FringeNYC 2005 Reviews - Page 13

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
reviewed by Hieu Tran

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, a new play written and directed by Adam Klasfeld, begins with a writer named Rosh, sitting by a wall on the stage, addressing us thus:

Dear audience, you do not know your history or art if you do not realize that a wall is a thing of beauty. An English bard once told a tale of two long lovers held apart by a tattered wall, such an old thing, that every day one spied through its narrow cracks to gaze at the other.

Moments later an Elf  knocks over a stone from the wall, and Rosh gets shot in the arm by some unseen person from the other side.

In the next scene, Rosh’s wife Faye is complaining to her friend Ah-Mee that her husband has been acting strangely for the past six days, staying outside all day—sleeping outside even—declaring that he is guarding their home against... what exactly? He doesn’t say, and she has no idea herself. She also can’t tell that Rosh’s right arm is missing, even though he says it is (and even though the audience can clearly see that it is), so she calls in a Doctor to examine him for what she believes is a mental condition. The Doctor, a family friend, can’t perceive the missing arm either. So... what are we supposed to make of all this?

Well, Good Fences appears to be an allegory, and the wall, the shooting, and the arm that may or may not be missing are all metaphors. The wall symbolizes the cultural, religious, and psychological barriers between all the countries and factions in the Middle East; the shooting is just another example of the many acts of violence that take place there every day between these factions; and the missing/not missing arm—well, here is what Klasfeld has to say about that (quoted from the show's website):

From the audience’s perspective, Rosh’s arm appears to be missing, so we’re challenged to question our own beliefs about the nature of reality: What is Truth? What is madness? Are these concepts determined by popular consensus, or something else?

Does the play really do enough to compel us to question the nature of reality, viz., the nature of shifting, competing realities and narratives that I’m sure contribute to, and often result from, the extreme animosity between these long-standing, contentious groups? Not really. The problem is, though Klasfeld’s attempt to distill the Middle Eastern quagmire works on an intellectual level—i.e., we understand what he’s trying to get at—its dramatic potency is diluted by a psychologically simplified and sanitized treatment of the subject. Though guns get fired two more times in the play, the allegorical nature of the piece fails to throw us into the true ugliness of the situation. Without that, the play seems to be more of an intellectual exercise than a profound piece of drama.

The acting, also, is unfortunately uneven. Though Donna Abraham (Faye), Nick Choksi (Elf), and Michael DeNola (Doctor) do fine work in their respective roles, I found Roy Edroso’s portrayal of Rosh as a man intent on protecting his wall and home against an unknown enemy strangely flat. His outbursts of anger—of which there are a few—seem, quite frankly, not that believable, as they come across more like affectations than actual rage. Michelle A. Dingoor could’ve also given her character a little more nuance to pull off some of the lighter moments in the play.

Patty Cake
reviewed by Maggie Cino

Patty Cake is inspired by the story of Patty Hearst. In it, we meet the infamous Patty Cake. Is she a debutante-good girl or a fearsome revolutionary terrorist? Her lawyer, Baker, is trying to find out. Patty is childlike at the start of the play, lost, slightly touched, hiding under the table playing her own game of patty-cake. Her lawyer tries to coax and bully her, to amuse her by drawing puppets out of his briefcase. But things change quickly, and Patty gains control by tying him up or suddenly growing up and becoming a fierce, seductive woman. During the course of the play, the two of them pretend to be everyone from Patty’s mother to her kidnapper to the man she killed.

The piece is obviously trying to ask questions about identity. Is Patty a good little girl or a bad little girl? Is brainwashing possible, or was there a part of Patty herself who wanted to do all the terrible things she did? Are her problems all her daddy’s fault? Does she have an identity at all, or just a story that can be appropriated by others?

The mood and pacing of the play is comedic, which makes it difficult to get inside of the characters or their situation. Ken Prestininzi’s script and direction demand an academic approach to these very personal questions. As Patty, Laura Caputo has the elegant look of a society girl along with a touching quality of awkward innocence. David Hanbury as Baker handles all the character and power shifts with aplomb. But ultimately, Patty and Baker are simply constructs used to abstract and simplify the story of the iconic Patty Hearst.

