A Midsummer Night's Dream

Reviewed for Theatermania.

This Is A Cowboy Poem My Daddy Taught Me

photo: Stephen M. Price

This new play starts out as if it's one of those "long night of hard booze and hard confessions" dramas of the middle of the American desert variety, as a mysterious stranger named Love convinces a bartender named Scrappy to pour her a few on credit. But the lyrical, engagingly structured play (by Katie Bender) soon reveals a theme (about the ability of art to change lives) that isn't usually seen with characters like these in places like this, and it's also soon clear that the play is on a course that steers clear of formulaic melodrama. Although the staging doesn't meet all the challenges of the problematic playing area, the production does an admirable job of creating an environment that allows Bender's heightened dialogue to play out intimately. Ultimately, it's a play that leaves its mark by seeping in slowly, gently, surely.

Hospital 2008 (episode one)

Photo/Dixie Sheridan

The saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," so the fans and fanatics drooling each year over Axis Theater Company's serial drama Hospital are not likely to be disappointed with this year's four surreal, comic installments. But from a critical point of view, it's hard to process what, other than a ridiculously experimental showcase, Axis is after. Watching Hospital 2008 episode one is akin to grabbing 35 minutes from the middle of a David Lynch film: the narratives are loose and disconnected, the actors are disturbingly present (yet blurred), and the ambiance (nicely evoked here by Kyle Chepulis's literal cavern of a set and David Zeffren's selective lighting) is unsettling. The trouble is that this serial version lacks the deepening compulsion of Lynch's craft: nothing within this segment ties in to anything (unless you count cryptic references to "an apartment"), and with such a short run-time, the mood of the piece never pulls the audience under.

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Len Asleep In Vinyl

photo: Joan Marcus

Carly Mensch's brief and underdramatized play about a burned out middle aged record producer barely finds a groove before it's over: for about as long as it would take to play the average CD (seventy minutes) we watch the depressed, somewhat volatile main character holed up in his getaway cabin following a tabloid-level incident at an awards show. He's descended upon by his estranged son, his ex-wife, a neighborhood kid who idolizes him, and a troubled Britney Spears-type pop star who is his latest project: potentially interesting characters all, put over by a capable cast, but the playwright, despite a talent for dialogue, doesn't do anything particularly interesting with them. The relationship between the son, an aspiring musician, and the neglectful dad, who isn't interested in hearing the kid's "chamber pop" music, seems to be meant to illustrate a cultural chasm between the generations, but it doesn't have much resonance for me at this moment in time during the phenomenon of Guitar Hero and the resulting popularity of new rock.

Jollyship The Whiz Bang

Reviewed for Theatermania.

EST Marathon 30: Series B

As I said about Series A, it's not worth focusing on the flaws of an uneven one-act festival: better to take note of those runners who hold up their leg of the race. To be fair, it's necessary to at least mention Neil LaBute, who has grown so sharp in The Great War that he's cut off all emotion and become an incindiary M. Night Shyamalan. That makes it easier to note the wild story of David Zellnick's Ideogram which manages to sharply satirize stereotypes while at the same time boiling down and condensing jealousy into a weird sort of mental noir. The weaknesses stand out right now (the forced flute solos), but that's only because the play is so short, and the concept otherwise so comic: undeveloped, it's still right up there with, say, the magical realism of Kevin Brockmeier. It's also important to illustrate the struggle, because then when you hit upon a winner, like Taylor Mac's fully developed and wholly satisfying Okay, it's clearer how good of a race the playwright's run. Setting a tragedy in a series of bathroom stalls keeps the door open for farce, and Taylor balances not only between the two styles, but seven wholly different voices, too--the show bursts with personality as the characters rant, snort, drink, and . . . sadly . . . give birth. Sound like your high school's senior prom?

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