FringeNYC 2005 Reviews - Page 15

You Wanna Piece of Me?
reviewed by Geeta Citygirl

Hip as can be, Pocho Joe aka Joe Hernandez-Kolski hops thru his stories in this hip-hop solo performance piece, You Wanna Piece of Me?. Mix spoken word poetry with storytelling. Add to that, mime. Toss in some incredible dancing to music by a live DJ. And finally, put in insightful cultural reflections… and all of it flows effortlessly.

You might have seen him on the season finale of the fourth season of HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. Perhaps you caught him in the recent national tour of The Bomb-itty of Errors. Whether or not you've seen him before, I recommend you go experience the exuberant energy and inspiring talents of this Los Angeles-based dynamic artiste.

Here is the flavor… walk downstairs to the Ace of Clubs space. If you want to cool off, buy a drink in the bar and then find a seat. Listen to the hip-hop music, a lot of old school stuff that you are sure to vibe with. The stage is set with the DJ turntables under a spotlight and a projected image of the caricature associated with this show on a screen. As usual, when the lights dim, we are requested to turn off our cell phones. However this time, we were also advised that with the volume of this show, we probably wouldn’t hear them anyway.

Fellow Los Angeles-based DJ Jedi controls the turntables with real finesse. Watching this musical wizard “scratch” vinyl records is invigorating. He scratches the familiar theme song from the TV show, The Jeffersons—“We finally got a piece… we finally got a piece… we finally got a piece of the pie….”. The music and song choices help to carry us through each vignette.

His hyphenated last name, Hernandez-Kolski, immediately caught my attention. And while he addresses his multicultural identity with humor and pizzazz, he also shares other snippets of his life. From the streets of Chicago, we follow this former heavy metal head-banger to his days at Princeton and arrive at what I would now call a pioneering spirit who has a unique view on contemporary culture. After this packed sixty minutes, you will certainly not forgot Pocho Joe.

Benjamin Byron Davis directs this solo-performance with just the right amount of freedom and control. He threads the moments of music, dance, visual imagery, and poetry like a master tailor. Congratulations to the entire team: producer Justin A. Yoffe, co-producer, Miranda Morton Yap, stage manager Olivia Killingsworth, and production assistant Natalia Romero. I was moved by the support of his crew—each of whom felt more like a member of his family.

Watch and feel the beating of his heart in the choreography of his dancing. And observe the high level of skill, when he shares his years at Princeton in a mime piece. Hernandez-Kolski gives you more than a piece of himself—he pours 100% of his spirit into this incredible work of art.

I attended the opening night performance with my husband Sudhanva and we both joined the crowd in giving a standing ovation at the end. Advice: Bring a little extra cash and purchase his chapbook ($5) or a t-shirt ($15) and join the Pocho Joe movement. And check out his official website www.pochojoe.com.

In Search of Stanley Hammer
reviewed by David Hilder

The quest for identity drives all the characters in In Search of Stanley Hammer. Baseball great Jackie Robinson tries acting when he finds a book entitled “Finding Your Character.” A woman named Bertha, who tells us vehemently (and repeatedly) that she did not kill her husband, wraps herself in a blanket and deposits herself on the doorstep of an unknown family. Sophie, the self-proclaimed prettiest girl in high school, drives herself first to become a wife and then an acclaimed actress. And the eponymous Stanley works his whole life to find what his ticket to success will be. In fact, everyone in the play is working hard to get away from the past, even if they don’t know exactly where they’re going.

At nearly an hour and a half, In Search of Stanley Hammer is too long and too diffuse for its central themes to bear any weight, and playwright Kimberly Rosenstock seems more concerned with a sustained wackiness than any actual investment in her characters. That’s a shame, because while there are wonderful moments to recommend the play, a deeper investigation of these ideas might be a lot more satisfying.