Who is Patty? According to Patty Cake, no one knows, really; no one can sift through all of the stories, media, reinterpretation, protection of her family, her “brainwashing.” At the end, Patty herself escapes, leaving us with only her media image. But this play establishes that on almost every level Patty was lost to begin with. It intimates that she achieves her freedom and finds her identity when the world becomes so distracted by her celebrity that it leaves the woman in peace, but there is something unsatisfying to this conclusion. The issues that led Patty to her brainwashing are still in place. Her father looms large in more ways than one. And so although her freedom is intellectually satisfying, emotionally we suspect that things are not this easy.

The action happens on Pannill Camp’s wonderful orange set, the color of death row and hazardous materials. Patty’s jumpsuit and various other scenic elements and costume pieces set the color scheme as well as the overall tone. Though there is something cold and brutal about this world, a certain element of danger is missing. Patty Cake takes political, idea-oriented theatre as its stylistic model. But while using an unknowable icon to question identity and celebrity is a logical choice and a brave risk, as a theatrical experience it left me wanting more.

Silence! The Musical
reviewed by Robin Reed

You’ve sold out your high-concept FringeNYC show (a musical comedy version of The Silence of the Lambs) before the festival even opens. The title of your show appears in every newspaper, magazine, and blog about the Fringe. There is a line down the block to get into the theatre to see it. What’s the buzz?

This is what I saw: an incredibly savvy production team has assembled an extremely talented cast to parody a thriller into a campy musical. This team does know their way around some musical theatre. One scene moves swiftly to the next, thanks to a smart set-on-wheels designed by Scott Pask. The costumes, by David Kaley, are a great balance of easy-to-work-with and funny (the “Lamb Chorus” is outfitted in just about the cutest little lambs-ear headbands you ever did see!). The band (Brian J. Nash, Charlie Alterman, and Dan McMillan) rocks out a varied and lively score. The choreography, by director Christopher Gattelli, is silly and fun to watch—it practically spoofs itself!

With all that going for it, I still couldn’t get my mind around why it wasn’t quite sitting well with me. In my opinion, the buzz for Silence! the musical far outweighs what is delivered. Not that you would ever have known it from the reactions of the audience in attendance the night I saw the show. These folks were having what seemed to be the time of their lives, hooting (literally!) and hollering (for real!) at every turn. Every turn. I had to wonder if this wasn’t what it means to really paper your audience. Or was I just not getting something? When does parody cross the line into tasteless pabulum?

The book is clever to a fault. Lecter’s famous “fava beans and Chianti” line is uttered this time by Clarice then corrected by the doctor to “an indifferent Beaujolais and a fluffy rice pilaf.” Funny. The clearly gifted Jenn Harris mimics Jodie Foster’s sibilant “S” throughout the piece. Sort of funny. The first time. After the umpteenth time, I realized that Harris seemed trapped in a one-note character who, instead of hitting the intended satire, sounded like she needed a speech therapist. Songs like “If I Could Smell Her Cunt” and “Would You Fuck Me” had the audience in absolute stitches. I didn’t find them funny. Irreverent dropping of dirty words does not satiate me or make me laugh. Most of the show is littered with an unnecessary yet overtly sexual tone. Has parody become all about anatomical jokes? The little bit of charm that the piece has is slowly obliterated as clever turns into smarty-pants.

With that being said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention outstanding performances by the cast. Paul Kandel nails the simmering intensity in his Dr. Lecter. Lisa Martin, as Katherine, the big-boned captive, has got a voice with an incredible power and range. Stephen Bienskie is hilarious as the damaged Buffalo Bill. The major standout here, though, is Diedre Goodwin who, in a sort of Spamalot “Lady of the Lake” role, delivers a killer combo of impeccable comic timing and easy stage presence that stands tall amid a top-notch cast.

But all in all, Silence! the musical rests too much on pushing jokes past the point of being funny and comes across largely as dumbed-down locker-room humor. A team this talented would do best to get back to the drawing board and come up with some original and truly inspired material and leave the parody to those who can’t come up with anything else.

The Last Two Minutes of the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen
reviewed by George Hunka

For those of you out there who consider the idea of watching another revival of a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen approximately as exciting as the idea of watching paint dry, I have good news and bad news.

