FringeNYC 2005 Reviews - Page 6

A Different Woman
reviewed by Kimberly Wadsworth

In 1925, Texas-born schoolteacher Gertrude Beasley published her autobiography, My First Thirty Years, with a Paris publisher. Her book was banned in three countries, and most copies of the first and only printing were destroyed by U.S. customs. Beasley herself disappeared two years later when she was returning home from a failed attempt to republish the book in England. So it’s something of a miracle that Veronica Russell, creator of A Different Woman, even found the book in the first place, and together with director Perry Martin she is bringing Beasley’s story to an audience at last.

Gertrude’s story was banned for “reasons of obscenity.” While the events of her life—including child abuse, incest and bestiality, and an absent parent—aren’t as shocking today, they were still unquestionably brutal. Her very first memory was of one of her older brothers trying to rape her when she was only four. She was the ninth child out of thirteen, and her early childhood was spent in absolute straw poverty with an inexperienced farmer for a father and a mother who resented having so many children—and always made sure the children knew it. By the time Gertrude was in her teens, her mother had taken the children and left her father. Gertrude later won a scholarship to an exclusive girl’s school in Abilene; she threw herself into her studies to escape the chaos at home, and put herself through college in Texas and graduate work in Chicago.

Russell has adapted Gertrude’s story as a one-woman show, and at its outset plays her as a deeply bitter, cynical woman who is telling her story to exorcise some old ghosts. She retells some of the crueler parts of her story with an almost matter-of-fact casualness, or a “can you believe how dumb my family is” eye roll. But at times Russell lets the façade crack, and we see just how much pain Gertrude is still in; talking about her brother trying to beat her just gets a shrug, but talking about a letter from her father begging the family to come home makes her turn away from the audience to compose herself. In Russell’s adaptation, Gertrude returns again and again to the subject of her parents—even when she tries to completely change the subject, talking about how she discovered socialism, before long she is again talking about her mother’s reaction to her ideas. It’s soon clear that Gertrude’s story is really about her parents, and about her longing for what could have been instead of what was.

“It is perfectly clear to me that life is not worth living,” Gertrude wrote, “but it is also equally clear that life is worth talking about.” It is just as clear that her story deserves the audience it never got, and one hopes that through Russell’s work it will finally be heard.

The Great God Money
reviewed by Akia Squitieri

The Messenger Theatre Company is presenting The Great God Money, a witty and quirky musical comedy that asks the age old question: why are we so obsessive about money?

Audience members are given questionnaires about their views and ideas of money. The questionnaires are later worked into the show in inventive ways, by incorporating the questions into little improv segments that help the main character Dot select a route to find her way to the Great God Money.

Messenger’s grown up fairy tale invokes thoughts of  The Wizard of Oz as the show opens with our heroine Dot (Deb Heinig) rushing in late to her robotic office job. There she and her co-workers sing “The Game of Life” about, yes, the everyday struggles of life. Soon her office encounters a blackout, and Dot’s journey really begins. She ends up in a land of warped realities and begins her quest to find the Great God Money. Along the way she meets various zany characters who either help or hinder her mission. There’s the Debt Dragon (played by various members of the ensemble) which gradually (and cleverly) grows in size as the story progresses; the Accountant (Micah Freedman), who assesses but does not advise and collects tolls along the way; Cash (John Myers) and Cora Zone aka.Heart (Myles Goldin) who are ever battling it out in their attempts to help Dot and thwart each other; and of course her faithful side kicks, Gimmee (Chris Speziale) and Nat Enough (Rainbow Geffner).

As Dot’s adventure progresses she comes across the Land of Extreme Gender Roles, Comfortville, and the Hall of History (which includes a very skillful little slide show) all of which include remarkably witty moments and songs. Dot eventually comes full circle and learns the answers to some of her questions with the help of Great God Money.