Antonia Grilikhes-Lasky has directed with a fine hand, working well to minimize transition time between scenes in the lovely but somewhat awkward theatre at the Center for Architecture. The scenic and prop design elements (by Jen Colombo), costumes (Ásta Hostetter), and projections (Natalie Robin) all serve the play beautifully. Most of the cast, though, fails to fully inhabit the alternate world—a quasi-Brooklyn of the 1950s and early '60s—the play posits. Only Phillip Taratula, as a series of radio and television announcers, and Kristen Schaal, as the outrageously selfish Sophie, seem to be living their roles. Schaal is particularly inspired, giving a comic turn that allows Sophie’s vanity a wide range of colors. It’s an impressive performance.

Ultimately, In Search of Stanley Hammer appears to want to be both lighthearted fluff and a rooted, character-driven story. At this point, though, it succeeds only at the first of these aims, and that somewhat fitfully.

Frida and Herself
reviewed by Kevin Connell

Frida and Herself is an original performance piece centered on the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. It has been choreographed and penned by a creative team of young Canadian artists, all of who are members of the Toronto-based theatre company Anandam.

In Frida and Herself they strive to push the boundaries of contemporary theatrical expression by taking the story of a woman of Mexican Indian descent, and actualizing her journey through the influences of Japanese and Indian theatre. This production mixes Bunraku and shadow puppetry, dance, and spoken word in attempts to challenge its audience through a melding of Eastern and Western theatrical influences. But the innovation that this production portends proves unsatisfying because little is revealed about its central subject that is in any way provocative. What we get is a thin line of biographical details that are already available on the Internet, in documentaries, and in textbooks. The facts: Kahlo was born in Mexico City. She was a painter. She survived polio. She was in a bus accident that fractured her back, collarbone, ribs, pelvis, shoulder, and foot. She spent most of her life in constant pain. She fell in love with the muralist Diego Rivera. He slept around on her. She died. What’s missing in Frida and Herself is why Kahlo’s story needs to be told as “theatre.” This missing reason is the production's downfall.

The lights come up on an actress portraying Frida. She speaks a monologue that sets a tone ultimately too casual, too linear, and too factual for a production begging to be told through gesture, storytelling, and non-verbal expressions. Yes, some metaphors are there, particularly in the colors of the set and costuming, which, like the garden of oils chosen by Kahlo’s paint brush, reflect a cornucopia of fruits like peaches, lemons, plums, and pomegranates, all expressed here in ribbons, fabrics, paints, and flowers. But the psychological and emotional metaphors, as well as the investigation of imagery from the actual paintings of Kahlo, are essentially underrealized. Yes, there is an interesting dance between Kahlo and a suspended skeletal model of a vertebral column and pelvis. And yes, there is success in the design and execution of the life-size puppets. And the impact of storytelling through shadow imagery is quite effective. But, this production fails to give due emphasis to these potentially illuminating devices. For example, I ask, what is the message gained by using a life-size puppet in a scene instead of simply using a live actor? It’s a question I wish Frida and Herself had investigated and answered.

This is a talented company with potential. I applaud their desire to re-think the theatrical event.

The Magnificent Hour
reviewed by Fred Backus

What if you had an hour where you could legally murder another American—that is, as long as you fill out the proper paperwork? This is the premise of The Magnificent Hour, the latest creation by the sketch comedy troupe ETC. With audience participation cards left on the seats, mock commercials projected on the back wall, and a program packed with "Magnificent Hour Application Forms," a countdown begins in real time on a large digital clock which launches a series of interweaving sketches that ensue during this hour of planned carnage.

But once the clock starts running, the product doesn’t fully live up to the promises of the packaging. The audience participation element comes off as little more than a gimmick: it is neither used to throw the audience off-balance, nor to give the performers hurdles through which to demonstrate their skill. The rest of the ingredients set you up for a political, cultural, and social satire, but The Magnificent Hour doesn’t seem to have a clear plan of attack or a clear idea of what its target is. The current presidential administration, city bureaucracy, the local news, and television personality shows all come under the bombardment of its artillery fire, but too often the gags aren’t tied to the premise of the skits, which in turn too often have little to do with the overall premise of the piece. Perhaps a good example is the local news sketch. Instead of exploring the comedic possibilities of how the local news might cover such an insane event, we get to see the anchors insult each other with sexual references. Humor doesn’t have to be a precision instrument, but if you’re going to go for the “I can’t believe they went there” approach, then you have to either go way over the top or dig deep these days. The Magnificent Hour doesn’t quite do either.