First the good news: Chicago’s troupe The Neo-Futurists, led this time around by deviser, director, translator and adapter Greg Allen, are back in town for another Fringe festival, and this time they’ve brought The Last Two Minutes of the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen, a fast-paced, wildly comedic, two-hour tour through the entire canon of the father of realism. And I mean the entire canon. While Ibsen is best known for the 12 prose plays that constitute his greatest achievement, it’s often forgotten that he wrote 14 plays before that. Some of them were real clunkers, too: nobody’s going to be reviving nationalist epics like Lady Inger of Oestraat any time soon. (The troupe gets around the inevitable challenge of not boring the audience to tears with, well, “innovative” stagings—like an all-kitchen-condiment version of The Feast at Solhaug.)

But the group really comes into its own in the second half of the show, when it turns its attention to the plays on which Ibsen’s reputation rests. Some of them—An Enemy of the People and The Master Builder—get the comeuppance they so richly deserve, but it’s the great achievement of the show that, as the evening continues, the group manages to find the poetic elements in the elegiac last plays like Rosmersholm, The Lady from the Sea, and especially Ibsen’s farewell to the stage, When We Dead Awaken. While they don’t drop the almost manic intensity such a project seems to invite, the performers manage to sensitively pass along their respect for Ibsen’s genius. There are more than a few quiet moments, and all of them are earned.

It would be unfair of me to single out any of the fine performers here, all of them in multiple roles, and also unfair if I didn’t list them: so all hail to Sarah Clark, Dina Connolly (boy, can that girl seethe), Joe Dempsey, Merrie Greenfield, Michael Kingston, and Steve Walker. Jennie Cleghorn managed the always busy stage, LaRonika Thomas provided dramaturgic support, John Pierson designed the graphics for the show, and Allen himself designed the sound, a well-chosen mélange of classical music.

Now the bad news: FringeNYC has provided a space called the Ace of Clubs on Great Jones Street for The Last Two Minutes …, and never has a venue so gotten in the way of enjoying a show, or even hearing and seeing it properly, at least in my experience. The Ace of Clubs is little more than a giant rec room; a low stage and lower audience space make it impossible to see the stage from four or five rows back, and the acoustics in the room are as dead as Solness at the end of The Master Builder. During the first half, whenever the cast members were sitting or otherwise prone, audience members popped up and down in their seats like a badly engineered game of Whack-a-Mole just to get a glance at the stage. Here’s hoping that a version of the show will open soon via the New York branch of the troupe. I’d like to see it again.

Crossing Currents
reviewed by Liz Kimberlin

The core idea of Crossing Currents, written and directed by Jorge c. Perez, is a good one and straight from not-so-distant headlines. This production is very sincere in tackling emotionally charged issues that any American of any ethnicity—whether born on these shores or newly immigrated—should find relevant.

In Crossing Currents, the Cuban American community of Miami is in an uproar over the court decision to send a little boy back to his father in Cuba rather than let him stay in the U.S., free from the tyranny of Castro’s regime. Popular opinion says the boy, whose mother lost her life in their flight to freedom, should stay in America. But a high school youth, Merlin Santiago, himself the son of a Cuban émigré, begins circulating around his neighborhood his own newspaper that takes the opposite view: the boy belongs back in Cuba with his father. Merlin is exercising his First Amendment rights, which, despite disagreement on the issue, his father Arturo applauds. That is, until Arturo learns that Merlin has published his full name, phone number, and email address in the newspaper, thereby placing the rest of the family in danger. Violence and social rejection quickly turn the Santiago household upside down. Arturo has to make the choice between censoring his young son’s voice for the family’s protection or hold true to the not-so-easy stance: “I may not agree with your belief, but I will defend to the death your right to believe it.”

The cast is large with a lot of sub-plots, but the central character of Crossing Currents seems to be Arturo, a Cuban-born, publicly anti-Castro, ex-baseball star incarcerated for three years in a brutal Cuban prison before escaping to the U.S. with his (presently absent) wife and two baby sons. Arturo is excellently played by Gil Ron. I also enjoyed Sam Hale’s performance as Freddy, Arturo’s compassionate, streetwise brother-in-law who helps watch Merlin’s back. As well, Wally Valenti is memorable as a usually placid civil rights attorney who suddenly turns angry and emotional upon learning his daughter is dating one of the “crazy talk” Santiago boys and forbids her to see him again. Lots of café con leche gets poured, pizza gets ordered, dinner plates get passed around throughout this (mostly) kitchen sink drama, and there’s a nice, bitchy joke about Jennifer Lopez that everyone in the audience seemed to enjoy.

