FRINGE: Jamaica, Farewell

Jamaica, Farewell is a first: the theatrically presented Hollywood autobiography. True or not, Debra Ehrhardt's escape from Jamaica is so over-the-top that it overwhelms the nuances she shows herself capable of, early on in the play. At times, the thrill of watching someone so pleasantly excitable overtakes the lack of a connection that she makes with the audience or her secondary characters. As for her writing, it's either a testament or detriment that she makes us laugh in the midst of an attempted rape; so much of her ordeal is comically portrayed that Jamaica, Farewell is more a lengthy dinner-party story than a staged work. (She paces, but hardly needs the stage or the lights.) So then, like a Hollywood movie, Jamaica, Farewell is entertaining, but only up to a point.

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AMERICA LOVESEXDEATH

If you haven't seen Billy the Mime before: he's South Park come to life: an elegant mime who channels crudely erudite takes on historic moments gone horribly wrong. If you have (like me), you're wasting your time and money: his act hasn't changed from the 2006 Fringe. I didn't love it then, though I thought it was at least interesting (albeit obscure for the teen-to-20s crowd). Billy has a repertoire of forty 5-minute skits, but I saw almost the same fourteen, in the same order. Yes, he's cleaned them up and refined the moments and transitions between characters. But his act grows less and less topical: he performed a general Columbine in "High School" rather than the new "Virginia Tech 4-16-07" and rehashed "A Day Called 9/11" (admittedly, I saw it on 9/11), not "A Hurricane Called Katrina." Bone up your history so you know that he's talking about President Jefferson in "Thomas & Sally: A Night At Monticello," and be prepared to pick apart the images that Billy skims in wide pieces like "The Sixties" or "World War II." "A Romance" and "The Clown & The Beautiful Woman" appear to be staples of Billy's act, and that stale repetition (no matter how once lip-smackingly tasty) makes a quirky, smirky act into a chore, a labor, and a routine.

A New Television Arrives, Finally

* 1/2

Live From Planet Earth Productions

(photo courtesy of: DARR Publicity)

An engaged couple with little to say to each other looks to television to provide them with guidance, hope and food for thought. Kevin Mandel's absurdist play, where a new TV is played by live person, seeks to address how reliant we as a culture have become on something so unwieldy and tempestuous as the phenomenon of television. This point was clearly made about 30 minutes into this 85 minute play. If there were other points to be made they went in one ear and out the other as I begun to tune out the long, loud speeches delivered by our earnest cast. If director Kevin Kittle's goal was for the audience- stuffed into a very small room- to feel unequivocally bombarded and buffaloed by three relentlessly yelling, intense actors then mission accomplished. I wish I'd had a remote so that I could've pressed stop or at least turned the volume down.

365 Days/365 Plays: Weeks 39-43

Even if the guys would allow me to count this as 38 plays (or even 5, for each week), I wouldn't. I'd sooner count Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind as 30 plays. In any case, what Suzan-Lori Parks has done is write in the stream-of-(un)consciousness format, and then given those futurist plays to any artist willing to take part in her pet project. Nothing I saw at the Public Theater's First Sundays Series was able to stand on its own, but it did highlight some innovative groups and showcase some talented performers. That, in itself, speaks to the importance of this project (or one like it). What I can tell you is that the TADA! Youth Theater has developed some versatile actors; that the Ma-Yi Theater Company, working in Filipino and English, understands how to translate a work, not just in language, but to the stage; and that I'm truly sorry I've never seen anything from The Classic Theater of Harlem before, as between Jaime Robert Carrillo and Lydia Fort, they managed everything from blacksploitation superheroes ("From The Absolutely True Adventures of Afrodite Jackson-Jones) to metafiction ("Bear") to their striking scene of a horde of actors crawling, with meticulous control, across a stage ("A Search for the Meaning of Life"). Like Finnegan's Wake, the entire idea is unruly and hard to encompass -- but individually, there's a pearl of something for everyone.

Don Giovanni

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Although Don Giovanni is part of the opera-for-all program at New York City Opera, I guess it will always be that opera just isn't for all. In Hal Prince's production the limp trees are well-met by the limpid supertitles, and Susan Stroman's choreography, deliberate and symmetrical, could've come from a school on formless etiquette. Opera is built on long stretches of exposition, and nothing is ever said or done easily, but the trade off is that these sometimes mundane things are at least beautiful in the undertaking. Well, the only thing beautiful is the undertaking of Don Giovanni's soul, by a fantastically costumed Statue (the makeup artist ought to be credited). There are voices that are phenomenal, like Julianna Di Giacomo's Donna Elvira -- but squinting across miles of rows to see her pained expression takes away from what you hear in her soul. And you can tell that Daniel Mobbs is properly hamming up Leporello--you even laugh here and there, yourself--but when he sings, the orchestra washes his low baritone away. The debut performances of Mardi Byers, Aaron St. Clair Nicholson, and JiYoung Li (Donna Anna, Don Giovanni, and Zerlina) are perfunctory, with moments of mellifluousness, but nothing that you would call a breakout. I don't claim to be an expert on opera, so take this sand-grained post as opinion more than review, but this traditional Don Giovanni seemed to lack soul from the start.

La Boheme

photo: Carol Rosegg

City Opera's current La Boheme is set in Paris as usual but it's been time-shifted forward to the early months of World War I: the conceit makes for some fresh stage imagery and business but it's occasionally at odds with the narrative. (Why does Mimi fumble around with that unlit candle when there's electricity in this garret?) But once you look past the minor glitches that result from the directorial concept, this production of Boheme is heartfelt and intimate, with staging that more often than not plays the big emotional moments far downstage for the sake of immediacy. I prefer it for theatricality and for dramatic impact to the opulent Zefferelli production that is still in rotation next door at the Met. Inna Dukach and Dinya Vania, as Mimi and Rodolfo respectively, convinced as lovers in both joy and anguish and had their share of soaring musical moments together; their moonlit snowfall duet at the end of Act I was especially tender and well-articulated. So soon, but there were already handkerchiefs out in the audience. The best singing and the most vivid characterizations came, however, from this production's Musetta (Elizabeth Caballero) and Marcello (Brian Mulligan); they generated so much heat as the fiery often-fighting couple it's a wonder the snow didn't melt at the sight of them.

I saw La Boheme at City Opera's OPERA FOR ALL festival, a start-of-the-season tradition now in its third year that prices all seats opening weekend in the opera house at twenty five bucks. As always, it's a quick sell-out. This year, the company is going to carry that spirit into the whole season and offer at least fifty front orchestra seats for twenty five bucks each *at all performances*; details here. I predict a roaring success. New productions this coming season include Purcell's King Arthur, directed and choreographed by Mark Morris and costumed by Isaac Mizrahi, a fresh Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci directed by Stephen Lawless which will nod to the Italian neo-realist cinema of Rossellini and Visconti, and the American opera Vanessa by Samuel Barber starring Lauren Flanigan. Other highlights include major revivals of Verdi's Falstaff and Handel's Agrippina and familiar titles like Tosca, Don Giovanni, Carmen and, of course, La Boheme in rep. Opera for all indeed.