Sharp or original characters can often make up for a lot, but the show doesn't quite satisfy in this department either. Sometimes the characters come straight out of Sketch Central Casting, like the Fu Manchu rehash of General Chang. Other characters work for a single gag, but then quickly wear out their welcomes when they reappear again and again.

Credit must be given to Anne Johnson, who at least puts in the effort to try to make some of her roles memorable, and to Gene Perelson, whose President Bush imitation is pitch-perfect both in mannerisms and in satirizing the content of his pronouncements and policies. In fact, every member of this seven person ensemble made me laugh at some point, which indicates there is potential here. I think ETC has both the intelligence and talent to carve out a comedic place in the urban, white collar landscape of our psyche, but they need to plan a better operation. I’d like to see them sharpen the knife, really choose their points of entry, and cut a little deeper.

The Last Days of Cleopatra
reviewed by Charles Battersby

Fox's epic motion picture Cleopatra cost $35,000,000 to make back in 1963, and nearly bankrupted the studio. Its legacy is a five-hour Director's Cut, five Academy Awards, a "Best Picture" nomination, and the first marriage of Liz Taylor & Richard Burton.

Liz & Dick met while she was playing Cleopatra and he was Marcus Antonius. This behind-the-scenes love affair is the subject of Charlie Barnett's new musical The Last Days of Cleopatra. The show takes place entirely in Rome, during the film's production, giving a very small slice of the Taylor & Burton epic romance. This is fine, since the audience probably knows the Liz & Dick story, and the tale of them falling in love for the first time makes a good romantic comedy.

Barnett's book tells the story with wit and drama, plus a heapin' dose of old-fashion Hollywood style; not to mention some show biz humor, such as a choreographer telling the director, "We can't shoot the dancers—at least not with a camera."

Barnett also wrote the music and lyrics, creating some big show-tuney numbers, plus a few funny soft shoe songs. There’s a lot of variety in the styles of music used; since it’s in Rome, there’s even a ballad that’s mostly in Italian. At times the voices in the company aren’t quite what they could be, but the principal players are all on target.

The cast are playing screen legends here, but there seems to be a deliberate directorial choice to avoid doing impressions. Michael Deleget’s booming theatrical voice isn’t a dead ringer for Burton’s, but he certainly does a great job of showing Burton’s arrogance, and occasional hangovers. Anna Roberts isn’t trying to be a Liz Taylor doppleganger either, but she definitely is a slinky screen siren and seductress.

The production values are lavish for an off-off Broadway show. Director Christopher Gerken's set is strewn with Roman finery; and Georgette Feldman's costumes not only represent 1960's Rome, but also Hollywood's vision of first century B.C. Egypt and Rome. There’s also plenty of eye candy in the form of scantily clad chorus girls, and loinclothed slave boys too.

The show has a couple of asps lurking among its figs, though. There's a few subplots going on when Liz and Dick aren't onstage; one is about an Italian huckster trying to leech off of the film company, and another is about a pair of young lovers (a script boy and a chorus girl). The young lover plot thread does seem like something from the golden age of Hollywood, but these subplots are still a bit superfluous, given the show's glamorous main story, and it's healthy two-hour running-time. These are but minor quibbles, and The Last Days of Cleopatra remains an entertaining show, even for folk who aren’t big fans of Elizabeth Taylor, and it’s certainly a must-see for those who appreciate Hollywood epics, and the people who made them.

A Lesbian in the Pantry
reviewed by Eric Pliner

Joe Latessa's quirky musical A Lesbian in the Pantry is built on a simple premise: that the word "lesbian" is funny. There's no more reason for what's hiding in the protagonists' kitchen closet to be a lesbian than, say, a clown or a frog. But that's part of the joy of this adorably entertaining diversion. Unlike many of the entries in this year's festival, Lesbian has nothing to do with civil rights or tolerance, focusing instead on an absurd and amusing fable, and succeeding delightfully in all the ways that a Fringe show should.

