The old line about who invariably stands behind every good man is often quoted. But how often do we stop to ponder the reverse notion
Behind Every Good King...
Fallen Star
Frances Farmer was a movie actress from the 1930's and 40's, loved for her radiant natural beauty, admired for her powerful, passionate acting, but remembered and immortalized for her tragic, wasted life. Her violent fall from grace was engineered by her mother, supported by a communist-paranoid government, and justified by a gossip-hungry press. In Sally Clark's fact based play, Saint Frances of Hollywood, currently running at The Manhattan Theatre Source, Sarah Ireland breaths vibrant life back into Farmer by skillfully resurrecting the feisty spirit and iron will that characterized Hollywood's most tragic starlet. Mounted on a bare white stage with no set, scenery, or props, Saint Frances of Hollywood relies on its tight plot, crackling dialogue, and well-nuanced acting to tell its story. The only special effect used to set the mood is a black and white movie clip from the 1930's Farmer film Come and Get It. Here the audience can see for itself why Farmer was once a beloved icon of the screen. Her glowing beauty is immediately evident. With high cheekbones, wavy blond hair, large blue eyes, and a face full of expression and charisma, her presence commands both attention and reverence.
Farmer's mother was a conservative, religious housewife determined to give her daughter a glamorous Hollywood life. But as Farmer matured, her mother's hold on her loosened. An idealist at heart, Farmer wanted to protest the treatment of migrant workers, join movements to help the poor, work with theater groups promoting social change, and find a way to make capitalism work for everyone.
Her passion for such changes was interpreted as a distaste for the government, which in that era meant being branded with the deadly label "communist." The press balked at her activities, her mother denounced her opinions, and the movie studio sent her to work in Mexico as punishment for canceling out on two big-budget films.
Farmer's refusal to pander to the press inspired it to paint her as a communist lunatic. After she physically lashed out at a hairdresser who called her as much, the government asked Farmer's mother to have her committed. Her mother readily agreed, then eerily proceeded to dress like her daughter and answer her fan mail while she was institutionalized.
Nine months later, Farmer emerged from the medical facility and attacked her treatment there. She reported that she was repeatedly raped by orderlies, prostituted to soldiers, subjected to constant electric shock, given insulin shots to stun her body, and forced to endure eight-hour baths in ice water. And yet her mother still sent her back to the facility a year later when Farmer announced she would rather return to the picket lines than to a Hollywood soundstage.
Unable to break her spirit, the mental institution performed a lobotomy designed to give Farmer only the most basic of brain functions. This time they sent her back into society as a shell of her former self.
With such heavy subject matter, humor is an essential aspect of this production. Fortunately, there are plenty of laughs, especially in the scenes within the mental institution. Jeffrey Plunkett hysterically plays Dr. Betelguese with a squeaky voice that makes every word play as a joke. Fiona Jones is perfect as Farmer's crazy, rubber ducky-obsessed cellmate, and Kendra Kohrt is excellent as a chipper nurse who breaks into Nazi-like seriousness when she means business.
But there is no doubt that the play is firmly planted on Ireland's capable shoulders. She gives a stunning performance as Farmer, one that, on a Broadway stage, would undoubtedly earn her a Tony nomination. Not only does Ireland have the same classic beauty and interesting face, but she manages to be spirited, zesty, and funny even in the darkest of moments.
Farmer's life was defined by her misfortune. Society took away her talent, butchered her beauty, raped her body, destroyed her mind, and sent her back into the world a compliant, mindless drone. Fortunately, her story lives on in movies like Jessica Lange's Frances, songs like Nirvana's "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle," and plays like Saint Frances of Hollywood. This legacy proves that even after lobotomy and death, Farmer's voice was never silenced.