Heinig is endearing and vulnerable as Dot, making the audience empathize and root for her. As Nat Enough, Rainbow Geffner is quirky and funny, and quite a joy to watch. Micah Freedman’s Accountant is delightfully fascinating and frustrating with his one-line answers and illogical requests. John Myers and Julia Beardsley O’Brien also have some stellar moments, particularly O’Brien, who has a lovely singing voice.

The cast is engaging and enthusiastic, and the ensemble is very strong in creating locations and character changes with the help of only props and a few costume pieces. Roxana Ramseur’s costume design is clever and inventive with subtle touches throughout the production. From the clock hat and shredded papers on Nat Enough to the Accountant’s silly horn-rimmed glasses, details are not overlooked.

The music and songs by Joey Clark, Barry Gribble, Dmitri Kalmar, and John Mercurio are light and entertaining, and cover all of the bases in the journey. Emily Davis’s script and direction is crisp, smart, and amusing. Emily Davis and Messenger Theatre Company have definitely created an adventure worth the travel time.

The Salacious Uncle Baldrick
reviewed by Maggie Cino

With The Salacious Uncle Baldrick, Sean Kent and Kenan Minkoff have achieved not just laugh-out-loud farce but fabulous theater. Not only are all the jokes funny, but the situations and characters are so well constructed it’s impossible not to care about these broad, absurd people and long for their troubles to have a happy ending.

Uncle Baldrick has come to visit his brother Ephraim. Their brother Dickie died many years ago, leaving Ephraim caretaker of both the family perfume fortune and Dickie’s daughter Lucy. At the opening, the family business is going under and Ephraim wants to marry Lucy off to a rich man. Lucy despises the man her uncle has picked for her and appeals to Uncle Baldrick, and as the story unfolds we encounter pirates, the greatest disguise in the world, and a group of Frenchmen with an indeterminate number of arms.

The script is done tremendous service by both director and cast. Matt Cowart’s consistent, impeccable direction keeps everything in line and the story hurtling towards its ultimate conclusion. Christy Pusz, Ryan Shams, Will Rogers, Shaun Kelvin and Alan Mozes are all consummate performers with explosive energy that never strains. But the heart of this play is the volatile relationship between Baldrick and Ephraim. Expertly played by Josh Perilo and Richard Robichaux respectively, they hate each other and love each other as only family can.

Even the scene changes, lyrically performed by Paige Hutchinson and Brian Philage, keep us in the world of the play and move the action along. Lex Liang’s costumes are not only beautiful but swing and flounce as the actors do. Gregg Bellon’s commedia-esque set establishes the tone, and John Burkland’s lighting rounds everything out.

Before going into this play I would never have suspected that the world needed a new farce set in Moliere’s time with period costumes, bad language, and pirates. But now I find myself glad that such a thing exists.

Edna St. Vincent Millay Speaks to the Committee…
reviewed by Laura Rohrman

So strong is the character of Edna St. Vincent Millay in Jennifer Gibbs's new one-woman show Edna St. Vincent Millay Speaks To The Committee on Immortality that I found myself entertained, enlightened, and consumed, despite the fact that the script misses some things fundamental to playwriting: a logical narrative question and a plot.

As Gibbs, as Millay, arrives on the stage, we are well aware that we have entered a private boudoir—well stocked with booze and morphine—for a conversation peppered with Millay’s real poetry. Discussion topics include the various aspects of Edna’s life: her loves, her mother, her husband, her times in Paris, even the drug itself. Gibbs, nearly slurring, ends each winding monologue by stating simply: “I’ve had so much, but I want more.” Then she grabs her needle and shoots up. Apparently, the quest for immortality is best expressed through a drug-induced high. Perhaps it’s true but it’s not very much fun to watch.

In reality, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s life sounds far more interesting and colorful than Gibbs’s intoxicated monologues show. Born in 1892, Millay became a celebrated poet by the age of 20 and soon after the first female ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She was an integral part the radical and avant-garde circles of New York’s Greenwich Village and rubbed shoulders with many prominent artists of the time, including playwright Eugene O'Neill, journalist John Reed, and poet Wallace Stevens. One can’t help but feel that the story of such a complex and influential woman could have been better told by a using a medium of a play—with a multitude of characters from various parts of her life—rather than a one-person show, which in this case, without the narrative flow, is a big constraint.