That said, I have to admit honestly that I became frustrated with the show early on. First, the young actors—most significantly the boys playing Arturo’s sons—need to enunciate their dialogue and project their voices more strongly. Their speech was fast and garbled, and even sitting mid-theatre, I couldn’t hear or understand what they were saying half the time. As a result, I suspect I missed some important plot information.

Second, Perez has some great ideas and creative ways of expressing them, but the construction of the play is problematic because there are too many short, choppy scenes that distinctly give it more the feel of a screenplay than a live drama intended for the stage.

However, if you're interested in this play's conflict, especially from a political point of view, and enjoy a life-affirming message, you might like this show. I had high hopes for Crossing Currents and really wish I could have liked it more.

Treaty 321! A Musical
reviewed by Amy Rhodes

If you are willing to check your sense of logic at the door and just have a good time, then check out Treaty 321! A Musical. This musical comedy offers a lot of laughs, great performances, and rocking musical numbers.

Treaty 321! is the story of Peter, a Gererian citizen who joins the army to fight the neighboring nation of Plebia only to find that he has fallen in love with a Plebeian girl named Jill. Peter must then decide which is more important to fight for: his girl or his country.

With a book and lyrics by Christopher Buckley, the show’s love story gets bogged down by countless subplots and one too many self-referential jokes about theatre. However, the muddled plot is more than made up for by the sheer amount of fun the show is. The show boasts toe-tapping music/musical arrangement by Stephen L. Murphy and Lenny (a pseudonym), campy choreography by Jenn Diminni, wonderful costumes by Jessa-Raye Court, and a clever, colorful set designed by Michael Wehner.

Director Sam Scalamoni keeps the mirth moving throughout, and deftly handles the large cast. The cast is uniformly good. Chris Matthias and Megan Lavner are adorable as the romantic leads, Peter and Jill. Bob Barth, who plays the show’s narrator, is hilarious as he toys with the actors and the audience throughout the show. Other standouts include Thay Floyd as the army’s token gay, Glennis McMurray as Peter’s quirky ex-wife, and Derek Travis Collard as the army’s wimpy courier. And Thadd Krueger shines in dual roles as the show’s stage manager and an enormous piece of cheesecake.

No, you didn’t read that last sentence incorrectly. The stage manager also plays a piece of cheesecake. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but by the time the cheesecake comes on stage the audience was enjoying themselves too much to care.

Venezuela
reviewed by Jo Ann Rosen

In Venezuela, it takes a tragedy to stimulate the imagination of a disaffected gang who escape the daily slog of poverty and hopelessness by train-surfing. The play, written by Guy Helminger and translated from German by Penny Black, takes place in East Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Helminger personalizes the scars of German reunification through his gritty gang of five, who personify the poor education system and the lack of opportunity by hanging out at a train station plagued by filth and graffiti.

The language of Venezuela is front and center. In the program’s Translator’s Note, Black explains the difficulty of translating Knustsprache, an artificial language overturning strict grammatical rules governing German. Since English doesn’t have the same restrictions, the effect is not always completely successful. And so it is with this play. One reason is because visually it is easy to believe that the characters are from the South Bronx during the '70s or '80s. Primarily, though, it is because the language—a type of street lingo—is in English using a German formula. It’s understandable, but it isn’t familiar. Still, the speech and its rhythms are specific; so specific that there is a glossary of slang (although the play is intelligible without it) and an explanation of its rhythms, and once the play is in full swing it becomes less intrusive. Someone knowledgeable in German and in German theater might have found Black’s translation entirely credible.

The play starts with the death of Fragel, the most accomplished train-surfer in this tightly-knit gang. He is unable to hold onto the rail for one more station, slips beneath the train and is torn apart. Although Fragel is never seen, he is ever-present, holding the five friends together for a year as they come to terms with his death, each in his own way.

Kerm, who photographs Fragel hanging onto the train as it passes the station, witnesses his death immediately after. Reluctantly, he tells Book and Flada when they show up, and they agree to withhold the news from young Olif, who idolizes Fragel. Instead, they tell him that Fragel took off for Venezuela where train-surfing is the best. Book, the only one attending school, writes colorful letters to Olif from Fragel describing train-surfing competitions, his new friend Pedro, and other adventures. Ismir, the fifth and most street savvy of the gang, turns a skeptical eye, but the others—despite German postage stamps, a train-less Venezuela, and a report in the paper of the train-surfing death—live on this fantasy for a year. About the length of time it takes to realize that East Berlin is gone forever and each must move on.

