FringeNYC 2004 Reviews - Page 9

A is for Aardvark
reviewed by Ross Chappell

Don't be put off by the blurb-y description of A is for Aardvark (reclusive millionaire's pet girl falls for new male nurse)—I have rarely been so surprised and so captivated by a production. This show is an astonishingly poignant and direct look at the prisons and cages of everyday life, the ones we create and the ones which are imposed upon us by others. It is also delightfully witty and is incredibly fun to watch. If you can imagine these two traits so intertwined that you can hardly tell one from the other, then you begin to understand the gem that Jess Lacher has created.

Lacher’s dark comedy begins with a mother’s gut-wrenching tale of a missing daughter. And then, moments later, the audience is cackling with laughter as we meet the heroine of this play, a young girl who believes she is an aardvark, and the mostly-mad millionaire who keeps her as a pet. It is difficult to say which is funnier, the aardvark’s antics or the millionaire’s lunacy. But none of it feels gratuitous. The aardvark clearly has more to her story. The millionaire knows he is mad. Lacher’s brilliance is in the way she keeps the audience laughing during the painstakingly slow realization that our aardvark wasn’t captured in a prison, she escaped from one. The multiple layers of metaphor become apparent only as the story progresses and the depth of the characters is revealed.

As genuinely remarkable as Lacher’s script is, it simply could not survive a mediocre cast—all of its cleverly disguised subtlety would be lost. Laura Grey (Aardvark) is utterly stunning. The transition of her character is breathtaking in the end. She is as comfortable with physical comedy as she is with evoking deep emotion with little more than her facial expressions. Her rapid-fire emotional changes and line delivery are fabulous.

D. Michael Berkowitz (the millionaire) is a marvel. His delivery of lines like “Well, I can’t drink real liquor, I’m almost entirely insane” had the entire audience hooting with laughter. His physicality, voice, and complete possession by this character are spectacular and had me totally enthralled. He, too, did a superb job of eliciting both laughter and empathy.

Sarah Brown's work as the mother is beautiful. Maureen Towey’s direction is admirable given the constraints of the space. Her careful pacing demonstrates a clear understanding of the author’s intent.

Simply put: see this show as soon as possible.

The End of the Line
reviewed by Stan Richardson

Dread is the feeling evoked by The End of the Line—an overly-earnest, but genuinely eerie look at the cost of human connection, conceived and produced by Isaac Everett and written by Jessica Hammer. Set in Manhattan (a “city of strangers” that prides itself on the, at times begrudging, camaraderie of its citizens) on a subway train (specifically the “E” train) not coincidentally bound for the World Trade Center, Hammer’s play seems to be interested in the risks of contact in a time where intimacy can so easily lead to infection, attention to attack.

On this particular evening, the gawky and gregarious Amy, an out-of-towner who is here to clean out the apartment of her late, estranged grandmother, meets the cynical and cautious Rebecca, an out-of-work(er) who has recently been fired from her low-level TV executive job because of her “inappropriate” interest in the subjects of one of their documentaries (those suddenly plucked from life by SARS, a disease that now seems almost a phantasm). The two women have a series of improbably familiar exchanges with one another and with other passengers on the train (the rest of the characters are represented only by voices), interspersed with monologues to the audience about their pasts, their reactions to each other, etc.

The sincerity of much of the dialogue as well as the knowledge that a late evening train ride from West 4th Street to WTC does not (in theory) take 30 minutes (this is an approximation, subtracting all soliloquies) requires a suspension of disbelief, but the sense of impending doom is palpable and what happens at the end of the line is as creepy as the characters promise.

Hammer, her director Brian J. Soliwoda, their two actresses, Mim Granahan (Amy) and Melissa D. Shaw (Rebecca), and their designers (in particular sound designer Isaac Everett and illustrator Abigail Estes), have each played (and played well) a critical role in creating a portrait of modern urban terror—a visceral fright that transcends our understanding of all the prominent threats.