As a long-abandoned housewife, Lucy's mother (Kristen Freilich) spends her days crafting impeccable meals for her family of two. Day after day, however, the meals go uneaten while daughter Lucy (played by adult actor Shannon Strodel) disappears into the pantry to get condiments for her mother's creations. When hours go by and the meals repeatedly go to waste, Lucy's mother finally confronts her daughter about what's distracting her: a friendly, Birkenstock-clad lesbian (Hedy Beinert) who lives in the pantry but enjoys playing games, chatting, even helping Lucy with her spelling homework. When Lucy's mother dubs the lesbian an imaginary friend, Lucy barricades herself in her bedroom, refusing to eat or interact, and focusing on mastering the art of prayer. Left to her own devices, Lucy's mother realizes that there is more to life than what she's been experiencing, and she eventually uncovers a hidden wing in the pantry, wherein lives the titular lesbian. Without giving away the show's hilarious climax, suffice to say that when the three finally meet face-to-face-to-face, mother and daughter are in for an existential surprise that alters their perspectives on life, happiness, and food.

The music in this sung-through tale is pleasant overall (although the most memorable and oft-repeated tune bears more than a passing resemblance to the Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl"). But what makes A Lesbian in the Pantry a true lark is the joy in the performances of its two stars. As Lucy, Strodel skillfully walks the line between adult and child, comically alternating between pouting and reflection, and belting her songs with aplomb. Clad in a cotton-candy-colored ensemble and looking like a world-weary Mary Kay saleslady, Freilich is hilarious, veering between sanity and insanity, singing gleefully and posing maniacally. These two actors are a treat to watch; we have fun because they're clearly having fun. The austerity of Laura Walberg's production design juxtaposed with Lori Mueller's fantastic costumes adds another level of frivolity to the piece, frosting the actresses’ already delicious performances.

A Lesbian in the Pantry is a small show, but an earnest one. At a 45-minute running time—and packed with an absurd story, plenty of laughs, clever performances, and one hilarious word—Lesbian brings FringeNYC back to what it should be: simple fun.

Ambrosia
reviewed by Timothy Fannon

My grandmother lives in New Jersey, and I don’t get to see her as much as I’d like. Mostly at holidays and family functions. But when I do see her, the familiarity, the soft skin, and the wet kiss are ever-present. And when I do afford myself the opportunity to reflect on my grandma, memories of comfort, security, family, and love are conjured. Ambrosia, performing in FringeNYC at Dixon Place, is a tribute to such memories and the bonds that are shared by family.

Three elderly women carefully make their way onto the stage and take seats in a row, a TV dinner tray in front of each one, as if they are practicing their daily ritual of passing time on the front porch together. One knits, one plays solitaire, one keeps the beat with a twitching leg. With a mix of humor, honesty, and musing, the women reflect on their lives, and the families they built around them. The three old ladies are actually played by young women, who break from the performance occasionally to offer their own opinions of the grandmothers and the individual relationships they forged with these women as young children and beyond. The theatricality of this dual presentation reminds us that their portrayals of their grandparents are not simply realistic—they are based in memory, and through the lens of their own evolving experience. As strikingly different as these grandmothers are, the actresses, and by extension, the audience, are thrilled by the common bonds shared by the feminine relationship of women to their maternal forebears.

The three performers emulating their grandmothers (and in one case, great grandmother)—Christine Ashe, Lilli Birdsell, and Susan Dalian—succeed beautifully in their roles and make the transition between grandmother and self fluid and seamless. They capture the subtlety, vulnerability, and experience of age in their elder representations, and keep the piece moving and engaging with a simple energy and commitment. I also commend the direction of Julie Ariola, who provides an economical yet specific environment, with a deft blend of musical underscore, for the three actresses to explore and identify with their roles.