Venezuela, ably directed by James David Jackson, is a thoughtful, challenging piece of theatre. It is about real people and real loss, although the loss—of the individual characters and the gang as a whole—could have been more heartfelt. Jason Zimbler as Book provides the gang-as-family with hope. Brendan Bradley, a last minute replacement in the role of the naïve, uneducated Olif, performs with enthusiasm. Jamie Klassel delivers a groupie as the sole female, Flada. Her character delivers a moment of humanity at the end when she chastises Kerm, played by Joe Sousa, for not rushing to Fragel after he dies. Hasani Issa gives Ismir a large presence. He is a man entering adulthood who chooses to believe that Fragel abandoned them to live under a box in the park.

Joe Powell designed the wonderfully run-down underground station. Designers for lighting and costumes are George Gountas and Meryl Pressman, respectively. Bill Kirby wrote original music.

Ricardo Jamon: Mastermentalist
reviewed by Timothy Fannon

The true pleasure of FringeNYC is that you can have a theatrical experience at anytime of the day, any day of the week—you are afforded the opportunity to expand your artistic horizons while watching artists explore their craft in innovative and raw ways. I went into the Ace of Clubs on a beautiful Thursday afternoon ready and willing to witness and participate in such an event. Unfortunately, Ricardo Jamon’s "Heavy Mental Tour," billed as a “hypnotic tour de farce,” though entertaining at moments and an experience in its own right, failed to truly engage and captivate me.

The performance begins with a playful lip-synch by a flight attendant (played throughout with simplicity and liveliness by La Linda Malinda), setting up the theatrical conceit that we as participants are onboard a plane and will soon be taking flight. We are then introduced to our pilot and destination by the entrance of Ricardo Jamon, self-proclaimed MasterMentalist, to the tune of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” again reinforcing the “journey” we will soon be undertaking. Jamon, dressed in an ill-fitting captain’s jacket and fighter pilot shades, and armed with one-liners and off-center humor, explains his “credentials” as a hypnotist and invites the audience to participate in his hypnotic exploration of the self. He asks for volunteers and seven audience members are ushered into chairs onstage.

Jamon strikes a serious tone as he explains the hypnotic process to his “passengers” and assures the rest of the audience that this is not a contrived event but that the participants will truly fall under hypnosis. Clue #1 to something slightly amiss to the genuineness of the event. He then proceeds to briefly introduce the seven audience participants, who, though vastly diverse, all seem a bit too eager and prepared with their responses. Clue #2. Captain Jamon too is conveniently ready with smart biting quips to all of his participants' banter. Clue #3. I admit I am a skeptic by nature, but I could not help but harbor doubts as to the authenticity of the imminent “flight.”

The pilot begins the hypnosis, and all participants fall under his spell. They are manipulated to make goofy noises, express clichéd insecurities and desires, and generally make fools of themselves. The experience is more silly and trite than engaging. The performance culminates with Jamon losing control of his participants and fleeing the theatre with his assistant. The participants are left to wander around the space, finally snapping out of their stupor and left asking the remaining audience “where did he go?”, “what just happened?”, etc. The lights come up and the “journey” is over. Thankfully.

My primary discomfort with the piece is that Jamon sets forth to appeal to his audience through an audacious blend of stand-up and hypnotic mastery, but once you assume that the whole experience is a ruse, and that the spontaneous elements are merely staged, you question the integrity of the performance and the performer. What is the point in faux improvisation? Why remove the element of presence from the production? Why promise to perform without a net, but allow the net to be so visible? These questions kept me from staying focused on the presentation, and undercut the potential thrill of the performances. I commend Jamon’s commitment and joyful playfulness, but I think the artist can support his piece by giving greater respect to his audience.

Fleet Week: The Musical
reviewed by David Pumo

Fleet Week is billed as a gay salute to those patriotic musicals of yesteryear, like On the Town. Instead of Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, the show features four sailors all in various states of sexual confusion and denial. Two are regular sex partners, but the chaplain—who prefers to be called “Daddy” rather than “Father”—assures them (with a song) that “You’re Only Queer on the Pier”: what happens at sea doesn’t count.

