Dina Martina: Off The Charts

*****
Cutting Room

You people! Dina Martina is in town! Rejoice! I have caught her thrice before and am quite obsessed with her. Who is she? What does she do? I usually just say "She's really funny and brilliant and it's hard to describe what she does because it's just so OUT THERE" but Patrick has done a great job of at least coming close to nailing down exactly what is so special about her. Really you guys, this is probably the funniest show in town right now. Doug Wright was in the house the night I went and was quite literally guffawing. At different points during the show Dina passes out gifts to the audience. My dear friend got a rubber pizza and I got Cheetos flavored lip balm. It's now hanging on my wall.

Happy Endings

First, and most importantly: yes, there is a happy ending. It's probably not the one you'd expect from a one-act play festival that commissioned nine playwrights to share their take on the sex worker industry, but it's a pretty satisfying evening all the same. There are a few rough spots that -- pardon me -- could've used more lube, by which I mean hard (or soft -- I can't stop!) revisions, the kind that I could have used to prevent this sentence from growing . . . out of control. Luckily, the evening balances between the poetic bookends (Beauty and Yes Yes Yes), absurd slapstick (Pulling Teeth), casual comedy (Switch), and calm drama (Whenever You're Ready). Whether dealing with first-timers (Peep Show), old pros (The Guest), or the dysfunctionally kinky (The White Swallow), there's something for everyone. And given the smart directorial choices regarding ambiance and musical transitions, the whole night's quite engaging.

[Read on]

Dina Martina: Off The Charts

How to explain one of the freshest and funniest acts I have ever seen? Part stand up, part performance art, part drunken hallucination, new millenium drag creation Dina Martina is a little bit Phyllis Diller and a little bit Divine and maybe even a little bit Leigh Bowery but in the end a one-a-kind mold-breaking comedic genius. Her current act, Off The Charts, can be seen at The Cutting Room for the next few weekends and it's a guaranteed fun night out as Dina performs/destroys songs by Duran Duran, The Smiths, Melissa Manchester, and so on, in between her hilariously malaprop-laden banter. If you can imagine a fearlessly brave blazingly funny comic assuming the guise of a cluelessly tacky entertainer who wallows in pathos and pop culture you might be able to wrap your mind around Dina Martina in advance, but even that is more than you need to know. Dina Martina is from Seattle, but she's more downtown New York nightclub than any of us.

Liberty City

Maybe every child should have to attend a school where they're in the 1% minority; maybe we should all have to watch our parents divorce and lose faith, live through race-incited riots, or have our father chain us to the rusted remains of slave shackles. On second thought, scratch that: April Yvette Thompson is a one-of-a-kind performer. Even if we recreated the exact circumstances that molded her childhood, there'd never be another actress able to convey those stories with such honesty, comedy, heartache, and strength. Her one-woman show, Liberty City, is filled with unabashed pride and embarrassing details, and it's one of the strongest solo shows to grace the stage not just because it's brave, but because it's necessary. We've had richly performed shows like Bridge and Tunnel or I Am My Own Wife take center stage, but it's been a long time since seeing such a pure (albeit processed) and relevant show.

[Read on]

Cat's Cradle

Photo/Edward Einhorn

Just as making a cat's cradle is deceptively deeper than it looks, so it goes with adapting Kurt Vonnegut's less-than-sunny novel, Cat's Cradle. Edward Einhorn takes a pretty good crack at it, but his condensations of plot come at the expense of the characters, and his definitions of Bokononism's terms come across as anti-foma, that is, truth that hurts the narrative of the play. Worse still, while the calypso lyrics are mostly ripped from the pages, they're roughly delivered by a chorus of musicians who, quite frankly, aren't very good. And worst of all, the direction often forces the play -- most particularly the explanation of ice-9, a central conceit -- to compete with the music: to accurately quote a Bokononist, it's all busy, busy, busy. Our hero, John (Timothy McCown Reynolds) is rational enough to be engaging, and he holds our attention even as he grows more and more tangled in a web of hastily drawn characters. Kudos to Evolve Company's model set, a projection of which is the only colorful thing on stage: that sort of crisp, clean translation of a key stylistic point is what this adaptation needs more of, and that means more cutting, better casting, and some sort of message. If science is magic that works, then it's time for this company to look toward science, for the random hocus-pocus they've got right now isn't working.

[Read on]

Welcome To Nowhere (bullet hole road)

Photo/Kenneth Collins

It's interesting to note that Kenneth Collins doesn't call Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) a play -- he opts for "performance" instead. Well, that's true, what with the tightly framed "stage" (a pair of transparent changing-room mirrors), the languid language (mostly delivered in breathy whispers), and William Cusick's Lynchian dream projecting onto a widescreen banner above the set. I'd go with the word "experience" instead, as the whole production is so uniquely compelling -- controlled to the point of ultimate enthrallment -- that you won't soon forget this show. The film is shot like a photo-realistic noir that splices flesh-and-blood actors with static backgrounds; the play is a minimalist grounding for the memories projected above. The pace is a slow and sustained necessity, one that mirrors the endless drifting of its twinned protagonists, Hunter (Ben Beckley) and Wyatt (Brian Greer) as they slowly merge on the highway of life. Don't try to unpack the bags of plot; just hop in the passenger seat and let Collins take you for a ride.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: Patrick]