As a performer, Gibbs excels in channeling this fascinating woman—her mannerisms, her sense of humor, and her passion for poetry and life. And Gibbs's physical resemblance to Millay—with her red hair and small frame—helps to create a three-dimensional portrait of her. The story itself, however, is lacking a coherent plot for such a character to inhabit. The articulate conversations and excellent poetry exist in their own space and somehow do not add up to a narrative development. The best moments are when Gibbs as Millay relives one of her first sexual exploits and, later, when she muses aloud about the “stupid” poetry of e.e. cummings.

Problems aside, credit is due to the talented, intelligent writer/actress and to First Fig Productions for “channeling” this incredible woman who has been too easily forgotten. I recommend Edna St. Millay Speaks to the Committee on Immortality to anyone who has an interest in history, poetry, and even the bohemian life in New York in the 1920s. It’s an illuminating excursion into the life and foibles of one of the most important poets of the 20th century. If you are more comfortable with a play that has traditional elements—such as beginning, middle, and end, look elsewhere—FringeNYC offers many more linear plays this year that should better suit your tastes.

Word Infirmia: The Criminal Perspectives Project
reviewed by Julie Blumenthal

What is crime? Is there such a thing as right or wrong? How do you define criminal behavior? These are the questions writer/performer Perri Yaniv explores in his solo play Word Infirmia: The Criminal Perspectives Project.

Based on interviews with prisoners, prison administrators, police, criminals, and victims, Yaniv uncovers here the highly personal nature of morality and right and wrong. Far from an absolute, definitions of criminal behavior are revealed to be innate only so far as they are bound up in social and cultural mores, personal history, self-awareness, and self-esteem.

This may not come as a surprise to any who’ve explored the concept of morality as an acquired trait. But Yaniv’s documentary style and the range of personalities and histories he brings to the stage brings these theoretical ideas vividly to life. The material—simple responses to simple questions—is utterly illuminating and real. While it may not be surprising, it breathes flesh and blood into our ideas of truth and personal responsibility.

True, I spent a few moments wishing to be surprised—but perhaps that’s just to wish that human nature were other than what it is. But for every dark moment—the white-collar felon excusing his embezzlement as “an advance,” the warden’s grim assessment of burglars-turned-murderers who blame their victims for leaving the window open or “getting in the way” during a theft—there is an equally luminous moment where a perpetrator (I’m now questioning my use of the word “criminal”) sees outside the prison of the self and recognizes the effects of his crime on his family, his victim, his victim’s family; where moral codes are revealed as a beautifully shifting mosaic reflecting necessity, honor, and survival.

If this sounds powerful, it is. The material in Word Infirmia is irrefutable, and Yaniv, as a young performer, is to be commended for compiling it simply and with integrity. However, his inexperience shows in a tendency to comment on his material, which is compounded by a somewhat stylized, heavy-handed directorial touch by Glynis Rigsby.

The challenge of documentary is letting the truth tell itself, creating only the structure needed to do so. Too often, in physical and vocal choices, I felt the eyes of the performer, the researcher, the director looking over the shoulder of the witness, when all that was needed was the truth. As such, the structure of Word Infirmia could be more carefully built, and the performance less so. While all the excerpts are telling, some seem misplaced, and the piece does not carry as strong an overall arc as it might. Though technically strong, Edmund Mooney’s sound design (collage of the recorded interviews, Johnny Cash pre-show music) is somewhat obvious and distracting.

That said, Yaniv delineates the individual personas of his interviewees well, and with compassion held equally for the petite female cop and the drug-dealing high school dropout. Adrian Jones’s lighting gives shape and texture to the range of tones and personalities we meet.

The voices Yaniv has collected are varied, real, and well worth hearing. As the piece matures, I hope he learns to let them sing.

