nytheatre Archive
FringeNYC 2000

SHOW REVIEWS ON THIS PAGE: VIVA LOS ALAMOS, I AM STAR TREK, TINY NINJA MACBETH, CHRONICLES OF HELL· CUT TO THE CHASE· ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL· THE MERMAID, BETWEEN US

VIVA LOS ALAMOS by Eric Winick · August 20, 2000
Combining the anything-goes-for-broke spirit of Elvis movie musicals with Cold War technological know-how, Sensurround Stagings’ production of Viva Los Alamos… in 3-D is a silly, popcorn-light wisp of a show. It’s also extremely clever, devilishly well-acted, and features the catchiest tunes since… well, “Viva Las Vegas.” The brainchild of Mike Katinsky (book & lyrics) and Deirdre Broderick (music), Viva Los Alamos makes no apologies for its out-and-out thievery, throwing caution (and copyright) to the wind to create a breezy and refreshing new musical. In Viva, the “plot” is simply the excuse on which Katinsky hangs a brilliant framing device. Claiming to have unearthed the “lost” film of the King himself – his name is cunningly obscured throughout – a smarmy actor-turned-film critic named Adrian (host of “Adrian Knows Pics” – say it aloud, you’ll get the joke) guides us through his personal reconstruction of the work. Naturally, problems abound: sections have been lost, destroyed, burned, redubbed in a foreign language, or reshot years later by an older, fatter King. The “film,” staged with hilarious “3-D” effects (actually actors rushing at the audience), plays out onstage with minimal set & props, slide projections bolstering our sense of time and place. In it, Dex, a handsome race car driver with a sketchy past, shows up at a military base (in this case the Los Alamos nuclear testing facility), sets hearts aflutter and gets himself entangled in some messy international espionage. The rest is a series of nonsensical production numbers enhanced by snappy choreography (the work of Hope Mirlis) and accompanied by a crackerjack pickup band. As the de facto narrator, John Gregorio turns in the show’s funniest and most assured performance. The rest of the cast, uniformly excellent, has a field day recreating Elvis film staples: Cindy, the good MP (Jil Perry); Barbara, the bad MP (Aileen Loy), the gruff yet sympathetic military officer (Bernard Clark, doubling as the corpulent King), the brilliant scientist/romantic rival (Matthew Myers), the bad guys (Jimmy Hilburn and Brad Thomason), and of course, the King himself (Michael A. Schneider, who’s got the King’s sneer and swagger down pat). Of course, there’s a happy ending (involving aliens) that simultaneously closes the show and explains what became of the young, strapping Elvis of days gone by. Viva has run out of steam by this point, having exhausted its central joke halfway through Act Two. But this hardly matters – you’ll be thoroughly entranced by Viva Los Alamos, and after all, who can resist a show containing the line, “The part of the young Dr. Jake Mollusk was supposed to be played by a young Ernest Borgnine, until producers found that there was no such thing as a young Ernest Borgnine.”
