American Sligo

****1/2

Rattlestick
photo: Sandra Coudert


With each new play, the young, prolific Adam Rapp continues to hone in on his caustic, cruelly funny, original voice as a playwright. His latest sick, mean comedy spends an evening with the Sligos, a violently dysfunctional American clan all sucking off the teat of the pro-wrestling father nicknamed "Crazy Train". This meditation on insult and aggression, two traits closely identified with American character as of late, speaks volumes on the ugly underbelly of the modern American fractured family. Many of Rapp's pet actors are back again and in top form with Paul Sparks expertly playing one of the most diabolical villains I have seen all year. Mary Louise Burke is priceless as the only polite one of the bunch hellbent on maintaining the smallest shred of decorum. Oh look! They have a Youtube clip! How post-millennium! I cannot wait to see Rapp's latest, Bingo With The Indians, at the Flea later this month.

medEia

By resetting the classic tragedy of Medea in the mode of pop lyrics, modern images, and simple English, Dood Paard (Dead Horse) is trying for the universal. Instead, they're just hitting the accessible, in an at first languorous, later vibrant way. They're removed all sense of the physical from their work--they speak out to the audience with their backs to a figurative wall--and that winds up giving medEia a ghostly quality, appropriately endowed to the chorus they speak as. But I wish the ephemeral slide-show that accompanied this work was more grounded in the words, because it all too often feels like dead air. While the cold and unflinching opening eventually gives way to sad and wistful mourning, and then to a revenge choked with rage, the simple mechanics of the performance keep the work at bay, even as the cast draws ever nearer to the audience.

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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.