Sex with Jake Gyllenhaal and Other Fables…
reviewed by Amy Rhodes

Sex With Jake Gyllenhaal... and other fables of the Northeast Corridor has received quite a bit of FringeNYC buzz based on its catchy title. However, the play is not about Jake Gyllenhaal, or his sex life. In fact, Jake Gyllenhaal is only mentioned in the show once, and briefly at that.

Yet, just as US magazine devotes several pages a week to the on-again off-again relationship between Gyllenhaal and actress Kirsten Dunst, Anthony Giunta’s play explores the ups and downs faced in the search for true love.

Through a series of vignettes, spanning the years from 1962 to 2019, the play creates several self-contained stories about relationships and the inherent human desire for connection. The stories range from a woman reuniting with her grade school crush, to a woman who shares her secrets with a model on a billboard, to a gaggle of geese flying south for the winter.

As a writer, Giunta does little to connect the characters or stories in each vignette, making Sex With Jake Gyllenhaal... feel like an evening of disjointed acting class scenes more than a play. Each scene contains so much exposition and, often, seemingly out-of-left field plot twists (e.g., a young girl's confession that her father raped her) that the vignettes becomes maudlin.

However, the cast of four, each of whom plays several parts, save the play from its melodramatic writing. Jason Alan Caine has a natural ease onstage, and Laura Walczak brings spunky energy to her roles. Tara D’Antonio is a gifted young actress who gives her characters an engaging vulnerability. Oliver Ralli is a standout. Ralli is a versatile actor who effortlessly moves between dramatic and comedic moments, creating characters that are sympathetic, endearing, and witty. In addition, director Mark Harborth does a nice job of keeping the show moving. And Jerry Mittelhauser’s costumes add much to the production by giving life to the era in which each scene takes place.

Sex With Jake Gyllenhaal..., a play about missed connections, is hit or miss itself. However, the show’s actors may just one day give the actual Jake Gyllenhaal a run for his money in Hollywood. If so, a word of advice: pass on “The Day After Tomorrow Part Two” and keep your indie cred.

Rock Out
reviewed by Leslie Bramm

“Rock out” v. 1) To blast your favorite music. 2) To wail on an air guitar. 3) To dance like a banshee in the privacy of your living room and or office.

I liked Gregory Jones’s Rock Out for encompassing all three of those definitions. A play with no spoken words, the narrative is communicated via the songs the characters lip-sync, to each other and when they’re alone. The songs themselves are eclectic and include works by Marvin Gaye, The Cars, and The Beastie Boys; any play that opens with Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away” already has me in its corner.

It’s a simple yuppie boy meets yuppie girl story. They are both lonely in an age where our ability to communicate has reached new heights. Empty voicemails, empty emails, empty answering machines, “you have no new messages.” Nobody loves you, nobody wants you, not even your cat. What else is there to do, but crank up your favorite song and rock it all out?

Gregory Jones writes and performs, while the choreography is courtesy of his co-star, Tiffany Hodges. Both Jones and Hodges portray our romantic wannabes, Gary and Mary, with agility and aplomb. Both actors are charismatic and I never tired of watching them.

The play has an ensemble that helps create various locations for our music-crossed lovers. Office party, subways. They support the play well and include: the talented Lee Barton, the amazing Jenna Harris, the wowing Juliet Heller, and the spectacular Laura Lance. The production also focuses nicely on the details, from painted backdrops used to suggest the locations (they were rolled in and out on garment racks; you need to tape those edges down, people) to my favorite, the CD cases that don’t bear the appropriate album covers for the music, but this year’s sunflower FringeNYC logo. Credit also to the Linhart Theatre for providing an awesome sound system.

I wish the play was a bit longer; the author may have thought that the device of the song-a-scene could easily play itself out, and it might have, but at 40 minutes the piece needs a bit more fleshing, or rocking, out. I never understood what Mary would see in her co-worker Gary, nor did I really believe that these two good-looking and charming people would ever want for dates and or the attentions they desired. I’m sure these types of folks do suffer and I would have liked to understand it.