I AM STAR TREK by Eric Winick · August 20, 2000
The life and times of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry serves as the vaulting point for this play by Rick Vorndran, a boisterous, rambling, sophomoric, and intermittently hilarious skewering of Hollywood in all its terrible glory. Although I Am Star Trek is presented as a send-up, it’s clear that the author’s done his homework – much of it has the sick ring of truth, most likely culled from biographies both authorized and unauthorized. There’s some pretty juicy stuff here, and there’s no denying its appeal. This proves to be the play’s greatest asset and liability. While it’s not hard to divine Mr. Vorndran’s attitude towards Trekkies, the show’s ravenous fan base, the jury’s still out on Roddenberry. And there’s the rub. The production, directed with reckless abandon by Paul Wells for his Dysfunctional Theatre Company, moves at breakneck speed through almost fifty years. Over fifty characters are employed to tell this seamy tale of ambition gone haywire, and the actors (nine in all) have a grand old time breathing life into such personalities as William Shatner, Patrick Stewart, Michael Eisner, Majel Barrett, and Leonard Nimoy. The re-creations of scenes from Star Trek episodes past and (somewhat) present are wonderful, the show’s true highlights. It’s pure theater delivered in an aggressively physical staging that leaves you breathless. The bear-like Roddenberry (Steve Orlikowski), initially seen with his family on a camping trip, is presented as a sex-obsessed egomaniac. He lusts after any woman that’s not his wife, steals his co-workers’ ideas, and throws temper tantrums when he doesn’t get what he wants. All in all, a pretty scathing portrayal, but Mr. Vorndran favors a more beneficent reading of Roddenberry. Towards the end, Roddenberry’s colleague, writer Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana (Stephanie Goldman, the production’s most accomplished comedienne), tells a gaggle of fans, “Everything happened because of Gene. The good and the bad. It’s part of the package. You understand, don’t you?” Well, sure, but the Dysfunctional’s telling of the Roddenberry story is so clearly a send-up, it’s hard to find the man within the chaos swirling around him. It’s not enough to tell us that Paramount execs prostrated themselves before Roddenberry for the chance to produce The Next Generation; Wells and Vorndran give us the delightful image of a female executive literally blowing smoke up Roddenberry’s ass. Like much in I Am Star Trek, it’s a blatantly over-the-top moment that only serves to stack the deck against a man who, though insufferable at times, was undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s most misunderstood figures.
TINY NINJA MACBETH by KIDS Editor Julie · August 19, 2000
As the name would suggest, Tiny Ninja Theatre presents Macbeth is Macbeth done with masses of ninja figurines (probably one inch in height), with a couple of yellow smile dolls (slightly taller than the ninjas, but not by much) for the Macbeths. It is incredibly creative and amusing, filled with many inventive touches (one example being how laser pointers are directed at any dying characters for the appearance of blood). I especially liked how accessible it made the story: whether you knew the play or not going in, you definitely knew it going out. One of the most amazing aspects of the show is that it is all done by one man, Dov Weinstein. He not only is the voices of all the ninjas, but he also does most of the lighting and moves all the ninjas. The way he does the latter is quite innovative. From what I conclude, the stands the ninjas are on are magnetic. Therefore he moves them from underneath the playing area. As I said earlier, the show is bursting with new and great touches such as these. Of all the shows I have seen at Fringe NYC thus far, Tiny Ninja Theatre presents Macbeth is truly one of my favorites. It’s original, funny, imaginative and resourceful. The only problem with it is that the audience can be of no more than 15. But then I suppose that fault lies not within the show but within the actors’ heights (but don’t fret about that, those who do get in are given opera glasses)!
CHRONICLES OF HELL by Tim Cusack · August 19, 2000
Upon leaving the basement that is the St. Marks Studio Theatre, my friend Ric and I played a game: If we had to create hell for a theatre piece, where would we locate it? We came up with a podiatrist’s office, an exclusive health club and an auto body repair shop in Massapequa. The production team of Chronicles of Hell sets hell in, well, hell. Complete with ooga-booga makeup, scary red capes and creepy sounds. Kind of like a haunted house my dad and I once went to in Long Beach, NJ, when I was a kid. Unfortunately, once de Ghelderode’s metaphor for the corruption of the Catholic Church has been literalized there’s not much left for the audience to do. When irony is killed, we’re all in hell. From what I could gather from the cacophonous production, a bishop has just died, or perhaps has just been raised from the dead. The bishop was responsible for a miracle of questionable providence many years earlier, and a monsignor and the Papal nuncio are fighting over the corpse. But it’s impossible to tell from the production what exactly it is that they’re fighting about because most of the lines are rendered unintelligible by a performance choice that calls for the actors to overlap each other at the most crucial plot points. If this is meant to invoke the chaos of Hades, all it actually does is further obfuscate an already abstract text. What drama there is gets sucked dry in the process. The cast’s energy and commitment are certainly to be commended, and Brian Rogers has created some visceral stage choreography, but ultimately one has to ask to what purpose. When de Ghelderode’s play, written in 1929 and first produced in 1949, was young, the demonic acolytes and homosexual priests would have been scandalous to a Europe still paying lip service to Christian piety. In today’s post-Vatican II world, the urge to shock the Altar and Rosary ladies just seems quaint. Obviously something drew this company to the play, and its themes of power corrupted and damned could still resonate for us today, but the trick, of course, is to find a performance style that allows that to happen. Ironically the production itself offers a tantalizing hint of the aesthetic road not taken. A running gag involving chronic flatulence and deflating balloons is exactly the kind of inspired, camp goofiness this highway to hell is crying out for.
