minor gods

I'm told that the first sold-out run at this year's Summer Play Festival was this two-hander, in which a genetic research scientist holes up in a hotel room with a rentboy (ker ching!) to discuss genetic predisposition and engineering. (Refund!)

The Magic of Mrs. Crowling

Over-the-top and waxing fantastical, Brian Silliman's parody of Pottermania is rough, riotous, and constantly funny. Abe Goldfarb's quick cuts between scenes keep the energy up, and the very different personalities of the deadpan Ramsey (Silliman); his son, the exuberantly dying Kicken (Paul Wyatt); and the doped-up writer, A. R. Crowling (Shelly Smith), are what make this show more than a series of (funny) one-liners from the peanut gallery of wizards (and critics): Dazzelin, Valiaare, and Charcana Charcane (Patrick Shearer, Dennis Hurley, and Ronica V. Reddick). Like the Harry Potter franchise, it's overlong and gets stuck in exposition a few too many times for its own good, but the good intentions and underlying charm make this show a successful send-up and a heartfelt homage to the imagination.

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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.

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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]