Live! With Pascale & Chantal
reviewed by Fred Backus

If you’ve gotten into the habit of thinking crass commercialism, shameless celebrity worship, insipid product plugs, and tabloid news are the exclusive domain of American pop culture, Live! With Pascale & Chantal will remind you otherwise. In this parody of Lebanese talk shows, former Miss Lebanon Pascale (Leila Gazale) and “Beirut’s top reporter” Chantal (Jana Zenadeen), give advice to callers, interview celebrities, and even promote a clothing line made of “100% elastical stretch” with superb comic timing, sharp wit, and, of course, chic outfits. And if, like me, you’re coming to this show without prior experience with the ins and outs of Lebanese television—have no fear. Director Maha Chehlaoui and her excellent cast offer plenty of references that are all too familiar, with humor that is very accessible. Live! With Pascale & Chantal could almost be a parody of a morning talk show on any of the major networks in the United States.

Almost, but not quite, and that’s what makes Live! With Pascale & Chantal even more interesting. In many cases, Americanized consumer culture doesn’t appear to fit all that seamlessly with traditional Middle Eastern values. This is evident in simple adaptations of American colloquialisms, as when Pascale refers to hearing things “through the grape leaves,” and in more unsettling conclusions, like equating the use of tampons with losing one’s virginity. The result is a sort of cultural Frankenstein that adds insight and even more humor to an already funny show.

Afaf Shawwa gives a wonderful performance as the Egyptian movie star Aziza, and Demond Robertson provides an excellent straight man as the program’s first guest, a Harvard sociology professor painstakingly trying to solve every caller’s problems with Dr. Phil-like solutions. But Pascale and Chantal shut him down quickly—this is Lebanese television, not The Oprah Winfrey Show—and offer less nuanced and perhaps more culturally appropriate solutions. In doing so, Live! With Pascale & Chantal makes fun not only of Lebanese culture for clumsily aping America, but also of those who see the Third World as the helpless victim of cultural imperialism. American consumer culture may be pernicious, but our sassy hosts serve to caution us not to be too patronizing in seeing the world as our victims. Two can play at exploitation, and Live! With Pascale & Chantal reminds us that American forms can be used to uphold values and mores that may be at odds with our own, and in surprising and sometimes hilarious ways.

The Gathering Room
reviewed by David Fuller

The Gathering Room, a new musical based on the novel of the same name by Colby Rodowsky, is one of the FringeNYC offerings at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University. The book is a collaborative effort among Valerie Kingston, Becca Bandiere, and Janice Goldberg, who also directs. The music is by Bandiere and Jimmy Flynn.

The audience is greeted with an especially evocative sound design and an arrangement of five very individual chairs, each which you just know will have its own story. As the show begins we learn that the chairs are each associated with a certain spirit who inhabits the environs around the gathering room. The room itself is part of a Gatehouse on the grounds of the Edgemont Cemetery. The corporal inhabitants of the Gatehouse consist of a mother, Serena, her husband Ned, and their child Mudge. During the course of the performance we learn why the family has taken refuge in the Gatehouse for the past three years, why Mudge has taken to cavorting with his ghost-friends, and what it takes for the family to get out and on with Life.

Dramaturgically, there is a major problem here: we do not receive sufficient expository information about the foregoing to keep us interested. It isn’t until the very end of the play that we learn the answers to these questions. And by the end, I mean literally during the finale, in which the authors have tacked on a flashback device to explain everything. The lack of information is annoying—we are not told enough about the characters during the first three fourths of the play to make us care about them.

This production has not as yet found its musical voice. At times the style is 1990s Broadway, with lots of sung prose. Sometimes it is operatic, with recitatives. One number, “Reporter Tango,” is a typical American musical comic duo number—it is well-choreographed, very well-executed, and entertaining. But it’s the only one I liked.

The cast is as a whole very good, with standout performances by Dashiell Katz as Mudge, Kevin T. Collins as Jenkins/Jack Fogarty, and Mary Ann Conk as Frieda/Mrs. Lovejoy.

The subject matter, coping with grief, is full of possibilities. The material just doesn’t achieve the aspirations of the authors. Perhaps there are too many authors’ voices? Too many ideas?

Apocalypse! Book One
reviewed by Alexander Zalben

One thing you can say for sure: We’re not in the middle of a political comedy shortage. Although I haven’t done a specific count, out of the 200 or so shows in the FringeNYC Festival, there are probably 3000 about how bad George Bush is at being President.

