33 To Nothing

photo: Dale May

This downtown self-billed "play with music" centers on the self-absorbed front man in a failed aging rock band who is still holding on to the dream. Almost all his bandmates have to put it to rest already. He's either lashing out, or turning inward with unspoken desperation, or drinking away the pain. As portrayed with jagged anxietous energy by Grant James Varjas (also the playwright and co-songwriter) he's an often compelling character, in some respects not so far from the self-disgust of the protagonist in Talk Radio, but he's in search of a play. The other four characters in this one - including the most prominent, the guitarist ex-boyfriend - aren't written with the same depth and don't raise the dramatic stakes high enough. The passing moments of intervening challenge they provide to the main character's freefall aren't enough to keep the play (which takes place in real time at a band rehearsal) from feeling underdramatized. Whatever the structural weaknesses in his script, Varjas at least keeps things moving and knows when some levity is needed: some of the play's best moments are the band's idle conversations about other musicians. (Memorable quote: "Bowie's an ex-gay. He reneged on us!") And there is the band's music, most of it very good and all of it authentic. Perhaps the best way to enjoy 33 To Nothing is to see it as a concert crossed with a character study that hasn't quite found its groove as a play.

Also blogged by: [Aaron] [David]

Bloody Lies

Wrong title: Bloody Lies is Bloody Camp. I expected as much from a show billed as "Dracula Meets Monty Python," but was hoping that the release's reference to Joss Whedon would give Greg Machlin's script a little more substance than this. No; there's a great turn from Gabe Belyeu as the manic servant, Reinfield, and a nice, deeply enunciated, performance from his classically evil master, Count VonRichtenstein VII (Thomas Lash) but the emphasis of this show is on the twinned love stories of the "straight" guy Clem (Michael Buckley) and vampire Nina VonRichtensten (Elaine Matthews) and of Clem's mother, Elsie (Antonia Marrero), and her evil landlady Doris (Larry George). And I guess also on the bondage-based zombification of Clem's one-worded friend, Barney (Brian DeCaluwe) by the French Goth maid, Simparticus (Carrie Cimma), with a little bit of magic thrown in there by the phallic LSD (Liquid Sky Degenerator). When the plot finds time to focus, there are some comedic moments, but the whole thing is so overacted that it's little more than a series of shrill jokes and intermittent sound effects. To her credit, Samantha Shechtman does a fine job directing it, using repetitive, roundabout blocking to "stake" out familiar areas on the Workshop Theater's black-box stage.

EAST TO EDINBURGH: Inside Private Lives

I see a lot of potential in Kristin Stone's distillation of character acting; she's transformed the act of monologuing into a rare chance for intimate communion with the audience. However, her show, Inside Private Lives, depends entirely upon whether or not the audience takes the cast up on this challenge, which in turn depends on whether or not the audience has heard of such infamous (but dated) characters as Christine Jorgensen, Bobby Sands, Tokyo Rose, Elia Kazan, and Wallis Simpson. Those are just the five from the matinée I attended; there's another five in repertoire for the rest of this run. What I'm missing from the show is the drama: while they need something from the audience, they aren't often given a hard time getting it, which leads to little more than a recounting of facts. The passion is there, but it's a tiny, flickering flame, one that needs sparks and support from the audience, like no show ever before.

[Read on]

Surface To Air

photo: Ric Kallaher

A family awaits the cremated remains of the eldest son, who died over thirty years ago in the Vietnam War. The standard issue arguments are trotted out, with each cardboard character too neatly assigned a set of beliefs: dad still believes that we were fighting the good fight in Vietnam (if he didn't, then his son's death was for nothing) and mom is still living in the past (so that she doesn't have to face the present). This play is the opposite of revelatory - it feels derived from a hundred plays and movies we've already seen - and the writing is so formulaic that I didn't believe a single minute of it. That's saying a lot, considering that the cast is headed up by the likes of Lois Smith and Larry Bryggman, two indisputable treasures of the stage who can usually make me believe anything.

Also blogged by: [Aaron]

Vrooommm! A NASComedy

Another not-to-be-reviewed new play at SPF.

EAST TO EDINBURGH: "An Age of Angels"

Before he heads to Edinburgh, Mark Soper needs to learn to sell himself a little better. His play, An Age of Angels is populated with so many eccentrics (child-watching perverts, pant-shitting nerds, alien-obsessed loners) that it's hard to get past the foulness to enjoy his characters. The thin, multi-threaded plot doesn't help either: the show begins with the sounds of children playing, then sirens, then bullets, but it isn't until the fifth character (an ignorant urban hick) talks about trying to get a "goddamn soccer ball" that we understand what's going on. The point of the play is to show how the little things add up, but the lack of self-contained arcs for the narrators makes them less than tangential: they're phantasmal.

Soper's other issue is his language: would even the smartest dweeb at an elementary school use the phrase "perfect Pynchonesque parabola" to describe the arc of a soccer ball he's reflexively kicked? His dumb characters work because they leave off with the staccato rhythms and beat-poetry descriptions of minutia, but the show all too often seems like a continuation of more of the same. It's also, quite frankly, terrible for a few of the segments: Soper looks and sounds like a combination of Robin Williams and Lee Tergesen, but without the energy or sincerity of either. As a director and producer, Ines Wurth should've given her star a transfusion of coffee: this would've cleaned up the stalling costume-changing transitions. Still, I give Soper credit for memorizing such technically roundabout dialog, and, to the eight people who left the performance after ten minutes, you should know the show improved. (Not enough for me to recommend it, however.)