This piece is well-conceived and executed, though I found the transitions from grandmother to individual reflection slightly disengaging—I would have liked the piece to spend more time within the characters of the elderly ladies, allowing us to experience the actresses’ own perceptions and illuminations of their grandmothers through their characterizations. That aside, Ambrosia is quite moving, and tingles with an acute sensitivity to human experience.

Lady Convoy
reviewed by Kelly McAllister

Lady Convoy has a very funny premise: take the plot of an old trucker song (that was also made into a Sam Peckinpah movie starring Kris Kristofferson), switch the gender of the hero and his sidekick, and play it straight. The result is an often funny show that, while still in need of some editing and tightening up, is certainly worth a viewing.

I haven’t seen the film of Convoy, but it seemed as if much of the dialogue here was lifted verbatim from that screenplay. This is either smart editing or excellent writing on the part of playwright Ken Gallo [The script is entirely original - ed.]. The story follows the adventures of Rubber Duck (Kelly Rauch), a tough trucker with a heart of gold—a desperado who likes to stick it to the man with her own white-trash version of panache. Rubber Duck's sidekick is Love Machine, who, though played by a white woman, speaks with all the trappings of any number of blaxploitation film heroes; as hilariously portrayed by Lucy Smith, she comes off as a sort of cross between Shaft and Jimmy Walker. The two truckers get into trouble with the law, form a convoy of like-minded truckers—all women—and then head across the Southwest to a big showdown in Texas. The entire story, like so many FringeNYC shows these days, is played straight, but with camp being the guiding force. By playing such a cheesy story straight, the absurdity is made that much clearer. Director Robert Ross Parker does an excellent job of keeping the pace tight, and the staging is inspired—hula hoops for steering wheels, simple frames of plastic tubing for semi-trucks, etc.

The cast seemed a little tentative at the performance I attended, but it was the opening day, and I am sure they will improve with each show. Both Rauch and Smith do outstanding work as the two main lady truckers. In multiple roles, both Sean Doran and Sam Schamberg are excellent—they both have a keen grasp of this type of humor, able to elicit laughs from the audience with ease. Rounding out the cast are Gene Gallerano as the pretty boy runaway who hooks up with Rubber Duck, Brad Thomason as the evil Sheriff Lyle McGee, and John D’Arcangelo as the Governor of Texas.

Muriel Vanderbilt Goes Walking
reviewed by Alyssa Simon

 The description of Muriel Vanderbilt Goes Walking in the FringeNYC program guide reads, "In a dreamscape of Muriel's disturbed mind she's forced to listen to her husband's infidelities, turning to shrieks of pain as the house becomes a playground for the acting out of violent and sexual fantasies unraveling from the Juniper Tree." When I read that, I thought how tough it is for artists to describe and sell their show with only a few words allowed for a blurb; how that never really gets to what the show is about.

However, after seeing Muriel Vanderbilt Goes Walking, I realize that, in this case anyway, the blurb is exactly what this show is all about. Without giving us reasons or specifics in plot, acting, or motivation, we see Muriel Vanderbilt (played by Melissa Meola) undergo hallucinations that stem from the trauma of being sexually and emotionally tormented by her husband (Barry Shaffer). I'm guessing that Dan Shanahan, the writer and director, is trying to evoke emotions in his audience that come from being confronted with the unknown and unexplainable in dreams and visions. But in executing it, as a drama, it does not succeed, because it is very general and plays only as mood.

There is no physical action, no psychological gesture that creates characters. There is only style that unfortunately comes off as attitude. Muriel Vanderbilt just seems angry and her husband really mean. He sleeps with the maid (Bonita Shaffer), uses and physically abuses her as well. She in turn takes out her cruelty on the children, Boy (Becky Globus) and Girl (Jessica Huber). She breaks the neck of the boy and feeds what looks to be offal soup with bones to the girl for dinner. There is a lot that is reminiscent of Strindberg, especially the themes of the war between the sexes and class struggle, played out with violence and cruelty.