So what makes Apocalypse! Book One, a comedy show by the ETC… Theatre Troupe about what happens once Jesus joins the race against George Bush, worth your time?

Well, the acting, for one thing. The six-member cast amiably plays parts ranging from the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse to prominent press figures to the aforementioned Bush and Jesus, with wit and commitment. Robert Michael McClure is particularly good with very specific characters, including a soulful Jesus and a businessman who decides to be perfectly honest with his employees now that the apocalypse is nigh. Gene Perelson is also very good in a variety of goofy character roles. And although I’m not the hugest fan of impressions, he does a George Bush that doesn’t seem to be a knock-off of Will Ferrell’s iconic performance.

But the standout in the cast is Anne Johnson, who brings a brilliant comic subtlety to every role she plays. Whether playing a low-key Pestilence or a conservative news announcer, Johnson steals every scene she’s in.

The one quibble I have with the show, and it’s a big one, is that for taking on such weighty topics as the upcoming presidential election, religion, and the state of the world, there’s no real depth of analysis. As an audience, we’re already aware that Bush mispronounces words. That Cheney is evil. That the media spins things out of control. The best bits here are the small moments, where common people are faced with the threat of apocalypse. But these moments are too few and far between.

So where does that leave us at the end of the day(s)? Political comedy may not be in short supply, but good performances are. Go for the comedy, stay for the Anne Johnson.

Dementia Presidentia
reviewed by Anthony Pennino

The Curan Repertory Company is presenting Dementia Presidentia by Jules Tasca at this year’s FringeNYC Festival. The play looks to satirize our current Chief Executive’s obsession with bringing his religious beliefs into the political sphere. Though the subject is rife with comic possibilities, Dementia Presidentia widely misses the mark.

For those familiar with the films that have spun-off from Saturday Night Live skits, the flaws of this play will become readily apparent. What could have been an amusing skit for five minutes has been dragged into a 90-minute-long one-joke story. Tasca liberally peppers his play with jokes and one-liners that, for the most part, fall flat. The playwright seems to be aiming to create his own Dr. Strangelove for the George W. Bush years, but his piece lacks that earlier work’s wit, keen satirical eye, structure, and, most importantly, growing sense of dread.

Dementia Presidentia follows President Arnold Bosch (a talented Tom Walker struggles with a poorly constructed part) who has gone crazy and believes he is the chosen of God. He aims nuclear missiles at every city in the world—including those on U.S. soil—because, well, that is where terrorists might be. His staff work quietly to get him committed without tipping off the electorate to his mental state during an election year. Though Tasca has named this president Arnold Bosch, the character bears no resemblance—real or satirical—to either the current President or Governor of California.

The direction by Ken Terrell does not help matters. The cast is under-rehearsed, the staging is static, the comic timing is off, and the sound cues are awkward and poorly thought out.

Not all is lost, however. President Bosch dreams that he has encounters with Jesus of Nazareth (Max Demers) in a heavenly cafeteria. Here, Tasca’s satire has some bite, and the writing is tight. In these scenes, Walker’s comic talents can truly shine, and he has an admirable foil in Demers’s frat-boy Jesus. Also worthy of mention are Jeremy Goren and Kathleen Ferman as the Vice President and his wife, respectively.

Assyrian Monkey Fantasy
reviewed by Tim Cusack

At the heart of Assurbanipal Babilla’s paired solo pieces, performed under the title Assyrian Monkey Fantasy, is the loneliness of exile in all its permutations—from one’s country, from one’s self, from the touch of another human being. In some ways it is the ideal subject for a one-person show. What could be a more apt metaphor for our existential singularity than a lone performer isolated against the black expanse of the stage? Babilla’s title, however, hints at other, more politicized meanings. As he explains in his program note, “Assyrian Monkey” is a sly reference to himself, the image of a monkey evoking both his Chinese birth sign and the racist slurs of his adopted country. (Babilla is an immigrant from Iran.) The “Fantasy” part is a bit trickier (as befits a monkey). While nothing overtly phantasmagorical happens, in both pieces one can’t help but wonder if Babilla is teasing out alternative versions of his own life—even when he appears simply to be telling the truth.

