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AliceGraceAnon

10/22/2012

I'm not quite sure what to make of this one. I have mixed feelings because there's a lot that I like about this play and production, but it also leaves a lot to be desired. However, overall, I agree with this article that says, "even if [ALICEGRACEANON]'s only intermittently successful, it's consistently intriguing."
Upon entering the ginormous space of the Irondale Center, the set and surrounding installations seem awe-inspiring and epic. But, as you approach the installations, talk to the "Spectacle Brigade" (the chorus), and generally interact, you realize everything's kinda crappy and haphazard. Unfortunately, those elements bled into the show itself, as well.
Right away when Grace Slick (Carolyn Baeumler) begins rocking out with her backup band, the Tuned-In incognito as Jefferson Airplane, a couple of Spectacle Brigadiers pretend to be late 60s-esque go-go dancers. Too bad they didn't have the full technique. They looked like a couple of middle schoolers trying out "the swim" at their semi-formal. There is a lot of skill required to pull off period dance, and this half-assery is just one example of many throughout the production. It put the show into a mediocre start for me, even though Baeumler herself was very alluring. She definitely had the essential qualities of "rockstar" that her character required.
Basically everything in the beginning is a mess. The three threads of 'Alice in Wonderland,' 'White Rabbit,' and 'Go Ask Alice' make for a BRILLIANT concept. I anticipated more cohesion in the overlapping of the threads. The show is meant to have the feeling of a 60s happening, but the improvised nature of a happening doesn't mean the whole thing should be chaos. Only pieces of ALICEGRACEANON are actually improvised anyway, the pieces which interact with the audience, which are, thankfully, few.
I say again, I was looking for cohesion, which really isn't a thing to look for in this piece. The chaotic overlap of the threads is one thing, but the characters themselves are major icons, and I couldn't follow the rules of their existence. Alice (Teresa Avia Lim) is a fictional character and the real person Lewis Carroll based the character on, Alice Liddell. Anonymous (Christina Pumariega) is entirely fictional although presented as a real "troubled teen" by her inventor, Beatrice Sparks. Anonymous is a sort of Pinocchio looking to become real. The play refers to her as a "Pinocchio with a pink purse." Grace Slick was a real rockstar. Grace and Anon seemed to stick to their icons, I think, but Alice was given bizarre and contemporary lines, like "I'm so fucked." I don't get it.
Again everything before the pause marking the next act or section was really hard to follow. It felt like playwright Kara Lee Corthron didn't want us to follow anything, although the production made us follow a path before entering the seating area. Alice and Anon are both characters who go on journeys, and eventually they and Grace go on a journey together in this play, but I just couldn't make any sense of the beginning. It was sort of an 'Alice in Wonderland' reenactment mixed with a 'Go Ask Alice' reenactment mixed with a Jefferson Airplane concert, and all of it is one happening. Except it's not that at all. Huh?
Eventually, Alice quits her own story, the show stops, and a ton of paper bits get tossed on the audience from above. I thought it was kind of fun. Happenings like to do things like that, pretend to stop in the middle and get "real." Having shit dumped on you takes a lot of patience as an audience member. Looking around, some people giggled and thought it was cute. I did. But the guy next to me was totally not having it. Okay, so after that happens, some chorus boy Spectacle Brigadier pops on stage to sing a random song. It felt like a space filler and really out of place.
What I suppose was an intermission was the pause between sections of the play. It was an awkward, time consuming set change that strikes the band at the same time. The audience just sat and watched and waited for the Spectacle Brigade to quit futzing with bits of crap that covered up other bits of crap on the unfinished-looking stage. When they come back, there's a line, "What the hell was that?" No shit. Grace adds, "What is going on?" You tell me. Alice says to Grace, "Please stop talking. Everything you say is absolutely horrifying." Pretty much.
The good thing about the second bit is that it finally almost comes together. The characters even start speaking in unison at one point. Grace suggests that Alice is "really committed to her narrative," which apparently "takes balls," but I don't know how committed any of the characters are to anything.
That article I linked at the top describes the play as "an amorphous purgatory where [the characters] must remain until they've managed to work up the gumption to stand up to the men in their lives." I think that critic was also looking for some cohesive piece of something to hold onto, but I don't think that's an accurate description of the play. I mean, Alice stands up to Lewis Carroll and Grace stands up (I guess?) to Paul Kantner (Matt Dellapina), but what about Anon? Anon has several run-ins with her creator, Beatrice Sparks (also Dellapina). Sparks, however, is played by Dellapina in church lady drag, a clearly comedic and insulting gag. It got laughs alright, especially when Ms. Sparks' wig is removed, Dellapina lowers his voice into a scary man growl to prove he is male. This, I would assume, is a directorial choice on the part of Kara-Lynn Vaeni, and this shock gag device happened more than once, as if even one time was necessary. It makes sense to me for Alice to confront Lewis Carroll, her author, just as Anon confronts her author... but Alice confronts Carroll as Alice Liddell, not the Alice of the stories. But none of this has relevance to Grace who has no author, unless that's Paul Kantner, but I don't know enough about Jefferson Airplane to know that, and that kind of info wasn't clearly established in the text. If it was, I was too busy being distracted by all the rest of the eyegasms in the production.
Corthron's voice comes through when somewhere in the play somebody describes Alice as the "best female protagonist ever written." I'm curious why Corthron included characters like the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar (which, by the way, was inventively staged with all the bodies of the Spectacle Brigade as segments of the Caterpillar), but chose to eliminate the Queen of Hearts, arguably THE MOST POWERFUL WOMAN IN ALL OF WESTERN LITERATURE, and certainly an equally ferocious antagonist to Alice's gumption-laden protagonist.
Good and bad highlights:
Good: Pumariega's ability to climb the set like a giant playground monkey bars.
The best moment of the show was Pumariega tumbling in the air through the Spectacle Brigade while saying lines! Difficult and very nicely done!
Baeumler and Dellapina's scenes together as Grace and Paul. The chemistry was actually nice, and spoke to me as the most accessible moments in the show.
Bad: Sound problems - Grace's mic went out.
Costume malfunctions - Alice's dress basically fell off (although actors found smart moments to try and fix it during the show).
Dangerous and half-finished looking set pieces - a turn-table that almost tossed some folks off and a really steep-looking staircase ON WHEELS. (That can't be good.) Platforms without safety barriers. Things like that. I was constantly worried somebody would take a tumble.
Eventually the show ended with the high energy concert vibe it started with. And even though I was, like Alice in Wonderland, lost along the way, by the end I was glad for the journey.
Props to New Georges for the epic scope of producing the unproduceable and giving so many opportunities to women in theatre.