Strutting and Fretting
Great quotes become clich
Mock the Casbah
Persians are "passionate people," argues Iranian-born actor Arian Moayed, and "all that hair," he offers as an afterthought, is just "to keep us warm." Issues of hirsuteness aside, if theater company Waterwell's re-envisioning of Aeschylus's The Persians is any indication, I would add that Persians are also somewhat schizophrenic, and not a little over-caffeinated. And thank the gods for it: what better way to shake some life into what is widely considered the world's oldest surviving play? First performed in 472 A.D., the work is remarkable not only for its age but also for the fact that it is the only extant Greek play to deal with an actual, historical event, namely the Persian king Xerxes's invasion of Greece just eight years earlier. With monumental hubris on full display, Xerxes amassed an army of nearly a million men
Murder, Third Row Center
A murder has been committed at Muldoon Manor, a remote, fog-shrouded country home, and the body lies in plain sight. Too bad the house guests, and the critics for that matter, are too self-absorbed to notice. The Performers Access Studio's spot-on production of Tom Stoppard's 1968 witty whodunit, The Real Inspector Hound, is a play-within-a-play that pokes fun at the murder mystery form while exposing the critics who decide "yea" or "nay" before the first act is done.
First, the play: Stoppard has created a telltale mystery that is comically aware of itself, complete with the attractive widow, Cynthia Muldoon; her busybody maid, Mrs. Drudge; the unannounced stranger, Simon; and the inept but dashing Inspector Hound.
Early on, when Simon remarks, "I took the shortcut over the cliffs and followed one of the old smuggler's paths through the treacherous swamps that surround this strangely inaccessible house," we realize that Stoppard is revealing how easily recognizable and implausible mystery-genre conventions are. The performers must remain aware of the molds from which they've been cast, exaggerating their horror and shock, their passion and anger in a constant send-up of well-worn tropes. As Felicity, Mary Theresa Archibold, for instance, accents every exit with a fluttering step and a sudden flick of her curly black hair that perfectly sums up her character's jilted pout.
Downstage left, in a short row of chairs identical to those in the audience, sit Birdboot and Moon, two critics who have been dispatched to review the murder mystery. A big name with an equally big ego, Birdboot is a career-making critic with a conspicuously absent wife and an eye for fresh young actresses, while Moon is a striving second-stringer who lives in the shadows of his superior, Higgs. They both seem to be watching the play, but actually spend a good deal of time musing about their own problems.
As the action in the first scene gets under way, Birdboot proclaims that the killer is not Simon, the unexpected guest, but Magnus, the wheelchair-bound brother-in-law of the lady of the house, who "ten years ago went out for a walk on the cliffs and was never seen again." Having made up his mind about the killer's identity and the review he will give the show, the weathered critic can turn his attention to the young starlets who grace the stage. And Moon, hampered by his own sense of inferiority
Woven Memories
Beth Kurkjian likes to crochet. A lot. The intricate, multicolored pieces that she crocheted for and wears during Age Less
Noir On-Air
Hard Boiled is playwright Dan Bianchi's latest crack at the world of pulp-fiction noir. Produced by Radio Theatre Presents, it is a send-up of gritty detective novels and the live drama of radio theater. The setting is straight out of a 40's black-and-white mystery, the kind where the rain is always falling amid the perennial darkness in some nameless city. Hard Boiled features the usual suspects: the jaded detective, the Hollywood matinee idol and his brassy agent, the mobster and his actress wife, and the mobster's stripper girlfriend. Thrown in for effective atmosphere are a sultry singer and her pitch-perfect band. The story is interspersed with clever advertisements for other radio programs and commercial products of yesteryear.
The play attempts to recreate radio theater, and to Bianchi's credit, he undertakes this endeavor with a great deal of passion. The problem is that Bianchi the director can't decide if he is presenting a play, a re-creation of a radio broadcast that is being watched as a play, or a radio broadcast that is being heard first and seen second. With elaborate costumes and props, Hard Boiled is very much a spectacle, but some of the actors simply use their voices while others use their entire bodies, giving fully physical performances.
