Fight Girl Battle World

photo by: Jim Baldassare

***1/2 (out of 5 stars)

Vampire Cowboys

With its endless fight scenes, wacky characters, puppets, wigs, bangs, pows and thwacks, this sci-fi cartoon play wants nothing more than for you to laugh your ass off. Sustained by a tireless comic ensemble trying very hard to not only bust up the audience but each other as well, this silly bring-a-beer-to-your-seat garage play revels in its over-the-top sensibility. The evil and horrible human race has been destroyed- all but one male and one female- and the rebellion's task at hand is to hook this saucy girl and serial killer dude up and have them mate to avoid extinction of their species. Fun! It's not Checkov, or Asimov, but stupid theater like this is a great stupid date play. Take a hot drunk with you. It'll probably get you laid.

Drunk Enough To Say I Love You

photo: Joan Marcus

The playing area seems nothing but a black void except for the loveseat where Sam (the American) and Guy (the Brit) have a man-to-man entanglement that looks like an unhealthy enmeshed love affair. But only the slightest amount of personal specificity is given and it's quickly clear that what we're hearing out of their mouths is not the talk of lovers but of two nations in bed with each other, with (Uncle) Sam bending Guy to his greedy, destructive will at every turn. The two don't even need to finish their own sentences - even their intimate, casual exchanges are jagged fragments spiked with loaded foreign policy buzzwords. They talk in commonplace, intimate tones of epic-scale horrors: the effect (most especially in one scene where Sam, curled up under a blanket, coldly lists methods of prisoner torture until his masochistic lover returns) makes for boldly provocative, politically charged theatre of a blood-curdling potency. The fourty-five minute play (yes, you read that right, and it feels precisely the length it should be) might sound in the retelling like a crafty, overly academic exercise, but it isn't: it is driven by a such a palpable moral outrage that despite its not-one-extraneous-word polish it often feels like it was borne of one explosive burst of focused anger. The playwright (Caryl Churchill) even finds mitigating moments of dark humor without letting its fueling rage below a boil. I wonder about a thing or two (shouldn't Guy be a good deal older than Sam, for instance, to keep with the metaphor?) and I must admit that the play's relentless condemnation of American policy and of Britain's spineless submission to it could easily shut down some theatregoers as it opens up others. But whether you agree with Churchill's overarching statement or not, this is jolting, must-see theatre that wants to disturb and strongly provoke us, and it does.

Fight Girl Battle World

Photo/Jim Baldassare

Looking to have a qwarding good time? Then check out the high energy, action comedy adventure Fight Girl Battle World, a theatrical send-up of science fiction with some innovative fight choreography up its sleeve. Hot chicks, sarcastic robots, and bad-ass aliens: rarely does theater get so blatantly entertaining. Knowing your audience well enough to open with outtakes between an action-figure Boba Fett and his tonton buddy leaves the door wide open for creativity, and Vampire Cowboys Theater Company milks it for all its worth: a soundtrack ripped from Tarantino, a passively subversive riff on the creation myth, and some puppet spaceships fighting one another with karate kicks. Oh yeah, it's on.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David]

Man-Made

photo: Jim Baldassare

This new one-act, written and directed by Susan Mosakowski and currently running at The Ohio Theatre, has the fathers of Evolutionary Science (Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace) interacting with Mary Shelley and her fictional Frankenstein monster, thanks to the conceit of Darwin's hallucinatory fevers. It's the kind of play that gently provokes questions, such as "how do we ultimately define human?" and "should we take a flying leap forward on the evolutionary chain just because we can?" By the time the first biogenetically manufactured woman arrives late in the play, Mosakowski has thoughtfully explored many aspects of the theme, sometimes with a bit of humor and always with intelligence, but the opening scenes are on the dry side and despite an able cast the play doesn't, ahem, come to life until Mary Shelley shows up. Once she does the play-of-ideas is more lively and textured, and remains engaging partly thanks to the playwright's probing tone. It's the opposite of being hit over the head sledgehammer-style with a "message".

South Pacific

photo: Joan Marcus

Lincoln Center's new revival of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic is lush and beautiful: the production doesn't skimp on the number of musicians in the pit or actors in the ensemble, and the sets - from the forced perspective sand dunes to the giant rotating airplane - also look no-expense-spared. The show is rich in gorgeous classic show tunes - "Younger Than Springtime," "There Is Nothing Like A Dame," and "I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy" are but three that have since achieved songbook standards status - and generally they are well-performed in this production. But I have to confess that while South Pacific may be my favorite Rodgers & Hammerstein score, I've never warmed to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book - everytime the military men pull out maps my eyes glaze over, and being asked to buy the dramatic convention of love-at-first-sight with not one but two couples in the story has always turned me into a tightwad. However, the show's heartstrings-pulling second act usually pulls me through (capped by the handkerchief-worthy double-hit of "You Have To Be Carefully Taught" and "This Nearly Was Mine", both splendidly performed here) as do charismatic performances. Two weeks into previews, some of the principal performers are not yet where they could (and probably will eventually) be: Kelli O'Hara hasn't yet found enough "hick" in her Nellie Forbush, for instance, and Paulo Szot - an opera singer making his natural and charming Broadway debut as Emile - needs to find more levels in his performance. Danny Burstein, on the other hand, is in ready-to-open spot-on shape as Luther.

South Pacific

****
Vivian Beaumont

This musical is at least a little bit ground-breaking in the sense that this is the first time that this almost 60 year old Pulitzer Prize-winner has been revived on Broadway; probably in part, due to the dated nature of the book whose themes on racism seem archaic and darling. Instead of calling in David Ives to fix it, Director Bartlett Sher, has smartly embraced the book as a relic and carefully presents it just probably had been originally. Having played Lt. Cable in my High School spring musical (Matthew Morrison decided to play him as sexy and masculine. Interesting choice.), I have every word of the score committed to memory and it was pretty heavenly listening to these songs sung so beautifully by our Broadway cast. I cannot get "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" out of my head. Nor do I want to.