A third sailor is actually a woman who thinks she has to dress up like a man in order to serve her country (it’s supposed to be present day), and the man she’s fallen in love with doesn't know she's a woman. In her song, "Loose It in the Front," the show's wittiest and best-written number, she tells us it's been like this since junior high. The forth sailor is the one she loves who…well…he seems to like her because he thinks she’s a man, and he’s a real flaming queen with religious issues, and…aaanyway…

They hit the streets of New York during fleet week looking for romance and adventure. They stumble into a bathhouse where they overhear a group of terrorists from Martinique plotting to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Silliness, faux intrigue, and mostly below-the-belt humor ensue. Fleet Week plays like a raunchy Saturday Night Live sketch. The characters have names like Seaman Stayn and Seaman Swallows, and the musical numbers are mostly okay and chuck-full of similar high-school-level double entendres. Cute, if you like that sort of thing.

Tony Nominee Melissa Hart plays the Mayor of New York, looking like Bella Abzug. She also plays the Statue of Liberty, who apparently has an ongoing romance with the ship's captain (hey, it’s a musical). The cast also features Micah Bucey, who won a 2004 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Award for his performance in The Only Thing Straight Is My Jacket.

Uncle Sam's Satiric Spectacular
reviewed by Frank Kuzler

Uncle Sam’s Satiric Spectacular is all that it promises to be—it's satiric, and it's a spectacle. Created by the 2005 Apprentice Company from the Actors Theatre of Louisville, this is a smart, funny show that channels the neurotic anxiety of a culture crumbling onto its own ideals and converts it into humor and laughs.

With 17 numbers and 18 performers, the show is a full night of vaudeville, and comes complete with an emcee in the likeness of Uncle Sam, a minstrel show, several contortionists, a knife thrower, and a striptease.

From the opening number, “American Way,” in which the company culturally takes over the world in song, the show develops ideas based on personal mania, individual liberty and national identity. It caps off the night with a number extolling those catchwords of independence—“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

In its sophistication (which will only become more finely polished through the show’s run), Uncle Sam’s liberates itself from political mockery to true satirical commentary. Vaudevillian in nature, the show goes beyond random acts of entertainment and develops a cohesive idea and psychological picture of our time. The show even pokes fun at itself and the hypocrisy of the vaudeville tradition in numbers like “The Minstrel Show” and the mock striptease “The Lady Sings the Blues.”

The numbers that I especially enjoyed, and they are numerous, include “Ties that Bind,” in which an escape artists must unravel himself from the psychological constraints of life; “My Geneva Babe,” in which a barbershop quartet bemoans the loss of their love, the Geneva Convention; and “The Minstrel Show,” which makes us take a good look at the face of theatre past and present.

All of the performances are excellently accomplished and the actors show commitment and heart in each number.

Go-Go Kitty, Go!
reviewed by Gregg Bellon

Go-go boots abound at FringeNYC this year—I've seen them on bodacious gams in at least three shows so far—but the numerous pairs used in Theatre B’s Go-Go Kitty, Go! pack the biggest punch… or kick, as it were. Ostensibly an homage to the Russ Meyer B-movie genre (B standing for boobs and babes, in this case), Kitty pumps hilarity, sexuality, and hipness, spiced with a little social commentary to boot out of even the background minutiae of these relics of counterculture brashness.

The death of headliner Popo sends the Go-Go Kitties Sugar 36 (Erin Quinn Purcell) and Wanda (Kim Ders) in search of the answers to the mystery surrounding the dead transvestite diva and the involvement of a senator-cum-presidential candidate and his devious campaign manager. Mounting their 2-D choppers, Wanda and Sugar make the most of their full and ample feminine appeal to suss out the intricacies of a back-door political cover-up while a pair of hapless young newshounds “follow the Popo” to the same conclusion. Along the way, a bevy of characters provide opportunities for these kick-ass kitties to exhibit more of that appeal, adding one more B for “brains.”

