FRINGE: Hillary Agonistes

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

To put it in the politically correct ambiguity of Nick Salomone's satirical writing, Hillary Agonistes is a seemingly relevant play. Emphasis on "seemingly." The alarmist plot (emphasized at every scene change by a blaring siren and sharp blackout) involves Hillary's first challenge as president (2009). Rather than face reality, Salomone turns to a full-blown Rapture: 65 million people vanish. The good parts are the slight observations as to how our government might deal: the military looks to cover up their ignorance with an alien scenario, Pat Robertson fakes his own Rapture so his followers won't think less of him, and Americans target Muslims as that legion of anti-Christs. The thought of Christ as a four-watt lightbulb of safety is nice, but the supporting dialogue is wildly uneven, prone to blustery sentiments and little faithfulness to real characters like Bloomberg (now in the Treasury), Chelsea (now a convert to Islam), and Hillary (played by Priscilla Barnes of Three's Company). Barnes is tightly drawn, yet always pandering to an invisible camera; there's evidence of a good performance, but she needs multiple takes to get it right. Most of her work is utterly unconvincing, and director Jon Lawrence Rivera (as with P. Diddy in Raisin) often has her emote with her back to the audience. (Talk about spin!) Salamone needs to tighten his grip on reality (the characters) before he tries to flush out a parable.

Scarcity

photo: Doug Hamilton

Shallow and thoroughly unconvincing, Scarcity is set in the kind of lower middle class home where stinking drunk Dad and world weary chainsmoking Mom scream at each other when they're not going at it like rabbits in earshot of the kids. Dad's one beer away from giving the eleven year old daughter the bad touch, while Mom is yanking the chain of his best friend in order to stock the kitchen with groceries. We're told that the rageaholic teenaged son is exceptionally bright but we see no evidence of it, except that he's well aware that the interest a female teacher has taken in him has more to do with his crotch than his brains. All of this ugliness is meant to strike us as hard and truthful, but it's just ugly, a Jerry Springer Show for middlebrows. Since the playwright hasn't done it, it's up to the actors to provide any illusion of humanity, and for the most part they do although it's not enough to redeem the play: Kristen Johnson is especially vivid and finds a way to maintain a hint of maternal warmth underneath a coarse exterior; The Squid And The Whale's Jesse Eisenberg sometimes pushes too hard but is a compelling stage presence; Michael T. Weiss, in a woefully underwritten role, conveys the wounded pride under a broken spirit.

Grease

photo: Joan Marcus

By now, the property known as Grease has been reshaped and reformed so many times over that it is difficult to answer this question: was it ever a good musical? As it is in the current Broadway revival, which seems designed as a star vehicle for its two non-stars (cast by television contest) and which melds material from the play with the movie, its message seems to be that a girl can get a guy by dressing like a slut and hold on to one by not getting pregnant. I did in fact see the original Broadway production way back when as a tyke, and mostly remember that it looked like a high school yearbook come to life and that it had enough sexual innuendo to make my aunt second-guess taking me along. But on the surface, this revival is the most family-friendly Grease I could imagine and safe for the kindergarten set: now the chicks will scream for Greased Lightning rather than cream. Beyond the blanding sanitization and the casting of two leads who can not hold the stage, this revival fails to capture any feeling of nostalgia for the 1950's and repeats many of the mistakes of the movie (the "kids" look like 30 year olds) minus the compensatory charisma of the film's stars. If Grease ever had a soul it's long gone now. There is one, and exactly one, performance that pops off the stage: surprisingly, it's not Jenny Powers, who belts "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" with feeling but who otherwise is a bland Rizzo. No, it's one Robyn Hurder, who manages to do something with the nothing role of Marty. Robyn Hurder is to Grease what Leslie Kritzer was to Legally Blonde.

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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