Bob and Allison go on a tumultuous journey that drags them through the talk show circuit, into the center of a reality show called “Live Coverage: Name That Rapist,” and ultimately takes Allison to the middle East. The play comments on the lack of understanding that a lot of people have about world events, each other, and who controls what in the world, by showing us greedy media executives, young people in dead end jobs, and a Middle Eastern couple, all reacting to these events.

Director Lisa Marie Meller has gathered a large, very impressive cast of seasoned actors, all of whom understand the comic style. Dawn McGee and Jim Barry do a really nice job as Allison and Bob Martin, the tormented American couple. Mary Goggin and Alex Emanuel are hilarious as media executives Olive and Oscar. Michael Quinlan is superbly understated as newscaster Joel Steinberg, and Kurt Everhart provides a star turn as Sir Henry, a camel riding, “ex-British, ex-homosexual” now living in the Middle East. Noah Peters, Jeremy Bohen, Vivien Landau, Adair Moran, Jordana Mollick, Michelle Dingoor, and Donald Rizzo, all do fine work

The costumes by Brian Lady, the lighting design by Eric Dente, the set design by Camille Connolly, and the sound design by Derek Wright are nicely thought-out and superior to most of my past “fringe” experiences.

The piece runs a bit long and could use an intermission, but it is intriguing enough to make you wonder what subject Rothstein will tackle next. I thought it was a nice touch that they had a New York State voter registration form inside the program.

Nicky Goes Goth
reviewed by Robin Reed

Pop culture freaks me out just a little bit. The concept of “celebrity” and our country’s voyeuristic obsession with living vicariously through the sell-your-soul-to-the-devil glamour of those whose faces slather the cover of magazines and TV makes me wonder where we’ve come to as a society. Yet somehow, whether you watch TV and read the Enquirer or not, you can hardly get around these days without inadvertently knowing a little bit about whether or not Ashley and Mary Kate had dinner, who Britney married and for how long, or that Paris Hilton made a movie. Do we need a piece of theater about the fodder with which we are inundated daily? I didn’t really think so, but…

Sweet holy mother of all things gay is this show funny!

And I’m not just talking funny "ha ha." Get ready for full-on edge-of-your-seat belly laughs! But be careful: the wit and priceless one-liners fly at you so rapid-fire that if you chortle too loud you just might miss one.

We are led through the world Nicky Hilton’s Goth transformation by Aaron (the adorable “tour guide/cosmetic magician” who came out to his parents over Instant Messenger—ha!) who is in sick twisted obsessive love with Paris Hilton. Aaron shows his love and affection by bronzing her until she looks like an overgrown Oompa-Loompa. Billy Eichner is perfect as Aaron—picture Jack from Will and Grace but with a firmer grasp on the present moment. Julie Lake gives Paris a genius dimwitted sensibility, and turns her from bitchy to saccharine-sweet on a dime. Whenever sister Nicky, played with just enough pout by Zoe Kazan, comes anywhere near to having a deep thought, real feeling, or impulse to not wear a halter top (hysterical!), Paris throws her to the ground and force-feeds her Doritos. And Shithead, the sniveling teen-angst-ridden Goth Guy, is played by the very funny (and cute in black lipstick) Michael Nathanson.

Also fantastic are Will Rogers and Derek Miller as Boomer and Christian  a pair of never-quite-got-over-how-cool-we-were-in-boarding-school dudes, and Anita Wlody as Shithead’s mom (who refuses to call her boy “Shithead”). But perhaps the most genius stroke of casting is in the role of the Dad, played by Heath Meriwether, the real-life father of the playwright. He is used sparingly and stunningly as Shithead’s drifting and absent father.

Playwright Elizabeth Meriwether does an excellent job of creating bold and absurd caricatures with just enough gumption to keep the whole piece very sharp, and director Shira Milikowsky keeps it all moving rapid-fire. It is the work of a fine director when things that shouldn’t work, i.e., screaming temper tantrums, hit just the right mark.

Hopefully the real Hilton sisters will grace FringeNYC and catch this piece. They might do well to take notes on where their senses of humor could use a lift.

You'll Have had Your Hole
reviewed by Martin Denton

Here's the set-up: Dex has been kidnapped by Docksey and Jinks, and is being held hostage in an abandoned recording studio. They've got his hands bound in leather cuffs which are chained to the ceiling; they take turns baiting him—Doxsey by threatening to have sex with Dex's girlfriend Laney, Jinks by threatening to have sex with Dex himself. When they pull the gag out of Dex's mouth, he curses and screams at them that he has powerful connections and they'll soon be dead; but in the remote, abandoned place where Dex finds himself, this is clearly just so much hot air. And the hopped-up Docksey and Jinks seem entirely inclined to make good on their promises...

This is You'll Have Had Your Hole, the profane nihilist drama by Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) that's being given its U.S. premiere by the Boomerang Theatre Company at FringeNYC. We spend the first third of the play in the dark, with Dex, as to exactly why Jinks and Doxsey have taken him captive and why they're exacting such a prolonged and tortuous revenge on him. When we do find out—and I'm really loathe to disclose it to you, because the revelation is the play's best surprise and its spine—we understand that we must feel at least a flicker of compassion for the assailants, even as we have been worried for the well-being of the victim, who turns out to be less innocent that we had at first supposed.

The play is violent, edgy, and disturbing. Most of the words are of the four-letter variety (two of them, one referring to the sex act and another referring to a woman's private parts, are used constantly, like battering rams). Much of the discussion focuses on sex and death, although there's also a recurring argument about the relative merits of George Benson versus Marvin Gaye that adds some much-needed levity and humanity to the proceedings. Indeed, the decaying humanity of two young men at the ends of very short, badly frayed ropes is the meat of this play; their story is terribly sad.

Director Frank Kuzler offers a sharp and generally fearless take on Welsh's sensationalistic drama, staging it with real brio in a most inhospitable venue (the new and, one hopes, not-yet-renovated Collective: Unconscious space), on a "stage" that is actually a banquette. The four actors—all of whom look, unfortunately, at least ten years older than the 20-something characters they portray—all do game work, with Zack Calhoon (Dex) spending most of the play's running time in the aforementioned handcuffs and Ian Pfister (Jinks) having to change costumes in front of the audience several times; and all of them pressing hard to master a difficult Scottish dialect that we can (usually) decipher. The standout in the company is Mac Brydon, who makes us want to know more about Docksey. This raw, flinty play is certainly not for everybody, but Kuzler and his collaborators are giving it a fair hearing.