FRINGE: The Box

Right now, Steffi Kammer's brave, autobiographical show, The Box, is a little too closed off. Her urban tale of growing up in Brooklyn's worst project, the lone white girl, smacks of authenticity, but her telling seems sheltered behind the safety of disassociative images, precisely the sort of memory-by-way-of-image she describes when talking about [Josef] Cornell boxes. At fifty minutes, the metaphors don't seem strained, but neither does Kammer's experience: her emotion peeks out, as if from behind a slightly ajar door, but her presentation is anything but jarring.
Her style presents the squalid past with rosy cheer, not resentment. To that end, the play is uplifting, but dramatically awkward; it is easier for Kammer to imitate the stereotypically rich Jewish ladies (whose idea of something not working is something that clashes) than it is, at times, for her to open up the full refrigerator of memories. She touches on a near rape with an older Russian man, the constant stress of her Swedish mother, and of a hopelessly romantic homeless man, but all the impact is boxed up with her memories.

Theremin

The theremin is the oddly fascinating musical instrument from the early twentieth century that is responsible for those moogy, eerie, somehow space-aged sounds in a lot of '50's horror movies. (You know what it sounds like if you've seen black and white film of a tin dish on a string being passed off as a spaceship.) It's the first instrument to be powered by electricity and probably the only one that is played without being touched; the thereminist controls pitch and volume with hand movements near the instrument. The story of Leon Theremin, the Russian inventor who created something of a sensation in Amercia with his creation before disappearing mysteriously for decades, is filtered in this (Fringe Festival) one-act through the narrated imaginings of Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson, seen here in a straitjacket and (as played by the drama's author, Ben Lewis) often in maniacal-energy mode. I'm really not sure why, because - apart from Wilson's childhood exposure to the theremin marking the birth of his musical inspiration - the play doesn't really make a sustained case for a connection between the two men. There are some musings about genius and the value of innovative vision, but they don't take hold: the narration starts to feel superfluous. The most potentially dramatic analogy between the two men's stories is reduced to a couple of lines like an afterthought.

FRINGE: The Sunshine Play

The Sunshine Play

Remember the Act II opening from The Fantasticks, "That Plum Is Too Ripe"? Well, that's The Sunshine Play, an overt physical comedy that hides the cynicism underneath. Both halves are well executed by the players, with Cosmin Selesi (Trifan) as a delightfully tight-lipped jealous drunk; Daniel Popa (Dan), as a sarcastic, joke-cracking free-wheeler; and Isabela Neamtu (Iza) as a quick-witted, overwhelmed beauty. Peca Stefan's script captures the nuances of natural conversations: awkward rhythms, weird first kisses, and all; this, even translated from Romanian. The direction from Ana Margineanu is thrilling: for all the small gestures, there's a sense of excitement in each nuance, and even a few surprises, too. That final scene, anything but happy, follows logically and completely from everything before, and the whole Monday Theater team has done us a service by bringing this play here.

FRINGE: Elephant in the Room

Elephant in the Room! is stacked high with comedy, like a pile of funny flapjacks drenched in silly syrup. It's got an outstandingly funny cast, all of whom are put to good use (particularly Ariel Shafir and Bjorn Thorstad). But Dan Fogler's play is remarkably uninspired for something that stems from Ionesco's Rhinoceros. For the first act, it gets by on charm and personality, but by the second act, it's clear (or perhaps doggedly unclear) that nothing much is actually going on. The epidemic that's turning people into elephants isn't captured by the political satire inherent in George W. Bush's emergency broadcasts, nor is it clarified by the Edenic love story between slacker Bern (Johnny Giacalone) and idealist Sylvia (Sarah Saltzberg). There's so much aimless pop culture that I half expected VH1-like commentary to interrupt the show (it didn't). Fogler's a funny guy, granted, but his brand of comedy lacks an idea big enough to last a whole show, and until he finds that, he'll be stuck stitching sketches together.

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To Be Loved

I didn't stay to see the second act of this Fringe Festival show. I would have, if a good deal of the first act hadn't been staged on the floor, where only the audience in the first row could see it.

BASH'd: A Gay Rap Opera

photo: Ian Jackson

Two white gay rappers who go by the names T-Bag and Feminem: sounds like a one-joke Fringe Festival show, doesn't it? But BASH'd isn't the parody that its come-on might lead you to expect; it's exciting, trenchant musical theatre and boundlessly invigorating entertainment. Using hip-hop's naked aggression and its uncompromisingly explicit language, the all-rapped show is both a convincing, affecting gay love story and an unapologetic in-your-face rallying call for equal rights. It's also the best case I have ever seen made for the stageworthiness of this genre of music: the dope beats and rhymes in BASH'd are always in service of storytelling. So what if there are a few gay-coming-of-age cliches and who cares that the message, as befits rap music, is ultimately blunt? That matters not at all, thanks to the freshness and the vitality of the presentation. I caught the show's last scheduled Fringe Festival performance but I don't believe that New York has seen the last of this show.