In the first piece, “Confessions of a Latter Day Temple Prostitute,” Babilla plays Dora DuBarry (or is it Dew Berry?), a luscious megastar of the silver screen. In this alternate universe, he is not only an actress but world-famous, gorgeous, and super, super rich. As Dora waits for a man who never arrives, she complains about her manicurist, reenacts scenes from her famous movies, and relates stories of her disastrous attempts to connect sexually with men. One encounter ends with her would-be lothario dead drunk in her lap; another with a piece of rough trade merely dead. She has given up an authentic sexual life for a partial existence as a mediated permanent sexual fantasy—one that can never be fulfilled.

In the second piece, “My Windows in Brooklyn or Welcome to America,” Babilla again plays a sexual fantasy, only this time he’s playing himself. This strange, but purportedly true, story tells of the night his 80-year-old next-door neighbor, Mrs. Anderson, paid him an unexpected visit. This is in the mid-‘80s, while he was lying low from the INS because he was an illegal immigrant from a country that was a sworn enemy of the United States. She begs him to leave Brooklyn because his presence has mesmerized her husband and is destroying her marriage. That the piece ends with him doing the unthinkable—phoning the police and thereby putting his residency status at risk—is just the culmination of a string of ironic reversals that render his story both good theatre and a little too good to be true. Whose fantasy was this really—Mr. Anderson’s? Babilla’s? Or maybe it belongs to the hunky upstairs neighbor who comes to his aid at the end. After all, the story must have had a happy ending—otherwise Babilla wouldn’t be here to tell it.

Geek Love
reviewed by Lee Ramsey

Geek Love is an adaptation of Katherine Dunn's cult classic novel from the 80s. It's the story of the Binewski family and the rise and fall of their traveling sideshow, The Binewski Family Fabulon.

Al Binewski, a showman, meets Crystal Lil, a very beautiful and refined geek (she's kind of a Gypsy Rose Lee who bites the heads off chickens and drinks their blood). Al and Crystal Lil get the idea to breed their own freak show attractions by taking all sorts of dangerous drugs during Crystal Lil's pregnancies. Along with several mistakes that are kept in jars (pickled punks), they produce Olympia, a bald albino-hunchback; Auturo the flipper boy, a bald wheelchair-bound man with flippers instead of arms and legs who performs in a fish tank; Iphigenia and Electra, a set of piano-playing Siamese-twins; and Fortunato (Randy Havens) a six-foot-tall five-year-old with telekinetic powers.

During the course of the play, Auturo becomes the leader of a cult of hundreds who all cut off their limbs to be like him; a baby with a tail is born out of incest; a strange woman named Miss Lick finds underprivileged women whom she maims in order to make them realize their potential; another baby named Mumpo the Mountain, a huge creature that never stops eating, is born out of what might be considered the rape of the Siamese twins by a huge limping, flatulating man with no face; a reporter comes to the side show bearing his testicles in a jar; and there's a huge fire.

There is very rich source material here, to say the least; unfortunately the adapters Aileen Loy and Mike Katinsky try to do way too much of it. They stick so closely to the novel (and they are obviously very passionate about it) that the plot just becomes incomprehensible. The play lasts three hours. Loy also directs, but the pace is very slow and there are long and unnecessary blackouts between scenes.

The large cast seems inexperienced and under-rehearsed and some speak so quickly and have such poor diction that we become even more confused. But there are some standouts: Anessa Ramsey does a very nice job as Olympia, who also serves as our narrator; Jeffrey Zwartjes is good as Arturo the flipper boy, though he doesn't have the charisma to pull off the second half of the play when he's elevated to the position of megalomaniac religious leader; and Loy is a lot of fun as Doc P, sort of a cross between Selma Diamond and Harvey Fierstein.

There are a lot of nice special effects, but some of the technical aspects of the play don't seem to be working. In this instance, and under Fringe conditions, I think simplicity would have been the best bet.

Geek Love is an ambitious project and it has a lot of potential, but it needs to be refined and reshaped so that it can be understood by its audience.