The cast of characters is game if not fully able. Ryan Kelly as the Mae West-inspired agent, Joey Kapps, gives it her all. Unfortunately, her all is too much, and with wild eyes, Kelly ends up overacting to the point of distraction. John Nolan as the Host has the perfect "radio" voice, and he does keep the action moving, yet he often comes across as bored. Elizabeth Bianchi has several nice moments as mob moll Cindy Marsh, but they are quickly undermined by a comes-and-goes accent and a weak character. Adam Murphy, Dan Truman, and Sarah Stephens fare better in their commercial spots than in their poorly defined characters during the show's story.
Charles Wilson saves the day (and the play) as Detective Jack Carter. His character is a cocksure ladies' man and a master of words, full of dry sarcasm, Wilson seems born to play the role, and he brings Hard Boiled alive. Yet ironically the unsung hero of Hard Boiled is singer Rhe De Ville. A sultry and sexy chanteuse, she sets the play alight with her smoky voice. Looking like a million bucks and sporting a priceless set of pipes, De Ville alone is worth seeing the show. She is expertly supported by Brian Cashwell on piano and Jimmy Sullivan on bass.
Bianchi has written a flawed script that tries too hard. With a plot that is incidental
Lost Love's Ghostly Visitations
"What is the beginning of happiness?/ It is to stop being so religious." These lines, from the 12th-century Sufi mystic poet Hafiz, were probably intended with a great deal of irony, seeing how Hafiz was reputed to have memorized the entire Koran 14 different ways. Happiness, he seems to be saying, is the cheap wine, while true mystical enlightenment is the next day's hangover: a woozy, achingly exact sense of the full heft and grief of things. In Jamie Carmichael's new coming-of-age play, Pilgrims, these lines are used to counterpoint the spiritual
Nuptials
When certain elements are introduced in the course of a play, they have specific, set-in-stone effects on the play's events. For example, if at some point a gun is shown onstage, that gun must be fired by the end of the show. Sam Marks's new work, The Bigger Man, brings to mind two more: If a character suddenly "finds religion," that religion is always a cult. And if a guy shows up at his ex-girlfriend's wedding, that guy will cause a whole lot of trouble. The ex in question here is Len, whose former amour Lily is getting married to a gentleman named Mike in her rural Pennsylvanian hometown. Len's a (supposedly) reformed drug addict and thief who's brought his unreformed, unrefined stoner buddy Rick with him to stay at an ugly motel the night before Lily's wedding. The two New Yorkers are undone by the remote locale and consider some cannabis-flavored relief, but also talk about a promise not to do drugs, which they made when they signed something on their invitation.
Lily's brother Jerry appears and wants them to leave. He hasn't forgiven Len for abusing Lily and stealing from her while they were dating. Len refuses to go, saying that Lily called him and asked him to attend. Jerry warns them about what they signed and leaves.
After a number of scenes like this, which are blacked out in the middle of thoughts, it gradually emerges that Lily has devoted herself to the Foundation, a spiritual group to which her brother, fianc
Absurdities
Panel.Animal is not a full-length play but two one-acts performed consecutively in one energetic performance. The first half of the production is called The Young War and centers around a panel of two men
Close to Home
In his new one-person show, Paul Boocock deftly shifts his insights and opinions from money and corruption to adultery, drugs, and civil rights. No, this is not about Supreme Court justice nominations; this is about baseball. The world of baseball doesn't often cross over to the theater world or the political arena (unless players are being questioned at Senate committee hearings, of course). But Boocock takes up the challenge and uses his love of the sport to offer Boocock's House of Baseball, a meditation on "America's pastime" and its eras of greatness, its problems, and its influence on and resonance with American life. The parallels are greater in number and relevance than one might think.
Boocock posits that the great virtue of baseball
Call Me Crazy
One-person shows are difficult. One-person shows about mental disorders are even harder. In Gary Mizel's play Memoirs of a Manic Depressive, Dexter Brown journeys through the ups and downs in the life of a man with bipolar disorder. From riding high in a red Porsche to being terrified by alien voices in the living room, Mizel's story is at once disconcerting and heartening. The show takes place at the Gene Frankel Theatre on Bond Street, named for the Broadway director and Off-Broadway champion. (Best known, perhaps, for his controversial staging of Jean Genet's The Blacks in 1960.) His theater school, where the motto was "You don't just get the Gene Frankel technique, you get Gene Frankel," closed upon his death this past April. The theater has continued producing, and Memoirs features two of his disciples: Brown and director Lorca Peress.
