Petite Rouge

photo: Stan Barouh

I don't see any reason why kids wouldn't be entertained and engaged by this clever, Cajun-flavored revision of Little Red Riding Hood, which transplants the fairy tale to the Louisiana bayou and reimagines Red as a duck and the Wolf as an alligator. Red sets off with a jar of gumbo in her basket now, and she's lured off the path to Grandmere's house by the promise of spicier hot sauce. Such changes are likely to tease the imaginations of pint-sized theatregoers, and young and old alike can easily enjoy the lively and flavorful musical numbers, all of which are soaked in the local color. I caught myself tapping my foot more than a few times. While it has to be said that the musical eliminates the darker subtext of the original tale, and that the story no longer has the neat tidiness of a life lesson learned, the show's desire to please and its witty revisions nonetheless make it pleasing bit of family entertainment.

Other Bodies

After seeing Riding the Bull at the Fringe, I took the opportunity to see August Schulenburg's latest play, Other Bodies, in a special black-box studio workshop produced by Katherine & Friends. I can't review a work-in-progress, but watching Gus, I kept thinking of Nicholas Cage, and actress Christina Shipp reminded me of a playful Katee Sackhoff. It'll be interesting to see how this gender-bending two-hander develops to explore the very relevant question of identity.

Girl Gang

NYMF

This festival entry was a send up of those sassy-brassy bad girl 50's empowerment novels. Promising idea but quite oddly it featured a smooth jazz score complete with acoustic guitar and ever present bongo drums (at least for the Act that I stayed for). The musicians wore berets. Presumably the choice was inspired by the beatnik culture but I felt like I was at brunch.

Iphigenia 2.0

photo: Carol Rosegg

Charles Mee's radical, theatrically exhilarating reinvention of Iphigenia is jagged, rough-edged, beautiful: it's like he's reassembled the shattered pieces of the myth in the aftermath of an explosion. The resulting collage is thematically and narratively coherent but full of jolting juxtapositions and violent cracks in tone: this is theatre that puts us on high alert and keeps us there. Mee's version of the wartime tragedy takes place in the world we live in now and the gods have next to nothing to do with it: it's now the soldiers, in American fatigues, who demand that Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter, reasoning that a leader should not ask his followers to risk sacrifices that he himself is unprepared to make. Many of Mee's other revisions are similarly systemic rather than cosmetic and fire missiles at our current-day culture. This bold, sensationally vivid production, currently in its final weeks at Signature Theatre, is both viscerally exciting and intellectually devastating. Don't miss it.

The Australia Project II: Australia Strikes Back (Week 2)

More of the same can be a good thing. Last week, The Production Company treated us to four off-kilter one acts, all of which were written by Australian playwrights who were thinking of America at the time. This week, it's another three one-acts, from the occasionally filth "967 Tuna" (Australian for excellent) to the beautiful "The Beekeeper" (no Australian translation needed there) and the hypnotically turbulent "Syphon." I fell in love with Emma Vuletic's "The Beekeeper," as it achieved what the other two plays didn't: a clear, simple, honest connection between American and Australian values (that unified rather than obscured), as well as an interesting parallel between colony collapse disorder and the Death of the Traditional Family. Also, always great to see Todd d'Amour perform: with his quizzically menacing stare, he's perfect for the Mamet-like stutters of "Syphon," a role that requires a range large enough to turn dismissive yeahs and dunnos into rich sentences of disaffection.

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Walmartopia

*

Minetta Lane Theatre

In one corner we have the sincere, heartfelt struggle of a mother and daughter futilely trying to make ends meet on their paltry Wal-Mart wages. In the other corner we have a wacky, fey scientist who has built a time machine and is and toting around the disembodied head of Sam Walton. When these two worlds collide it is jarring and stupefying as our proud, ballad-singing mother/daughter team are manhandled by goofy Wal-mart cronies and tossed into a time machine. It's Norma Rae meets Spaceballs. Wal-Mart is EVIL with a capital "E!!" seems to be the unsubtle point they are making here but with their poorly juxtaposed, puerile plot and generic ditties not much else is conveyed except for the ever increasing desperation to make the audience guffaw at this cloying mess. In the end it was condescending, insulting to our intelligence and reminiscent of poorly conceived children's theater.