Rock Out is light, fun, and fast. It won’t leave your head filled with the wisdom of the ages, but will leave your feet tapping and a song in your voice.

Out of Body and Out of Mind
reviewed by Fred Backus

Obsessed with and overwhelmed by the onslaught of a technological revolution they were born too late to ever truly master, a group of thirty-somethings clutch their laptops like security blankets and desperately try to tread water. As “Charbroiled” he is the undisputed leader of his clan and one of the most influential figures in his universe, but in real life Scott (Zachary Buchanan) is not so much a failure as a nonentity, rooted to his computer for eight to nine hours a day. Chad (Matthew Kinney) is a self-proclaimed Internet celebrity who takes in and spits out factoids and infogarbage on his podcast like a running sieve, and Lisa (Julie Fitzpatrick) finds in the Internet the safety to cultivate relationships that are too frightening or difficult in the physical world. Things start to unravel when Scott summons ironic apparitions of obscure pop culture icons—musician Jeff Buckley (Matt Yeager) and Eponine (Julia Osborne) from Les Miserables—to convince him to commit suicide.

The characters in Matt Yeager's Out of Body and Out of Mind are on the verge of a mental and emotional collapse, but what makes this play so surprisingly effective is that these are not crazy elements on the fringes of society, but only slightly exaggerated caricatures of what we as a society are chillingly degenerating into. The obsessions may be absurd just past the point of reality, but these characters come off as likeable, rational, and recognizable. Making the piece work is an excellent ensemble of actors—which includes the playwright himself—under the clear and effective direction of David Apichell.

There are, however, uneven elements in both the script and the production. That Yeager and Apichell have chosen to focus on performance rather than design shouldn’t be a problem, but mixing real furniture with metal folding chairs that mark furniture seems unnecessarily sloppy and easily fixable. The Buckley avatar that appears is fun and intriguing, but the Eponine manifestation seems unnecessary, and their joint function in the piece is never really resolved in a satisfactory way. There is a clumsy and unsuccessful attempt to tie them in at the end with a confusing and bizarre parallel plotline involving a twelve-year-old being inhabited by the spirit of her mother. I imagine it’s intended to mirror the projection out of the body into an online persona, but it still seems out of left field, and while Lindsey Broad delivers a great performance as Abby, how she really ties in with the other characters and their problems mystifies me.

Still, for all its lumps, Out of Body and Out of Mind has enough moments of real brilliance to make it worth the time and money. The script may need some trimming and reworking, but Yeager has true insight into some of the implications of our gradual exchange of the physical world with an electronic one.

Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies
reviewed by Alexander Zalben

With Fluffy Bunnies in a Field of Daisies, Matt Chaffee’s amiable sex romp, sitcom-hungry audiences finally have a play to call their own. Four friends live, love, discuss, and meet every night at the local bar to talk about their experiences with the opposite sex; or lack of experiences as the case may be.

The most important word in the title is bunnies, as this play, as a whole, is mostly harmless. In fact, the most shocking thing about it (unless you find yourself tittering at the mere mention of the words “penis” and “vagina”) is that such a generic farce is playing in the FringeNYC Festival. Where’s the Bush-bashing? The thirty minutes of conceptual dance with background multimedia-installation? The show's one musical number is even presented non-ironically, and just for the sheer joy of watching the ensemble dance.

The ensemble, in fact, is the best thing about the show. On a whole, they clearly enjoy working with each other, and that likeability translates well onto the stage. Particularly enjoyable are Samuel Bliss Cooper as “Baby Boy,” the naïve and hopeful member of the quartet; and Matt Chaffee (also the playwright) as Tommy, the gruff and randy “Dude With a Heart of Gold.”

The writing is fine. It seems to operate under the assumption that if the characters talk fast, then they must be witty. On the whole, they are not. It also seems to think that it is exploring love from angles never before discovered. It is not. However, that hardly seems to matter when the audience is enjoying it so much.