In addition to the images of blood and death, there is a peasant woman played by Bonita Z who, I think, represents utter misery. She enters three times, nude, covered with dirt and/or excrement and wails. There is also a giant rabbit (Lenny Ziolkowski) who comes out, sings a song to the girl at tea, and then rapes her. But because there is no reason for this, what should startle and disturb, does not. I know it is supposed to be a fantasy in the mind of Muriel but it is unclear what effect this has on her character, because, although we see her on stage, she does not react to what she envisions.

Costumes created by Geraldine Duskin and set design by Michael Lodick and Tim Sivertsen are the highlights. They create the dark atmosphere of a house of horrors. Unfortunately, the audience is left not knowing how the nightmare came to be or why.

Weddings of Mass Destruction
reviewed by Matt Schicker

If the style and format of Weddings of Mass Destruction feels familiar, it’s because GayCo Productions, the comedy collective who wrote and performs all of the material, is the gay offspring of Chicago’s famous Second City. (Additional material is by Mary Beth Burns and Matt Elwell.) And in the Second City tradition, the sketches are topical, full of edgy wit, and performed with only minimal furniture (a few metal chairs) and an accompanying pianist (Stephanie McCullough). What makes GayCo unique, however, is their commitment to comedy where “gay is the given—not the punchline,” a refreshing sentiment in the age of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which GayCo targets in a brilliant and affecting sketch.

There are about 20 sketches in Weddings of Mass Destruction. Bookended by two scenes involving a double gay wedding, the evening makes use of a wide range of styles, from pantomime to group and solo musical numbers to traditional sketch comedy; none of it seems to be improvised. Among the hilarious highlights are routines involving a disastrously clumsy date between two women, a couple’s Twilight Zone-like trip to a sex toy shop, and a couple of straight guys from Massachusetts who get more than they bargained for when they marry each other for insurance reasons. A couple of the sketches prove the troupe isn’t afraid to take on touchy political issues; one of the funniest of them can hardly be better described than it is in GayCo’s press release: “Iraqis wreak homo-rific Abu Ghraib revenge.” The piece that really is a satirical bulls-eye, however, is a send-up of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy featuring cuddly TV queers performing a “Stepin Fetchit”- style minstrel act in “pink-face.” The incisive social commentary hits twice as hard because they’ve got you laughing.

The six versatile performers in Weddings of Mass Destruction are uniformly strong actors and singers, and together form the tight ensemble this kind of comedy requires. Celeste Pachous, with her hoarse, high-pitched yelps, makes the biggest impression of all, however, in a very funny sketch in which a game of Old Maid hits dangerously close to home for one of the players. The other players—Jim Bennett, John Bonny, Andy Eninger, Judy Fabjance, and Mandy Price—are game for anything and are skillful physical comedians, too.

Though there are a couple sketches that aren’t as inspired as others and fall a bit flat, the only serious weakness of Weddings of Mass Destruction is a less-than-crisp pacing. Director Jim Zulevic, who otherwise has done a fine job with the wide variety of material, hasn’t perfected the technical timing of the ending and beginning of each piece; often the audience hesitated to applaud after the punch line because of imprecise lighting and sound cues. However, under the extremely rushed circumstances of participating in the FringeNYC Festival, this sort of technical sloppiness is understandable, and it ultimately doesn’t detract from the audience’s enjoyment.

Not Dead Yet
reviewed by Yuval Boim

It is a welcome relief to sit in the audience of Collective: Cabaret and watch Aaron Samson perform his one-man show Not Dead Yet. He takes good care of us. Writer-performer Samson invites us to listen to a story he weaves as he sets out to unravel the mystery behind his grandfather’s memoirs.

At the age of 27, Leo Samson, a Russian Jew with a political affiliation to Trotsky, escapes an execution and embarks on a journey to become American. At the same age and a century later, his grandson and our narrator Jacob Samson, on the run from a fragmented American identity, makes a journey back to Russia. The simultaneous movement between the Old World and the New give Not Dead Yet its shape, which Samson inhabits with deft agility, juggling different spaces, times, and characters. En route to these destinations, we meet a slew of people who form the craggy landscape from which grandfather and grandson make powerful discoveries about hope, survival, and self.

