Kiss Of The Spider Woman

The Vortex Theatre's stark, in-your-face production of the Kander-Ebb musical is packed wall to wall with bold and inventive ideas, but only half of them work. Ambitiously stripping the musical of razzle-dazzle and playing it like a gritty drama with music, the production's greatest strength is its menacing proximity: with a single long bench for audience on either side of the theatre, we're immersed in the prison where Molina, a fey window-dresser jailed for propositioning a minor, is holed up with Valentin, a political prisoner. Excepting that Max Ferguson lacks the needed gravity as Valentin, this production does reasonably well conveying the harsh reality half of the material: there's imaginative, resourceful staging and muscular, aggressive movement-choreography. But in conveying the other half of the story it's wrongheaded, replacing the glamorous, significantly bourgeois movie star of Molina's escapist fantasies with three figures (two of whom are cross-dressed men) who prowl the stage with panther-like sexual energy, a nightmare version of Madonna's The Girlie Show. Whose fantasy is this anyway, I asked myself, as it certainly isn't fey, fatally romantic Molina's?

The Australia Project II: Week 1

The Australia Project is a three-week festival of America, as seen from Down Under, that illustrates our penchant for self-convinced arrogance, our drive for (self-) destruction, and our self-centered egos. The four one-acts I saw demonstrated a wide range of style, but a pretty similar view of America as a nice place to escape from or through, either as a futuristic VR version of MySpace New York (Goodbye New York, Goodbye Heart), a travel-free nation (The Port) or an emotionally stunted artist (Pinter's Explanation). The best of the bunch, Anthony Crowley's The Melancholy Keeper of the Deep, Deep Green, brings a determined American back to 1890's Australia, so that he can convince an otherwise loyal lighthouse keeper to keep the light out. Patrick (Andrew Lawton), is an innocent, wanting only to love his wife and crank out his daily routine, but the smooth, diplomatic Richard (Kevin O'Donnell) slyly changes Patrick's mind with friendship and technology. It's a clever reminder of America's imperial might, working from behind-the-scenes to affect change, regardless of the cost, but also a sad and personal story of one man, struggling to stay afloat in a sea of turbulent morality.

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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.