Goodbye April, Hello May

Goodbye April, Hello May is like the quiet kid on the debate team: he makes good observations, but they go unheard in a sea of more aggressively pitched ideas. What's worse for Ethan Lipton's piece is that it's meant to be comic, something that's hard to do when you're this passive. Shows that succeed in this vein, like the recently alienating God's Ear and The Internationalist, do so on the strength of a consistent tone and a few overblown characters. You'd think that having Gibson Frazier (who was in both of those shows) would help, but unless he's given something outrageous to do (as in the opening, where he describes shooting a seven-year-old), he's just shooting the breeze with the rest of the cast. Those few slivers of Lipton gold are good, but they're drowned out by the bland narrative, unnecessary intermission, and overwrought staging.

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Hairspray

****
Hairspray

If the comic sensibility of this production is a little less unified and focused as it was in its first year, the replacement actors do bring fresh perspectives to the table that turn out to be quite fun. Shannon Durig, the prettiest Tracy Turnblad to date, owns her fat and imbues her role with a sexy confidence that makes the Tracy/Link romance all the more believable. More man-playing-man-in-dress rather than man-playing-woman, Paul Vogt's intermittent booming bass line deliveries as Momma Turnblad were hysterical and he sang the role better than I've ever heard it sung. And Jerry Mathers (The Beaver) as Daddy Turnblad comes off pretty clueless to everything around him which actually works in that same odd cult-ish way that Pia Zadora's or Patty Hearst's performances did in Waters' movies. After 5 years, that can-do moxie that gives Hairspray that triple espresso jolt of energy is definitely still there and if the Broadway production gets a nice box office boost after the release of the film then yay for Hairspray and yay for the fans who flock to it!

AntiGravity 2007

Admittedly, I'm still a young'un, but watching the deft and fearless performers of AntiGravity soar, glide, slide, and hang from various contraptions in the air made me feel like a kid again. It's the giddy feeling of vicarious vertigo, the velocity of the vertiginous feats, and the rush of fresh air through the massive Hammerstein Ballroom as a performer does a mini-bungee onto a platform mere yards behind you, and then dances himself defiantly up into the air--the most graceful set of jerky movements you've ever seen.

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Dark Of The Moon

photo: Ian Crawford

Dark Of The Moon is famously hard to pull off convincingly and to proper chilling effect, but the young company Thirsty Turtle has done it. Their storefront theatre, seventeen cast-membered production of the folkloric play, which tells of the tragic, doomed union between boy witch John (played with wirey-weird sweetness and sincerity by Noah J. Dunhan) and his human lover Barbra Allen (a radiant, believably tender Sarah Hayes Donnell) somewhere deep in the hooch-guzzling, revival hymn-singing Appalachian Mountains, is shrewdly and inventively directed, effectively designed on an indie budget, and played with straight conviction as it absolutely must be. The young lovers face obstacles from his supernatural world and from her earthly one: the play's lingering punch is landed from the fact that the more horrific affronts to the couple's union come not from the petty scheming of the witches, but from the religious intolerance and pack mentality of the humans. Director Ian Crawford makes many bold choices that are always in service of telling the story; he resists grafting an authoral modern irony onto it, and (aided by Emily French's thrifty but evocative bi-level set and Duncan Cutler's atmospheric sound design) makes memorable, resourceful use of the problematic space. The excellent and dramatic seven-foot mesh and wire puppets in the witch world, designed by Dakotah West, would be scene-stealers if there weren't so many good young actors in the ensemble: standouts include a flirty, laugh-getting Jessica Howell, and Brendan Norton, whose depiction of Barbra's baby brother has just the right amount of boyish pout.

The/King/Operetta

I hope some of you readers are high-school students and/or veterans. Not only would I like to get so diverse a readership, but Waterwell's new half-history/half-vaudeville revue (in a chamber-rock style) is free for you guys. Not that The Last Year In The Life of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As Devised By Waterwell A Rock Operetta isn't worth seeing otherwise, but given the shaky amalgamation of technique that I saw at this preview, it would certainly go down smoother on the cheap. I've had great admiration for Waterwell ever since their last show, Marco Million$ made Eugene O'Neill interesting again. And The/King/Operetta is filled with great music and an award-deserving King (Rodney Gardiner); it's just also filled with a few moments of poor acoustics, an odd vocal choice (or perhaps just an illness) for Kevin Townley's portrayal of the cruelly effeminate Hoover, and some awkward interpretive dance. At the same time, King's final year has never seemed so accessible nor as human as when it's presented as a populist opera that pulls upon rock, ragtime, satirical minstrel work (ala Bamboozled), and even sweet little lullabies to get out the story. The show runs through August 11th, so perhaps give them another week to gel their work, but then by all means run to Barrow Street Theater and check 'em out.

Politics of Passion: Plays of Anthony Minghella

photo: Stan Barouh

Three one-acts, all written by Anthony Minghella (whose film-directing credits include The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient), comprise the 100 minute Politics of Passion, currently presented by Potamac Theatre Project as part of their first season back in New York. While the tone of the middle piece (a very brief and out of context scene from the film Truly Madly Deeply) doesn't sit well in the show, the longer one-acts that flank it are very good indeed. The evening's opener is Hang Up, a sharp little observation of two lovers whose late-night phone conversation turns from seemingly benign and agreeable to thorny and distrustful: it's directed and performed at just the right pitch to inspire snickers of knowing recognition from the audience. The main attraction is the show's final play, Cigarettes And Chocolate, in which a woman puzzles her friends by ceasing to speak; her continued silence prompts them to reveal far more to her than they would if she would talk with them. The pace could stand to be a bit quicker, but it's a nifty, cleverly written one-act that gives each of the actors a chance to shine. As the woman who chooses to be mute, Cassidy Freeman remarkably creates a full, ever present character almost entirely out of just sitting and listening, and as her husband, James Matthew Ryan is especially vivid conveying shame, frustration, and flashes of anger.