Juxtaposing contemporary American and Russian cultures through the focusing agent of a single bloodline, the piece serves as a refractor, highlighting an inquiry into what it means to be American in today’s world, i.e., the world outside the American universe. Samson proposes questions about roots; about what it means to belong. As Americans, we have a complicated relationship to our past which often leaves some of us feeling as if we do not possess an easily referenced culture. Samson captures some of this anxiety as he gets lost in the search for meaning and heritage.

While Samson paints vivid portraits of the characters accompanying his present day journey and experiences—a biker chick who calls herself Lil’ Bitch; the Russian host of Jeopardy; his Russian host Olga’s belligerently drunk husband (whom Samson joyfully plays, to our delight, by invoking the common kernel of the dommedia dell'arte and Chekhov’s comedies)—the spaces and characters of the more distant past lack the same vibrancy of texture and color as the present-day. While I understood Jacob Samson’s plight, at times with moving subtly, I didn’t feel like I really got to know Leo Samson. Employing the same prowess of invention to the construction of his grandfather’s story as he uses to introduces us to Olga’s husband would have perhaps given the memoirs a life of their own on the stage. Nevertheless, Paul Nicolai Stein’s clean direction and the specifics of Sean Phillips’s sound design serve as vigorous buttresses to Samson’s writing as together they share with us this intimate and poignant homage to ancestry.

Marlowe
reviewed by Pamela Butler

Christopher Marlowe—activist, rebel, poet, and dramatist—died at the young age of 29, killed in a brawl, or so it is said. Bailiwick Repertory presents Harlan Didrickson’s Marlowe as the victim of great Queen Elizabeth I; perhaps because she is a jealous woman, perhaps because Marlowe is a political liability, perhaps both.

The theater is hung with heavy mist as we enter, feeling like a cool, dark cave, sounding of period music, and setting the tone for a 16th century drama. Tom Osbourne’s lighting adds to the effect perfectly, and as the play begins we are in damp London Town hundreds of years ago awaiting the story that’s to unfold.

We soon come upon the young Marlowe with his fellow university pals, drinking and bantering in a London pub, discussing graduation. Marlowe will be deprived of his diploma because he has broken the rules of attendance. This is no small matter to our egocentric hero, who believes in his genius and entitlement and demands and finally gets his due reward for all his study by imploring his Queen’s help. It was because of her after all that he was out of town, in France, uncovering plots against her life.

What follows is a classically Byzantine layering of intrigues, loves and jealousies, and struggles for power and immortality. Marlowe here is a lover of men and is equally loved and reviled by those surrounding him. He has a quick tongue and temper, running afoul of the law on more than one occasion. He is always saved by his lovers and friends until the end when he becomes too uncontrollable even for them.

Throughout we are treated to Marlowe’s own words, from his famous poem "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love” (which begins “Come live with me and be my love”) to scenes from Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus, and Edward II, deftly running through the action; drama enhancing drama.

The costumes and masks by Kerith Wolf are wonderfully rich. The fight choreography by Erik Peterson works well for some pretty ugly brawls, and the scenes themselves have a tableau-like quality as if from a Dutch master’s brush (David Zak is the director). But Timothy Hull seems miscast as the brilliant young dramatist: I could not get past his modern haircut and sheepish American grin. He just looks like a surfer at a costume party and he doesn’t project the ego of a man like a Marlowe.

And the action is a bit muddled, perhaps trying to tell too much in the two hours given. Other performances are uneven, with exceptions being Julie Partyka, illuminating a complex Queen Elizabeth; Rian Jairell as the faithful and straight Watson; James Bould as the has-been dramatist, Kyd; and Kevin Mayes as the unctuous, pandering Walshingham.

My theater companion liked the play but kept asking questions about just what was happening. My suggestion was not to worry about it and just enjoy the show.