mis(Understanding) Mammy

This underdramatized, facile 80 minute monologue is an extreme case of too much tell and not enough show: we listen as sickbed-tethered Hattie McDaniel narrates the key events of her careerography to an unseen (hallucinated?) Walter White, the NAACP president who led the public campaign against her portrayals of Mammy roles. Too much of what we hear is of the "that was the year I had a role in such and such" and "do you remember when I played opposite so and so?" variety, and as her character has no arc over the course of the show, there's no dramatic conflict. What the show does have going for it is Capathia Jenkins, who plays Hattie with a credible mix of warmth and sass, and who thrills the (too few) times she gets to sing. It's almost enough to make you forgive everything else, but not quite.

Real Danger

Can you spot which one of the above is a psychopathic killer? Oh, who cares. By the time this show is over, you'll be begging for your neighbor to stab you. What's irritating about Jeff Hollman's play, Real Danger, is that there's plenty of substance there, and some workable characters. But for a show about real danger, it's played too safe: when the change actually hits, it's almost laughable. The actors deliver their lines with the flattest of zest, the direction amounts to a game of musical chairs, and I'm bored just remembering it. A thriller doesn't work if you don't let on that there's supposed to be suspense, and if the play boils down to nothing more than a twist that everybody knows is coming . . . then what are you left with?

[Read on]

Howard Katz

If the National Theatre website is accurate, Patrick Marber's play clocked in there at two and a half hours including an intermission. Here, presented by The Roundabout, it runs an intermissionless ninety minutes. Maybe it's been cut too deeply, because - despite a solid cast and at least a handful of attention-grabbing dramatic scenes - the play seems to be missing a great big something: why does career-centric talent agent Howard Katz suddenly begin to repel everyone in his life until he is left alone and suicidal? I've no idea, and I don't know why Marber is telling us this story. What we see is an unpleasant and abrasive man whose raging workaholism drives his loved ones, and then his career, away. He seems to begin to experience some moments of humility, but if that's the intention, the play does a poor job of defining his change: he seems just as miserable after his sweeping losses as before. Except for a wrenching moment of workplace humiliation that is something of a cousin to Death of a Salesman's "a man is not a piece of fruit" scene, and a heated argument between Katz and his father about the value of earning to provide - I didn't find any reason to care about or believe this character.

The Secret of Mme. Bonnard's Bath

Israel Horovitz's play takes its time coming into focus - it jumps at a fast clip between two stories a couple of generations apart which seem at first to have only a banal connection - but after the play's structure and its purpose become more clear, this is an intelligent, often lovely little play which gently and playfully speaks to the eternal mysteries of love and to the immortality of art, among many other things. In the contemporary story, two young art students study Bonnard paintings and fight their attraction for each other; in the flashback story, Bonnard catastrophically gives in to his attraction for a woman he immortalizes in his paintings. While John Shea (credibly and vibrantly) plays only Bonnard, the other two actors - Michael Bakkensen and Stephanie Janssen (both very good except for a wobbly accent here and there) - are called upon to play all other roles, quick-changing behind the line of dress forms upstage. The "we're here right now putting on a show for you" feeling, also communicated in moments when the actors break character and tell us what we will soon see in the play or that it is time for intermission, gives the play a warmth to mitigate some of the cold truths it gently reveals. I'm happy to add, finally, that the art critic friend I attended with vouched for the play's historical credibility and accuracy relating to Bonnard: fact-based art scholars probably have nothing to fear here.

NEO FUTURIST OVERLOAD: Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind and Apocalypse Neo

I say overload because it makes for a good title, but you can't get too much of a good thing. I'm glad that I'm no longer a TMLMTBGB virgin, and that my eyes are open wide to the aesthetic appeal of the "deny nothing" art form that is Neo-Futurism. Well, to be perfectly honest, you need to experience TMLMTBGB. Thirty plays in sixty minutes is a unique viewing experience on its own, but this is a talented ensemble, an energetic series of shows, and ultimately an entire season of Saturday Night Live on crack. There's political expressionism, avant-garde imagery, slapstick, straight-stick (it's hard to just call it drama, given the conceit), interpretive dance, movement pieces, narratives, monologues, spoofs... the list goes on, and while some of the themes may repeat, the visual performances of them continue to change. While this week's eclectic collection didn't demand as much from the audiences as I'd heard (rumors of buzz-cuts, beer-chugging, and make-out sessions abound), 11 of the 30 plays next week will be all new (determined, like the ticket price, by the roll of a die), so unlike other cult amusements like Rocky Horror, this is the gift that literally keeps giving. [Read on]

Apocalypse Neo, on the other hand, is a "prime-time production," which means that the works are less frantic and more paced. The advantage of TMLMTBGB is that when it misses, it only misses for a few minutes. With Apocalypse Neo's "In which the end of the world...," a "debate" between whether or not the Apocalypse will occur in our lifetime, we've got a winner. The action is clear-cut, comedic (yet poignant), and hey, there's popcorn too. The other two segments aren't quite as strong, depending on your tastes: "Revelations of a City of Us" is a pop-culture story about recreating society, made the more interesting by their appropriation of the audience's coats, shoes, and persons, and the use of lighting is intriguing. But the show itself is a little threadbare. "Monkeyland II (anatk 21.10)" is a satire of biblical proportions that mocks the very things that we put faith in, by comparing them with a cult of toy-monkey worshippers. Again, interesting, but so vague and confusing that I'm not as engaged here as with the ADD antics of TMLMTBGB. Still, Apocalypse Neo ends on the 10th, while TMLMTBGB has a continuing run late Friday and Saturday nights at the Kraine, so you might want to catch their prime-time work before it vanishes, and then just stick around for TMLMTBGB. [Read on]

At Least It's Pink

The most wonderful and perhaps even the funniest thing about Bridget Everett's on stage persona in this self-proclaimed "trashy little show" is not that she's porno-mag raunchy. It's that she's happily, hilariously unashamed about it. Stripped down to fishnets and a too-tight thong, she can belt out a tune about a drunken Internet hookup gone wrong with what feels like uncomplicated candor and glee, and there's not a trace of righteous anger nor a subversive desire to shock in it. No matter how graphic she gets, she's smiling and warm...at least on the surface - just a small town big-boned blue collar gal who's telling you the score. Even her potentially humiliating stories are given a cheerful wide-eyed gloss: this is not an example of the gal who comes to the city only to be robbed of her dignity; this is a gal who proudly didn't have any dignity to begin with so it's all good. It is a testament to Everett's freshness that she brings to mind the bawdiness of early Bette Midler, the comic faux-earnestness of vintage Sandra Bernhard, and the unique skills of half a dozen other ballsy comediennes, and yet the result is something original and unique. This unabashedly filthy, fall down funny 80-minute show, which she wrote with Michael Patrick King and Kenny Mellman, features a dozen original songs and there's not a show-slowing bummer in the bunch. At Least It's Pink is a howl from start to finish.