This is Mizel's first foray into playwriting, and as a man with bipolar disorder himself, it is clear that this is one way he can portray the ever-changing world in which he lives. Lucky for us, he has a sense of humor: "See, bipolars used to be called manic-depressives, but I think a better euphemism would be 'the sanely challenged.' "
Brown has spent far more time in the theater world than Mizel has; plus, he personally trained with Frankel. It is odd, then, that it is Brown's pacing that allows Mizel's script to often drop precipitously. That said, he does a commendable job at evoking deep emotions, such as the wracking grief of his mother's death or the excessive elation of a manic episode.
While the play's title may be daunting, the content is actually peppered with candid humor, especially to audience members who know people with bipolar disorder and understand the power of understatement. At one point, the character "Gary" admits, "I take drugs. Specifically, Zoloft, Lithium, Trilofon. With them I get to be human. But before I was diagnosed as bipolar, I was, shall we say, 'moody.' "
Evidently, Mizel's life has been quite a challenge--from his mother's suicide to his own mental illness. This is a brave play, publicly airing the inner struggles of a man with a trying disease. Dale Wasserman made some strides in this area with his 1963 stage version of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Tennessee Williams's shaky little Laura in The Glass Menagerie arguably has a mental illness; and, of course, Jessie Cates in 'night, Mother is anything but well. But the man in Memoirs finds a happier ending than those characters, thus making mental illness less of a spectacle and more of a difficult struggle that can end in victory.
Unlike those other full-length plays, too, Memoirs demands a virtuoso solo performance. While Brown is capable enough to get the audience through the 90-minute piece, he moves less than gracefully through the tumultuous scenes. A tough job, though, to be sure. In his worn-out jeans, white sneakers, and blue button-down, he does not embody the Manhattan stockbroker the character is meant to be.
Peress has also encouraged a lot of direct addresses to the audience, which is always a bit disconcerting if the fourth wall is not broken early on. In this case, it is especially disconcerting because this is a one-man play, not a comedy routine or a tell-all. Her sound design, however, is spot-on, with apt entrance music and well-done voiceovers as the voices in Mizel's head.
While bipolar disorder affects only about 3 percent of the world's adult population, those who have it suffer mightily from the auditory hallucinations ("hearing voices"), delusions, and severe swings between mania and depression. If these Memoirs leave us with anything, though, it is the confidence that such an affliction can be overcome.
Radio Days
Turns out we have someone to blame for the high number of court shows that dominate the afternoon-television lineup, and surprisingly enough, he never worked for NBC, CBS, or ABC. His name is Rabbi Rubin, and his court show aired on Yiddish radio in the 1930's and 40's. His court, though, was not exactly legit. Responding to the needs of the Jewish community in New York's Lower East Side, Rabbi Rubin's House of Sages (a place he created for retired rabbis to study and pray) formed its own private court system to settle disputes for people who were too poor or unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the real justice system. The service was free, but there was one catch
Four Sisters
This season on Broadway, testosterone has been as prevalent as the New York City summer heat. What is perhaps most remarkable about this phenomenon, however, is not the noticeable dominance of male-heavy shows but the significance of their content and the frustrating lack of comparable significance in shows featuring all-women casts. Steel Magnolias may be a diverting enough play, but it withers next to the drama and sheer power and urgency of Democracy or Twelve Angry Men. For those seeking a play about female empowerment and strength, one not focused solely on the drama of getting married or giving birth, there is a welcome respite in the current Off-Off-Broadway production of Kevin O'Morrison's Ladyhouse Blues at the Linhart Theatre. Directed by Marc Weitz and produced by 3 Graces Theater Co., a theater company "committed to exposing and exploring the power of women's experience through theater," the play revolves around the issues facing the four Madden sisters and their mother, who live in St. Louis in 1919. At times a bit overstuffed, Ladyhouse Blues is nevertheless a charming and touching look at a family of women who are close enough to lean on each another, but strong enough to stand on their own.
