Workshop: The Debate Society's The Untitled Auto Play

I loved my first introduction to The Debate Society with their The Eaten Heart, enough to check out their year-plus development process for their new work, The Untitled Auto Play. Presented by the Prelude festival (a chance to see what's coming in '08), I can only say that I wish that there were enough grants to enable more groups to make such bold and rewarding investments in time. Then again, even three weeks in, these short little vignettes are still highly refreshing, with some creepy use of darkness and branches to evoke the crackling woods. Perhaps we'll be so lucky as to see a spotlight on TDS when the Signature moves to its new space in 2011: their use of Americana calls out for more attention, as does their playfulness.

NYMF Weekend Jaunt

New York Musical Theater Festival

The three festival pieces I caught this weekend all fell into the same category of well-cast, earnest productions of young, imperfect but worthwhile chamber musicals. Love Kills has excellent subject matter full of high stakes as it's based on a boyfriend/girlfriend murdering spree in the late 50's. With all the references to 50's movies/icons and the pre-feminist nature of the piece, I found myself yearning not for the emo punk score offered and but for the old school, Presley-fried rock n' roll inherent to the time. Deirdre O'Connell, as a sheriff's wife attempting to ease a confession out of the girlfriend, with her beautifully untrained singing voice was the soul of this dark, little musical. The Boy In The Bathroom with its sweet, yearning melodies was definitely my favorite score of the festival entries I have caught so far. Unable to bring himself to face the world, the boy has locked himself in his bathroom and relies upon his mother and a hired care-giver for toilet paper and emotional support. Though I felt like one of the characters was ultimately villainized a little more than they should have been, the story had an honesty and wistfulness that wove in beautifully with its score. And Michael Zahler, as the bathroomed boy is probably the most charming person with OCD that I have ever come across. The Family Fiorelli, with it's perky, upbeat slightly kooky score, dysfunctional upper-middle class family politics, and decidedly modern sensibility, reminded me of Falsettos. Taking place on the family's Long Island vineyard, this musical followed the roller coaster ups and downs of the outwardly happy but inwardly troubled wine making Fiorellis. And though the stakes weren't as high as in Love Kills, and the score not as memorable as The Boy In The Bathroom this musical was ultimately charming and like the other two, with a little work, should be hopeful of a life beyond the festival.

Tully (In No Particular Order)

photo: Jaisen Crockett

Tully, the main character of this new NYMF musical, falls for a rich bitch socialite and then goes ballistic when she dumps him, stalking her around town when he's not burying his rage with a gay affair. It's like something you'd see in a glossy made for cable movie, so it's a surprise to learn that the character is meant to be based on Roman poet Catullus (1st century BCE): we're right on the line here between ambitious and pretentious. The book has lofty aims that are kept earth-bound by the melodramatic plot and (perhaps because it is trying to do too many things at once) it defines its main character less sufficiently than all its others. What Tully has going for it, besides a solid cast (I especially liked Kate Rockwell and Austin Miller), is its school-of-Sondheim score and that's a very substantial something: of the dozen NYMF shows I've seen so far this month, this one has the music I would most want to hear again.

Love Kills

photo: Sarah Sloboda

To be filed under "What Spring Awakening Has Wrought", this new (NYMF) musical has its characters stepping up to microphones to express themselves in emo songs. Since two of the characters are Charlie Starkweather and Caril Fugate, the two Nebraskan teenagers whose killing spree horrified the country in the mid 1950's (most memorably dramatized in the movie Badlands starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek) the style seems bizarre - why are they singing emo rather than the rock and roll that defined their time? The other two characters in the musical are a sheriff and his wife (Deidre O'Connell, the show's standout performance) who aim to get confessions out of the kids before lawyers arrive - turns out that they express themselves into microphones with emo songs too. It took me a while to accept the style of the show, but I never did accept the substance: the kids are romanticized, without irony or much regard for fact, as victims suffering for their deep binding love. The actual victims - the eleven people who died at their hands, including Caril's two year old sister - are listed in the show's playbill but are not suitably acknowledged in the show; Love Kills is an insulting cheat.

Blind Mouth Singing

Photo/Zack Brown

Visually, director Ruben Polendo manages to focus the wide and sparse stage (classic yet industrial) onto a single metaphor, a strip of life (seen as a horizontal well). But textually, Jorge Ignacio Cortinas's script is narrowly focused on the metaphorical coming of age, and is cluttered with repetitious scenes. These two styles clash, and though Polendo fills the dead space with stylized movement (dashes set to drum beats, knife-sharpening jerks) and distracts us with a Foley artist, the play is neither jarringly magical nor beautifully mundane. The all Asian American cast is pretty good, but adds nothing to play, especially not what Blind Mouth Singing really needs: clarity about the mental-made-physical struggle of the second act between Reiderico (Jon Norman Schneider) and his well-dwelling "twin," Lucero (Alexis Camins). Polendo has the magic to conjure up a storm on stage (among many other interesting visuals), but the plot, slippery like water, eludes him.

Look What A Wonder Jesus Has Done

photo: Julian Rad

Walter Robinson wrote the book, music and lyrics for this new (NYMF) musical loosely based on the true story of Denmark Vesey, an African-American whose plan to lead a slave uprising was thwarted by his capture and execution in 1822. Robinson's score is heavy on gospel, with a handful of roof-raising ensemble numbers (a couple of which are thrillingly sung a capella) that soar to the heavens: apart from the ocassional rough patch of awkward recitative, Robinson's music is richly evocative. Robinson's book, however, is as flatfooted as his score is accomplished: partly because of the device of having Vesey narrate his story, it falls into the "too much tell not enough show" trap right at the start and takes too long to break free. Robinson gives us a glimpse in the opening scene of the story's triangle, when a plantation owner buys Vesey's wife and children inspired by what he claims is love for her, but Robinson doesn't sufficiently pick up on it again until the last (and best) twenty minutes of the show.