Daddy was the Biggest Stage Mother in Texas
reviewed by Eric Pliner

As a piece of reflective autobiography, Jack Dyville’s Daddy Was the Biggest Stage Mother in Texas is certainly heartfelt. Hopefully, revisiting his experiences as the showbiz-loving son of a well-meaning but hard-pushing father proved therapeutic for the playwright. Unfortunately, even the most sincere experiences of resignation and love do not make a successful story in and of themselves; as a piece of theatre, Daddy doesn't work.

Dyville’s writing is full of the sort of clichéd lines that typify either inexperience or unintentional camp. Halfway through the production, Dyville’s script has actors suddenly begin to address the audience. The play’s primary conflict doesn’t make sense: the father and child ostensibly clash because they want different things for the son, yet in this script, both seem primarily driven by the same thing—wanting Jack to succeed as an entertainer. And the overall story itself, while undoubtedly important and moving to those who lived it, feels like the sort of coming out tale that was played out (and much better played) in theatre and film even ten years ago.

Director Joan Eileen Murray stages virtually every detail completely literally. Her choices, especially having the actors repeatedly mime opening and closing doors and windows, are largely distracting, and add little to the script.

As Daddy, actor Ron Palillo (best known as Arnold Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter) is a sputtering mess, bungling lines and alternating between his familiar Brooklyn accent and one that’s pseudo-Southern (but occasionally sounds British). His most emotional scenes convey feelings that don’t seem to match with his facial expressions, and he appears occasionally disoriented throughout.

The other actors seem to do the best they can with what they’re given. Actor Keith Everett, playing Jack from childhood to adulthood, is a respectable tap dancer. As Mother, Kelly K. Griffith works hard to maintain some authenticity and sincerity, and she does a solid job. And in six different—and mostly comic—roles, Theresa Rose manages to create a larger number of convincing and entertaining characters than the rest of the cast combined.

In fairness, there are a few amusing moments, and it would be wrong to discuss Daddy Was the Biggest Stage Mother in Texas without re-asserting how heartfelt a work it appears to be. Jack Dyville has clearly lived a full life, and it might be exciting to see him re-work this piece as a solo performance (that, with his apparent wealth of talents, he might think about starring in). That way, these undoubtedly moving experiences could be shared directly from the source, the undertone of sincerity wouldn’t be lost, and the author’s real personality might shine through. I have a hunch that that sort of approach might make Daddy proud.

Existentialism: The Ride
reviewed by Hieu Tran

It is strange to see how a play written by two people (Ronald X. Pesh and David Dvorscak) and directed by five (Pesh, Dvorscak, his wife Doreen Murray Dvorscak, Jerry Sipp, and Richard Kirkwood) could lose itself, not in a whirlpool of conflicting styles and ideas, but rather in the monotonous drone of a single style and idea. I was fairly excited to see the Existentialism: The Ride, spurred by Pesh's playful, subversive description. He wrote, “at the end of our play . . . you’ll probably be so inspired you’ll rush home, read all the Camus and Kierkegaard you can, then quit your job and hang out at a café all day . . . It’ll basically be a life-changing experience. How can you NOT go?” Oh, if only that humor had carried over to the show.

The play opens with Pesh walking onstage carrying a hula hoop. He stops, sits down inside the hula hoop, takes out a journal and begins writing “out-loud,” as the theatrical convention goes. Do I remember much of what he was saying? Not really, except to say that it had something to do with broad existentialist doctrines, intoned in an unwavering mock-scholastic style. Apparently he finds himself immersed in a self-imposed/metaphorical/arbitrary/socially-constructed pit, and throughout the play he encounters characters ranging from a ditzy woman to a Shakespearean swordsman to a wannabe gangsta, played interchangeably by the three remaining actors (David Dvorscak, Sipp, and Kirkwood). The point of all this, I suppose, is to hammer home the idea that everyone, as disparate as they may be from one other, similarly leads the same arbitrary existence. They impart their own meanings and significations to their lives, and outside of that there is nothing else. I think that’s the point, but I’m not sure.