Set in the kitchen of the Madden home, the play starts while the audience is filtering in, with actors in turn-of-the-century working-class garb passing out fans and fruit and hawking their wares from the wings. Designed by Alexis Distler, the set, a skeletal frame of a large kitchen, is cleverly suggestive enough to provide a homey setting where the Madden family convenes to discuss all-important family business, yet sparse enough to allow the ensemble to create ambience-setting, between-scenes montages of wartime and struggle.
Indeed, the Madden sisters are products of their hard times. Eylie, the youngest, is a waitress who, along with her suffragist sister Terry, brings in the only income. Helen, who is married to a man of German descent, has consumption, is not allowed to see her young child, and can barely leave her home. Dot, a New York transplant and former model, is pregnant with the second child of her socialite husband, whose family does not approve of her. Liz, their mother, has had to raise her six children alone since she was 26, after the death of her husband, and her only son, Bud, is fighting in the Great War.
If this sounds like a lot of plot points, it is. And yet, the travails of these very different sisters weave a tapestry of love and labor that becomes engaging and heartwarming.
Weitz does an admirable job of attempting to meld both the elements of societal influence and private values. Yet his direction sometimes gets muddy, as when the ensemble, whether peddling wares or singing with a visiting revival, frequently overpowers the dialogue. Weitz also fails to rein in the play's focus in the second act. The play's most dramatic event, involving the sisters' brother Bud, fails to resonate as it perhaps should, because there is so much left to resolve or even address.
This lack of resolution also lies in a lack of focus for at least some of the characters. Most of the sisters' love and strength and rebellion come from their mother Liz, played by Kathleen Bishop with a little too much aw-shucks, quirky-yet-strong, "Southern" cartoonishness. And as the matron, she is given the play's most whopping one-liners, which she delivers without restraint, such as "God, I can't help but feelin' if you was a woman, you'da done it different."
Yet her performance is also paired with some wonderfully nuanced ones. Annie McGovern's Dot, the ailing, pregnant wife of a New England aristocrat, is wonderful to watch as she uses her dainty features to full comic potential, and to also show her suffering. Nitra Gutierrez fills the stage with energy and warmth as Eylie, and Dorothy Abrahams as Terry, the suffragist, is full of charm and passion.
Ladyhouse Blues is not a perfect production. Weitz's direction sometimes lacks delicacy, and some of the acting at times feels heavy-handed and overwrought. Despite those small flaws, the play will touch you in unexpected ways. "Ladyhouse" is an old word for a house full of women waiting for their men to return from war. Perhaps it would be appropriate to find another title for this play about a group of strong women who are so engaging to watch.
Shakespeare in the Park
When performing a play in Central Park, an actor has several distressing obstacles to fret over before he or she utters the first line. Will it rain? Will your un-microphoned voice reach the ears of a scattered audience over a host of background noises such as sirens, car horns, and drilling? Will you slip on the wet grass? Will a passing dog break free from its master and chase you backstage? With the play running an hour and 55 minutes, no intermission, will audience members' periodic visits to the restroom and snack bar distract others from becoming fully engrossed in the show?
Boomerang Theatre Company's production of Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona overcomes all these obstacles and everything else the outdoor Central Park theater space tries to throw in their way.
Understanding Shakespeare's Elizabethan language is vital to appreciating the plays. Without this understanding, they can easily become confusing and dull to a contemporary audience. Even Shakespearean scholars who are accustomed to his work have confessed it takes at least 15 minutes of reading for their minds to fully wrap around the unfamiliar words and phrases.
And so it is a great testament to the skill of this play's exceptional cast that they instantly engage their audience in Shakespearean language that flowed from their tongues as lucid and naturally as modern-day English. So clear was their discourse that passers-by would stop in midscene to listen, young children abandoned their parents' blankets to take front-row seats, and few people left for refreshments.