CUT TO THE CHASE by Tim Cusack · August 19, 2000
Buster Keaton used to say about filmmaking, “If you have a beginning and an ending, the middle will take care of itself.” Cut to the Chase, Scott Nankivel’s solo biographical show on the life of Keaton, starts wonderfully and ends movingly. Unfortunately in theatre, you do have to attend to the middle part. The show begins as Nankivel enters from the back of the theatre as Keaton, dramatically back lit, and makes his way down the aisle to the front of the house. He tries to put on his hat, and it flies off the top of his head. He spits in it and puts it on the head of an audience member. Again it flies into the air. He tries to read the newspaper, and it unfolds into an unmanageable mass, wreaking havoc in the orchestra pit. He is banished to the stage where that darned hat still won’t behave. He chases after it on the floor and falls off the stage. The audience gasps. He gets up. He’s all right, folks! Nankivel executes all of these bits with a deadpan aplomb that instantly wins us over. He gets back on the stage and starts to fuss with the huge playbill poster at the back. Suddenly the billboard falls forward, missing him by inches, and reveals—a movie screen. Nankivel will spend much of the rest of the piece interacting with a movie he directed in which many of Keaton’s most famous gags are re-created. He is an impressive filmmaker, with complete mastery of pacing and tone. He also finds numerous ways to imaginatively combine his live body and the filmed image, often to charming effect, but ultimately I grew impatient with this device. I want theatre, and this just isn’t providing it. What text there is only teasingly gives us glimpses of the real man behind the dead pan. Often, pivotal moments of his life are relayed to us via a radio-announcer voice over. We hear about Keaton’s alchoholic abusive father and his own battles with the bottle, but we are never really shown anything unpleasant or ugly. Nankivel wants us to love Keaton as much as he obviously does, but one gets the sense that there is more to the story than is being let on. Show business was both Keaton’s ticket to immortality and his undoing. The loss we feel at the end as he returns to the light at the back of the theatre is for a great entertainer, not a complex man.
ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL by Tim Cusack · August 19, 2000
Jason Nuzzo is really angry. He’s fed up with spoiled twenty-something urbanites and their prissy neuroses; their micro-managed cell-phoned lives and consumerist obsessions. He also despises the stupidity and ugliness of the rural and suburban parts of this country. Seems there’s just no place for a Brooklyn boy to go when everyone else is asleep at the wheel. So he takes control of the wheel for himself, arms himself with a tape recorder and camera, and goes out into the vast spiritual wilderness of America in search of...what? According to the Fringe NYC program guide, he asked people around the country what they would want if they could have one wish. He includes about three minutes of material in which we hear the answers. But the responses he chooses don’t add up to anything, largely because we don’t get a wide enough array of them to discern patterns or create interesting juxtapositions. And since he makes his contempt for most Americans “out there” pretty explicit, it seems odd that he wants to go on the road to interview them in the first place, especially since all of his interactions have the “just folks” feeling of a Charles Kuralt piece. While Nuzzo’s road seems prone to detours, the scenery along the way is certainly rendered with jagged pizazz. He describes Texas as the “cocyx bone in the ass crack of America,” while the Grand Canyon simply is, with “no cynicism, no irony” capable of attaching themselves to its description. Perhaps this oscillation between smug superiority and pure awe is the point of the piece, an evocation of the schizophrenia that comes from being in the U.S., but it leaves the viewer wondering exactly what Nuzzo wants from his fellow Americans. To be better than we are is the implied answer, and he offers his grandfather as a model for the kind of alpha male who commanded hard work, respect and virtue from those around him through sheer physical intimidation. So that’s what America needs—someone to whip us into shape. I think I’ll take the neuroses and stupidity.