And that, in essence, is what the show is: a crowd-pleaser in the mold of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, or one DNA strand away from sitcoms like Two and a Half Men or Friends. In a festival known for shows that work overtime to alienate their audience or discomfort them, isn’t it nice to have a show that wants nothing more than to make you happy?

Answer: Yes.

System Eternal
reviewed by Stan Richardson

In his play with music System Eternal, Chance D. Muehleck has taken great care in creating an elaborate futuristic reality—a corrupt crime-ridden town called Eternal filled with cons, murderers, and a few people who seem simply lower class. Below the town is an underworld that hosts a quasi-police force which dictates punishment for the crimes committed above. But George Enemy, the scatterbrained softie of a boss, has hired a new right-hand-man, the nefarious Agent Fix, whose intended policies are about to make the present place seem like Disney World.

System Eternal, however, is organized around a murder—that of Enemy’s new liberally-politicked wife, Catherine Promise. The first act is about the after-effects of Catherine’s death (her brother Bill may or may not have been framed; Agent Fix is handling the investigation in a curious way). The second act shows what led up to Catherine’s death (she wants her husband to pardon Bill; Agent Fix wants Catherine out of the way).

Muehleck spends so much time trying to show us a complete world—its lingo, its customs, its culture. But without a satisfying mystery—the whodunnit is as obvious as the whydunnit is underexplored—his efforts fall on indifferent ears. The experience is rather like being made to learn a computer program without being told its practical use. There is a lot of intelligent thought in this play, but the real drama is diluted. The cast is adequate, but don’t seem involved with or taken by the narrative. Director Melanie S. Armer does little to clarify the events, nor does she pull forth whatever humor the script contains: instead the tone is wan. The band performs the songs with a strong display of musicianship (Tony Finn is the composer), but their presence (like the songs) seems superfluous.

I suspect System Eternal means to be an allegory about our current administration or our criminal justice system. And though it is muddy now, I suspect that Muehleck will hone this piece in the future or will write an entirely new play that will display his intellectual gifts while giving his audience something to feel about.

Legend of the Gypsy Bride
reviewed by Jonathan Calindas

As the audience walks into the spacious Mazer theatre, they are greeted with the sight of the cluttered Gypsy camp “under a highway in Queens.” Bottles and milk crates lie about, and a clothesline full of colorful rags serves as the backdrop. This sense of clutter, unfortunately, permeates every facet of this production of The Legend of the Gypsy Bride, from the performances to the writing and directing.

The Legend of the Gypsy Bride tells the story of a band of Gypsies living a destitute life in their camp. When a writer of computer manuals (David Jenness) appears on the scene looking for a Hollywood story, the gypsies, with dreams of stardom, led by the slimy Marko (Joey Gay) and his associate Shadow (Raven Solano), act out the story of the Gypsy Bride. Zazu (Nedra McClyde) is to be married to a wealthy American entrepreneur, Wynn Dwyer (Curtis J. Bisek), but their plans are complicated by The Albanian (Keith Malley), a storeowner who hates the Gypsies (he claims they steal from him) but has a thing for Zazu.

The musical is one that seems to have many elements in its favor: a by-the-book set of true musical theatre numbers (lyrics by David Jenness, music by “The Roma of Hungary and Transylvania”); Gypsy choreography by Andrea Kalan, Chemda, and Aron Szekely; and a band of talented musicians (Jesse Kotansky, Franca Vercelloni, George Kalan, Tom Cirillo, Gerald Gates, and David Jenness) who double as minor characters in the show. However, the book of the show (also by Jenness), though filled with witty lines, betrays the score. It is very confusing as to what is part of the Gypsies’ story and what is happening for real. The Albanian (the archetypal villain) does not really provide much of a conflict, and the plot seems arbitrary and fails to make much sense. This sense of confusion is not helped by the muddled direction (by Koby Benvenesti) on a cluttered stage where bottles and other items keep getting knocked over and have to be moved out of the way for safety. The musical numbers and choreography fall flat, and the funny lines fail to elicit laughter.

