I Google Myself

photo: Max Ruby

An entertainingly pulped-up 70 minute black comedy, which begins as a needy masochist latches on to a gay porn star who happens to share his name, I Google Myself makes a lot of delicious (and sometimes lurid) fun out of our human need for recognition and connection in the information-soaked culture we live in. Playwright Jason Schafer overboils the plot devices and turns of events to Jerry Springer Show temperatures but that's part of the point: these characters (including a third, a seemingly normative mellow stoner who blogs his poetry) are probably the psychos we are afraid might be lurking behind anonymous screen names on the Internet, but underneath the sensational and ridiculous they are all too recognizably human and familiar. The fast-paced show intends to be more fun than deep and it is, but if it's a bit of a cartoon at least it's a smart one, and this production (from Theatre Askew, devoted to new "queer" plays) is put over very well by its cast: all three men are perfect and perfectly in sync. As the porn star, Nathan Blew lets you glimpse something behind the smug, hypermasculine mask; he reminded me of Marc Kudisch doing arrogant. As the stoner, John Gardner is believably laid back and does slow-synapsed amusingly. And best of all, as the stalkerish masochist who is the play's center, Tim Cusack is simultaneously able to be funny and to render harrowingly needy. And he has a quality that is essential for this play to work: you just like him, no matter what.

Washing Machine

Photo/Ben Kato

Washing Machine is a spin cycle of sorrow, going from the curious beginnings to the tragic, asphyxiating finale. This aesthetic foray into minimalism allows actress Dana Berger to maximize her connections with the various characters she plays, and with the audience itself. Writer Jason Stuart and director Michael Chamberlin don't presume to know what led to the drowning of a five-year-old girl in a washing machine, so they focus instead on the emotional reverberations of this single ripple in the pool of life. The pivots from character to character are harsh, but their stories are soft (not wrinkle free). Doing the laundry is a perfunctory task; seeing Washing Machine is more like watching perfection.

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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.