The Lady In Question

photo: David Rodgers

It's been fifteen years since Charles Busch first donned wigs and heels to star in his delightful spoof of 1940's suspense melodrama: ever since, some of us poor suckers have been starving to death for another taste of this deliciously kitschy bon-bon. Busch is Gertrude Garnet, a world-famous concert pianist who agrees to Mata-Hari a smitten SS officer while touring Bavaria: there's a big laugh when she extends her man-sized hands and says they are insured by Lloyd's of London. Every move Busch makes, both as playwright and as performer, reveals a deep understanding and affection for the high-style dramatics of the silver screen heroines of a long-gone era. Every lift of an eyebrow has an impact. Think of it as the kind of send-up that The Carol Burnett Show used to do, but better and just a little bit warped by flashes of raunchy naughtiness and the gently subversive texture of drag. The ensemble in this production (which includes Richard Kind, Julie Halston, Matt McGrath and Candy Buckley) is pitch-perfect individually and in tandem: everyone gets the style of the material and achieves it. This may be the best play that Busch has in his drag closet, and this production (at Bay Street Theatre, in Sag Harbor) is every bit as fun as the original one.

FRINGE: I Dig Doug

I didn't dig I Dig Doug; I found the play to be as vapid and superficial as its protagonist. I think Bert V. Royal's direction needed to do more than simply ferry the two energetic writer/performers from point A to point B; it needed to actually shape the satire, too. Far too much comedy leaked right over the edge of this shaky ship, and too much of the show was filled with digressive skits. There's also the subject material itself: being unfamiliar with Howard Dean's '04 campaign, I missed out on some of the broader political needling. There's definitely promise in Doug, but until the story stops serving the jokes, it'll stay needlessly democratic: that is to say, it'll keep shuffling all over itself, unable to get anything done. And satire without a point is just heartless humor.

[Read on]

FRINGE: Lights Rise on Grace

Five words, six years, three things. Three actors, three chairs, a series of light cues. But Chad Beckim's brilliant new play, Lights Rise on Grace is anything but by the numbers. Told through parallel monologues that evolve into fully fleshed scenes, Beckim uses the repetition of events and the shuffling of time and perspective to unify the three disparate roles into one. Along with Robert O'Hara's seamless direction, he transforms the spotlights into prisons and the actors into a contemporary urban chorus, catcalling disses from the background. This, while moving at a rapid pace that compresses three lives and ten years into a tight sixty minutes.

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Being Alive

photo: Richard J. Termine

Roughly two dozen Sondheim songs are re-imagined (mostly in the r&b idiom) and performed by an African-American ensemble in this confused and overly ambitious revue, conceived by Billy Porter and currently running in Westport. One of the aims is for a fresh new spin on the songwriter's material. Instead, the music often sounds like a bad concept album by The Fifth Dimension. The show does the nearly unimaginable: it makes Sondheim sound pedestrian. Walkouts began at the preview I saw around the half hour mark and continued steadily, with a few especially noisy and disgruntled ones for Natalie Venetia Belcon's eleventh hour all-hummed "Send In The Clowns." I don't object that these songs have been re-imagined, but I do object that the results here are numbing and diminishing on stage: the few moments that do spark some dramatic interest are the ones which are performed closest to how the songs were written to be sung in the first place with minimal musical re-invention. (Joshua Henry's heartfelt rendition of "I Remember" from Evening Primrose is the show's highlight) As if the Sondheim Goes Black conceit was not enough, there's another that has the performers quoting lines from Shakespeare plays between songs, and as if that also isn't enough to bite off and chew, the book makes a feeble attempt at a story. Sample song-segue dialogue: "What's all this talk about giants in the sky, son?" "I'm all alone, Mama" "No, no one is alone". Being Alive is the kind of out-there risk that only well-meaning, highly creative people can think up and take, but in this case, the risk doesn't pay off.

100 Saints You Should Know

The vibrant, instantly fascinating characters in Kate Fodor's gorgeous, not-to-be-missed new play are all struggling with isolation and loneliness; while a priest, returned home to his mother from his parish, begins to lose his faith, the single mother who works as a maid in the rectory begins to search for hers. The first act is thick with prickly humor, the kind of laughs that come from our recognition of believable, sharply observed behavior. Gradually, and with an elegant gracefulness that is the opposite of a heavy hand, the play flowers into a deeply affecting drama about the soul-searchings of identifiably real everyday people. This production, directed with sensitivity and clarity by Ethan McSweeney, boasts a flawless ensemble: all five actors (Jeremy Shamos, Lois Smith, Janel Moloney, Zoe Kazan and Will Rogers) make strong characterization choices that enrich the play's humor while remaining connected to the sadness of the characters. In a word, 100 Saints... is a gem.

Also blogged by: [David] [Aaron]

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100 Saints You Should Know

****1/2
Playwrights Horizons


Heads up! An exceptional production has just started previews at Playwrights Horizons. The themes of Kate Fodor's beautifully crafted drama are so clearly (and heartbreakingly) delivered by her finely drawn characters that she has rendered her 8 paragraphs of Playbill notes (including the phrases "It's a play about.." and "The play is also about...") obsolete. Musing on religion (or the absence of), loneliness, and parent/child relationships this often funny/often sad play provided perspectives and insights that were as modern as you could get. The 5-person cast is top-notch including Zoe Kazan and Will Rogers brilliantly playing teenagers with all of the rage and awkwardness that comes with it. And I FINALLY got to see Lois Smith onstage. That was a special treat. This one's a keeper.

Also blogged by: [Patrick] [Aaron]