Nevertheless, the cast does their best. They deliver their performances with vigor but achieve varying degrees of success. LinDel Sandlin and Raven Solano, playing a textbook bickering married couple provide the comic relief and do so with vaudevillian panache. Judith Jones as Zazu’s sister, Paprika, makes the best of her smaller role. However, Nedra McClyde sadly does not have the presence to make the lead character of Zazu work and her two torch songs fail to get the audience to root for her. She also speaks with an urban American accent even though her lines are clearly written for someone with an Eastern European accent.

I had the sense that under other circumstances, come of the components of The Legend of the Gypsy Bride could be made to work. There is a real sense of camaraderie and determination among this company, not unlike the spirit of the Gypsies that they play.

Bronx Express
reviewed by Eric Beckson

Osip Dymov’s well-crafted Bronx Express  was originally produced in 1919 and has now been translated from the Yiddish by Nahma Sandrow and transformed into a musical. The comic Faustian plot depicts a working class Jew, Khatski Hungerproud, who is tempted to leave his family and religion for money, fame, and women. As Hungerproud’s father repeatedly asks, “Is this good for the Jews?” The answer is emphatically no.

Obviously, the playwright has something to say and feels strongly about it. I rejoiced in the clarity, despite the sugar-coated moralism. Dymov expresses many anti-capitalist sentiments in his high-end vaudeville, such as: the wealthy use advertising to sell junk to the poor.

The story begins on the Bronx elevated train, where a Mephistophelean Jew named Yankl Flames stokes Hungerproud’s latent dissatisfaction as a button factory worker for the past 25 years. Flames portrays the lives of “the Americans” as brimming with glamour and prosperity. As they ride past billboards for products that have enriched entrepreneurs, Flames persuades Hungerproud that he must recreate himself (and pay Flames commissions on future income) in order to live the American dream.

Punctuating the drama are live parodies of the billboard advertisements for Nestle’s Baby Formula, Smith Brothers Cough Drops, Murad Turkish Cigarettes, and Pluto Water (a popular laxative). Several vintage advertisements are vertically aligned on both ends of the stage, reminding us of the seductive artwork that preceded the use of color photography.

After Hungerproud leaves his wife and two children, he makes his first million by selling a plan to put the Jews to work on Yom Kippur. He then marries the Murad Cigarette girl, adopts the Nestle baby, and joins a consortium of wealthy businessmen including the Smith Brothers and Pluto Water (donning devil’s horns).

As a fan of Klezmer, I was hoping for more of an emotional range from Jonathan David’s compositions and Glen Berger’s lyrics, although I did enjoy their work. I especially liked the song “The Jews Stick Together” and wished it was longer. And who would not relish a lyric such as “You can only eat stewed prunes with a clean spirit / a taste for the pure of soul”?

Jeffrey Schecter, who reminds me of the young Richard Dreyfuss, captures the humble side of Hungerproud, but his greed is never believable. Jase Draper, as Flames, portrays a sleazy hustler who grows on you like the pathological liar Jon Lovitz portrayed on SNL. Yelena Shmulenson must have been transported through a time machine from the Jewish Riviera, she looks and speaks the part of Mrs. Hungerproud so well. Stephanie Johnstone doubles with versatility and charm as Hungerproud’s daughter and the Murad Cigarette girl, although she has yet to lose the self-consciousness of a young actor.

Period costumes by Melissa Levin are simple and unobtrusive (even Brandon Sturiale, the talented pianist/musical director, wears one). But the Murad cigarette girl costume exposes a lot more than the original advertisement (inspired by our desensitized age?).

Director Miriam Weiner paces a very swift three acts with no need for an intermission. The overall result is worth seeing. Although assimilation may not be the subject of discussion it once was, the Faustian premise endures. And there are many amusing lines, such as Mrs. Hungerproud’s: “My cooking is so good, even the fish enjoy it.” Who knew a Bolshevik could be so funny?