The story follows the trials and tribulations of two lovelorn men from Verona, Valentine (Henry Martone) and Proteus (Jeremy Black). Valentine hopes to steal his true love, Silvia (Jessica Myhr), away from Sir Thurio (Dennis McNitt), the boring man her father the Duke (Bill Weeden) wishes her to marry. But when Proteus sees Silvia's beauty, he forgets all about his own love, Julia (Sharon Paige), thus betraying his friend Valentine to win Sylvia's affections for himself.
Paige creates a likable, sympathetic character in the scorned Julia. She has a youthful, classically adorable face that is always twisted in a recognizable expression. Her love Proteus is played by the animated Jeremy Beck, whose energy inspired a round of impromptu applause in the middle of a perfectly timed comic scene. His friend Valentine thrilled the audience when he hid in their midst, staying in character while Sylvia wept onstage, declaring her undying love for him. His rival Thurio is played by the hilarious Dennis McNitt in a nuanced portrayal of a disgusting, cowardly, and boring love interest.
And then there's Speed and Launce
Fun & Dames
Vaudeville, though enormously popular in its heyday, has not enjoyed the longevity of other types of entertainment. In the last few years, however, there has been a quiet resurgence of these anything-goes acts on the alternative performance scene downtown and in the boroughs. At Walkerspace, Women's Expressive Theater is presenting Big Times, a lovable, fun-for-all-ages tribute to and send-up of the art form. The little TriBeCa theater's lobby is tricked out in old show posters and leads to a wooden stage enshrouded in rich, red velvet curtains and lined by bulb-style footlights. Two-person tables as well as bleacher seating is available, and old songs are piped through the room before the show.
As the lights dim, the Moonlighters (described on their Web site as "New York's finest ukulele and steel guitar ensemble") take to the stage
A Dish of the Gay Pimp
It was 2003 when Johnny McGovern's techno ditty "Soccer Practice" became the "YMCA" for a new gay generation. It blazed itself into the computer hard drives of gay boys everywhere, boasting lyrics like "I like to do manly things, but I like maybe to do them with you
Mystery on the Maternity Ward
Few murder mysteries have entered the recent theatrical canon, and even fewer musical ones. The last one that immediately comes to mind is The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on Charles Dickens's final, unfinished work, and even that one nabbed the Tony almost two decades ago. Part of the difficulty in mounting such a production is that there are many elements to oversee. The plot's events need to be plausible and should keep the audience guessing until the big revelation, which then must make sense. And for the play to be truly successful, all the suspects must be real characters rather than just walking and talking potential motives. Quiet Cry, a PASSAJJ production at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row, purports to be a musical murder mystery, but falls a little short of the necessary criteria.
Ambiguously set in the 1980's in the maternity ward of a fictitious New York hospital, Cry primarily tells the story of the sensitive Dr. Bill (Robert Kane) and a hospital worker, Sarah (Elena Stauffer). These two are drawn to each other amid a most depressing background: they observe drug-addicted prostitutes admitted to their hospital to give birth, along with equally strung-out transvestites.
Many of the characters comment on how horrible these women are, but while Adam Dick's book looks down upon them and their decadent lifestyle, Paul Dick's music and lyrics never echo this sentiment. Director Andrea Andresakis's production itself never expresses anger and judgment to match some of the characters' early outrage, and though it plods along for two hours, it fails to do so with the audience in its thrall.
Specific plot points are essential to any good (or even lukewarm) mystery, so I will not reveal too many details in this review. But suffice it to say that there aren't too many. The entire first act consists almost exclusively of exposition, with the Dicks telling the audience who the characters are and where they come from. But they do so with one or two background details that then repeat and repeat themselves.
The first act alone consists of 11 songs in 10 scenes. Ordinarily, that would be a rather impressive number, but these songs only say so much, and then they, too, become redundant. This kind of wall-to-wall music makes the entire musical feel hollow when it should feel enriched. As a result, the more suspenseful action disappoints. And said action does not even begin until the end of Act One, when one of the ward's newborns is found dead.