Interspersed among these episodes are scenes delineating the rise of a mega-corporate power, lazily named McDisMart. Do I need to tell you how broad and unnuanced these boardroom sketches are? An executive and his two underlings (played again by Dvorscak, Sipp, and Kirkwood) scheme up ways to profit exorbitantly from the blind, consumerist tendencies of, well, the rest of us. Are there trenchant, satirical points to be made here? Of course; but the best satire pricks at our own awareness of our foibles artfully, deftly, and in an imaginative, multiplex manner—and not, as in the case of this play, in a dull, fixed, stabbing motion. The idea of Nazi concentration camp and jihad amusement park rides may seem funny—well, at least to some of us—but when the notion extends no further than that, when its sole point of humor comes from a broad, clichéd understanding of corporations as greedy and the masses as credulous, then the play is no longer being subversive. It’s merely preaching an unreflective, popular sentiment.

The Passion of George W. Bush
reviewed by David Fuller

The Passion of George W. Bush is for Republicans and Democrats alike. Yes, it makes fun of our current President. Yes, he is labeled an illiterate idiot and made out to be a puppet of Dick Cheney. Yes, the current administration is made out to be a conniving profit-motivated lot of scoundrels. But The Passion of George W. Bush has an actual dramaturgical throughline which ultimately paints “W” as a hero of the masses. I won’t go into detail here, as you ought to be surprised. And you ought to go. Now.

All the elements here coalesce into a fine production: the director Simon Hammerstein, the choreographer Dontee Kiehn, the rock combo led by Jana Zielonka, and the terrific cast—Craig Baldwin, Charles Browning, Chad Coudriet, Thursday Farrar, Michael Gladis, Jennifer Houseal, Shannon Polly, Jonathan Putterman and Colin Stokes. Kudos to the authors: book and lyrics by John Herin and Adam B. Mathias; music by Alden Terry. They have created an edgy satire with a message using a rock score that supports the material without overwhelming it.

This intermissionless romp is ninety minutes of pure fun. In this election season, it is a great reminder that we ought not take ourselves too seriously but that we ought to take our elections seriously.

Africa & Plumbridge
reviewed by Anthony Pennino

The musical Africa & Plumbridge is inspired by the life of its co-composer and co-lyricist Sue Carey. Africa, a black orphan, returns to the St. Agnes Orphanage, where she meets Sharon who eventually decides to adopt her.

The music for this show is terrific; Carey is joined by collaborators Karena Mendoza and Mark Janas. The upbeat score follows in the footsteps of other recent musicals that take inspiration from contemporary popular music such as rock, soul, r&b, and gospel.

The performances, for the most part, are excellent. The energetic and talented young cast keeps the audience engaged. Janeece Aisha Freeman is one of the standout performers in this year’s Fringe. As Africa, Freeman is always compelling. She invests every moment with power and depth of feeling. With her angelic voice, Freeman will be a Broadway star soon.

Freeman is ably supported by Liz McConahay as Sharon, Eric Anthony as Richie, and Monique Whittington in multiple roles.

The book by Jim Brochu, however, does not match the inspiration provided by the music. Much of the dialogue is given over to exposition. No compelling reason is provided for why everyone else on stage cares so much about Africa when they have only known her for five minutes. Africa, who should have most of the action, has to sit around for long stretches of time while others lecture her. The main conflict between Africa and Sharon—over a postponed promise—feels hollow. A villainous attorney (Jim Meade) has a ludicrous subplot about embezzling money from the orphanage; his character is as much a cliché as the moustache-twisting landlords from the silent movie era. And, finally, the characters of Sharon and Dr. Spense (Tim Ewing) are such desperately good, saintly, upper-middle-class white figures that they come across more as advertisements for LBJ’s Great Society than complex characters in a theatrical piece in 2004. The musical would be improved a great deal if these two characters were more flawed, more complicated, and more given to the uglier side of human emotions. But because they are so good, Africa & Plumbridge runs the risk of coming across as patronizing.

Nevertheless, the music and the star performances are worth the price of admission. And the story idea itself—Oliver! for the 21st century—has a great deal of appeal. With a few rewrites, the book may stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the other elements of this fine show.