THE MERMAID by Tim Cusack · August 18, 2000
The Mermaid plunges into the murk of familial ties, and if it doesn’t shed much light on the primal triangle of mommy, daddy and baby, it does evoke the complex strangeness of our most intimate relationship—that to our parents. Maggie is the mermaid of the title, and her story is that of Gypsy Rose Lee as filtered through the Drama of the Gifted Child. Maggie is extraordinary, a “star,” Helen, who may or may not be her mother, calls her. She is also extraordinarily large. As played by Stephen Ferguson, she is a pre-Raphaelite nymph on steroids. She is so big, that as a child her father wasn’t strong enough to bear her weight. That’s not all he can’t bear, and we learn that he has vanished from the women’s lives, perhaps committed suicide. Helen, who is or was a dancer, decides that the only way for Maggie to make a life for herself inside of her giantess’s body is to put it on display for the world—in Vegas. So they work up an act to the R & H classic “I Enjoy Being a Girl” and take it on the road. A funny thing happens, though, on the way to the Sands. Somewhere in the desert Southwest, in the course of moving from one cheap motel to the next, Maggie becomes an artist. She discovers a recording of dolphin communication and begins to choreograph underwater ballets in the motel’s swimming pool to its strange, otherworldly music. She has found her level, so to speak, and this discovery throws her relationship with Helen into crisis. It’s the stuff of Broadway musicals as rendered by Maria Irene Fornes (in whose workshop the play was developed), and while the delicacy of approach is certainly a welcome change of pace for this kind of material, at certain points the cool tone leaves one wishing for a little of the emotional chutzpah associated with the (Ethel) Merman. Fornes’s obliquely spare poetry is echoed in the terse exchanges Amantha May has crafted for the two women at the center of her play. Her direction is equally spare and poetic, and receives excellent support from her design team of Juliana Von Haubrich, Nicole Pierce and Michael Fracassi. Special note must also be given to Eva Van Dok’s Helen. For a dead woman, she certainly blazes with life on stage.
BETWEEN US by Eric Winick · August 19, 2000
“There is no subtlety to my rage,” one character intones in Between Us, an oddment of a play from poet Nancy Kuhl being given a tepid staging by The Human Group at the Kraine. He might be referring to the play itself, a seemingly endless tape loop of accusations and outbursts delivered by actors who are alternately blinded by or lost attempting to locate their specials onstage. The play’s tag line, which appears on the cover of the program, reads: “Broken Bones, Schizophrenia, and the whole Soon Yi Thing…” While the first reference has at least minor resonance in Between Us, the latter two never seem to rear their ugly heads – at least, not that I could determine. It’s possible that one character’s ranting and persistent hand wringing is meant to be perceived as mental illness; as far as Soon Yi goes, well, aside from a few oblique references to one character having slept with her stepfather, that’s as far as comparisons go to the old Woodman. Too bad. Ms. Kuhl’s three-character play could use a little pulp twist, some pop culture sizzle to enliven a lumbering plot, underwritten characters, and serious lack of direction. By far the most engaging aspect of this production is the music, played live by two guitarists (Aaron Nevezie and Aaron Dugan) whose pre-show music, which includes a spooky, Jerry Garcia-esque rendering of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” is alone worth the price of admission. And although their portentous onstage noodling is at best distracting, at least it’s distracting. Asked to join the curtain call (which almost never began, as it was unclear that the play was over), these talented young men seemed about as confused as the audience. The main problem with Between Us, it seems, is its sheer lack of dramatic punch. All the ingredients for compelling drama are in place; this should by all rights be an engaging if slightly clichéd tale of greed and familial obsession. Unfortunately, the play’s considerable action has already taken place; what remains are characters recounting, Rashomon-style, incidents which (had we seen played them out before us) might have given the play the narrative thrust it demands. The fact that the lines (which seem to be in verse) are all delivered directly to the audience at a pace best described as somnambulant does not help matters.