There’s so much more to the story than what I can say in a measly few hundred words, but suffice to say that the scenes and characterizations, captured with such rapturous commitment by the superb cast, sublimate the narrative. Purcell and Greg Jackson, as co-writers, give the ensemble a toy-chest’s worth of sumptuous characters to inhabit and a scenario that winds and weaves from ridiculous to sublime and back, giving us road chases, car crash-and-burns, mind trips, and blow-outs. To single out performances would diminish the impact of the whole, but on opening night, coping with a few technical kinks that that were still working themselves out, a few especially amusing moments allowed for some classic theatre brilliance. Vin Knight, doubling as Popo and Senator Thomas Patrick McDonald, had some shaky moments in a pair of high heels during his opening torch song that he nonetheless performed with spot-on sensual bravado. The finale musical number as sung by Billy, one of Jeremy Brisiel’s many juicy personas, lacked the use of his guitar due to some unforeseen prop mishap but Brisiel picked up the beat and eventually was joined by the entire cast to redeem the number and, in my eyes, solidify the beauty of Go-Go Kitty, Go!

The behind-the-scenes team shares in the fun as well. Samuel Buggeln directs with Meyer-esque pacing and tongue-in-cheek. Lee Savage’s scenic design employs a comic book flatness that accentuates the theme. Mark Huang’s sound design becomes another character, providing foley sounds and hilarious backing tracks. And Meganne George’s costume design, along with showcasing some of the show’s greatest “assets,” includes a gorilla in a bikini.

Congratulations to Theatre B and all of the Kitties for contributing to the B-movie legacy of full-throttle, tough-as-ya-wanna-be coolness that makes us all still want to jump onto the back of the chopper and hold on for dear life.

Grandmotherfucker & The Seducers
reviewed by Liz Kimberlin

I suppose Grandmotherfucker & The Seducers took me a bit by surprise because I went in expecting something more along the lines of traditional theatre. The show is actually comprised of the four cast members Pat Candaras, Desiree Burch, Michael Cyril Creighton, and Jack Kukoda each taking an individual turn at the mike and performing a comedy monologue/set of about 20 minutes. But these are no ordinary “joke, yuk-yuk, joke” stand-up routines. At first, the material seems random, almost non sequitur—except that there are corresponding video stills—but then certain themes definitely start to emerge. Much of the show has the confessional feel of a 12-Step meeting, albeit with a twist: no shame, no regret, and certainly no apology. In fact, it’s a celebration of human foibles and fantasy, including embracing moments of public and private mortification.

And, of course, sex figures a lot in this equation with the “f”-word only the beginning of the profanity. But sex and debating the visual aesthetic of the penis (with accompanying slide illustrations) aren’t the only topics addressed; self-image, identity confusion in general, stupid lies perpetuated by parents, and religion are also all referenced. And you know how most people are loathe to admit, and especially describe, their inane thoughts or fantasies for fear of other people thinking something is wrong with them, that they’re weird, gross, or just plain sick and crazy? Well, the people on this stage are not in that majority and put in our faces the most natural of acts, thoughts, and desires which, for God knows what reason, we might be ashamed of.

Pat Candaras, Grandmotherfucker of the title, talks, for instance, about being a devout Catholic teenager in the '50s and having the patriotic sex fantasy that she would save America from those evil Russian Communists by offering her virgin body to Khrushchev. (Yes, Khrushchev.) She also admitted to having a crush on Castro because she knew that would piss off her father. Seducer Desiree Burch now eschews on-line dating because her email inbox inevitably becomes littered with penis jpegs from prospective suitors. She admits to having a disgustingly girlie knight-in-shining-armor/Prince Charming fantasy, except, of course, that he’s gay. He’s ALWAYS gay.

Michael Cyril Creighton also discusses religion and praying. He prayed a lot as a child—prayed to grow up to be Madeleine Kahn, or Carol Burnett, or Mary Tyler Moore. He admits to a number of neuroses and inhibitions. After you’ve heard Creighton’s explanation of one in particular, you may never look at a Mr. Softee truck the same way again. Jack Kukoda doesn’t spend that much time discussing sex, although he admits that he once accidentally racked up a $700 cable bill watching porn on someone else’s account. In probably my favorite part of the show, Kukoda talks about his early down-and-out years in New York when he was spending his days buzzed on Bud by 11am while watching Quantum Leap marathons and becoming positively obsessed with putting on an act to make the giggling non-English-speaking workmen in his apartment think he wasn’t, in fact, a drunk, pathetic, unemployed loser.

Grandmotherfucker & The Seducers will most definitely offend people of right wing, Moral Majority, and homophobic persuasion. Those sensitive to ethnicity issues and the PC thing might frown a bit as well. I, however, found this show’s down-and-VERY-dirty pathos to be refreshing and cathartic, even therapeutic—which I suspect is the whole point.