Cry bears a sense of tentativeness, the kind found in more amateur productions than this should have been. Andresakis's lack of fluid pacing seems to have unnerved some of the actors. Kane, though blessed with a rich voice, ends his songs with no gusto, and while he makes Dr. Bill seem like the sweetheart he should appear to be, the actor sometimes comes across as too hammy. Shea Hess, as Emma, the leading addicted-mother character, has a sweet voice, but Paul Dick tests her range too often for her to pass every time.
The performer who fares the best is Kit Williams, as the Nurse. While strong throughout, she particularly nails her showstopper at the end of the first act, "There'll Come a Day."
Cry may be a problem child right now, but it remains rife with potential. With much tightening and revision, there is no reason to think it couldn't improve.
Jerry Springer Theater
A comedy that fails to be funny is often artistically flawed, but a comedy that fails to be funny and insults Jews, Catholics, gays, and women without any sense of irony is morally repugnant. According to the press release for the Theatre-Studio's Playtime Series play I'm Not Gay!, the show originally premiered in Iceland, where a woman in the audience reportedly needed CPR after a choking fit of laughter. After seeing the opening-night performance of the English version, I can't help but speculate that the woman wasn't laughing at all and instead was aghast with shock and horror. After hearing such lines as "I killed my wife tonight...She's so fat...for four months I was [expletive] her belly button," one can imagine the woman wanting relief from the show's tactless vulgarity, if not an excuse to stop the play in mid-performance.
Granted, I'm Not Gay! is listed as a dark farce, "similar in style to South Park." But unlike South Park, which is a social satire disguised as a kids' cartoon, I'm Not Gay! has as its dominant feature the mere enjoyment of its own naughtiness.
Saying the show is collegiate would be an understatement. The fat jokes, the cursing, and the horrendously reified and unchallenged stereotypes are reminiscent of middle-schoolers gone wild. Who, one wonders, gave Daniel Guyton, the writer and director of I'm Not Gay!, the impression his Jerry Springer-inspired play was funny? Even the audience on opening night showed reserve, politely laughing at first but only tittering uncomfortably toward the end.
The show follows Gary, a homophobic Jewish businessman who turns out to be a cross-dressing, self-hating closet case. After confessing to a child-molesting Catholic priest, he murders his obese wife. Gary then makes a pass at Michael, a gay cop who has been left by his heroin-addict lover. Michael rejects him, and Gary subsequently shoots himself.
Dark comedies are difficult. A story isn't dark because it simply has curse words or political incorrectness, but because, like Todd Solondz's movies, it taps into unpleasant truths about human society in quirky ways. I'm Not Gay! only reveals the unpleasant and misguided artistry of its creators.
Despite a possibly able cast of actors, the heavily flawed writing and direction obscure any signs of talent. The pace of the actors, as well as the script, is unbearably slow. The story's unsurprising plot consistently lags behind the audience's expectations. The show's blocking and set changes are distracting and sloppy, to the point of collisions. And the perfunctory miming of opening doors, combined with the over-the-top dramatic delivery of lines, puts I'm Not Gay! into a category of its own
Schemers
When will actors learn that it's better to find someone, anyone, to direct their show rather than do it themselves? History tells us that unless your last name is Allen (as in Woody), Branagh, or Welles, you will probably not pull it off. (Even they don't get it right all of the time--Frankenstein, anyone?) Four fine dramatic performers have started their run at the Access Theater in John Nassivera's Making a Killing. But with one of the four doing double duty as player and show-helmer, the show is rudderless, and the cast is left to keep on course as best they can.
Killing begins on the opening night of E.G. Nelson's new play. His agent, Marge Decker, is in her West Side office, fielding calls about the troubled play and its absent writer. Several states away and several hours later, Nelson's producer Marty and actress wife Estelle have just arrived from the theater at a cottage in the snowy wilds of Vermont.
It's reported that Nelson has jumped off the George Washington Bridge and is missing and presumed dead. But this is no surprise to Marty and Estelle, who've planned the whole thing