Suburban Motel: Adult Entertainment and Featuring Loretta

10/6/2012

Alrighty, so I saw this weeks ago. I'm writing this on Halloween, entirely from notes and memory. In fact, I may just list the notes I took during the performance as they are.
I loved the detail of the set that I could see as I entered, which is a typical perk of the Brooklyn College performances. I'm a big fan of house music that sets the tone and period of a play, and Fiona Apple's "Criminal" wasn't lost on me.
'Adult Entertainment' was the first of two plays making up 'Suburban Motel,' like a 'Plaza Suite' mixed with a Denzel Washington crooked cop thriller. It opens with a semi-realistic sex scene. It was pretty convincing except that Jonny Maldonado as Max was fully clothed. Director Mary Beth Easley added wonderful touches of detail, such as Andrea Aranguren putting her underwear back on, but if she was supposedly panty-less during sex, shouldn't all participants be? I wouldn't make a big deal of this minor point if it were not for the other hyper-real effects like the sound of Max pissing in the bathroom and then flushing. I think this underwear situation is a double standard, and I also think Mr. Maldonado wasn't comfortable, even with clothes on, which leads me to my next point.
Jonny Maldonado was pretty fantastic in 'Marisol' in the spring. He brought life and dimension to a very bizarre and frightening character. This time, given a pretty straightforward character, he seemed out of sync with the rest of the ensemble of 'Adult Entertainment,' and he certainly flattened his lines and missed emphases. I have to mention that I saw the evening performance of a 2-performance day, but I shouldn't be able to notice an actor's fatigue. It stood out tremendously right from the beginning, a hot and bothered motel sex scene. When Aranguren loses interest, Maldonado had a line, "I'm still worked up here, can't you see I'm still worked up?" I may not have a penis, but I'm pretty sure that's what the line is about, and Maldonado was too scared to allude to masculine physical excitement. Or Easley told him not to, I don't know. But it was super flat, and all of the rest of his lines were flat, too. Aranguren was in a constant state of compensation to balance the dying energy.
Thankfully, Jeremy Ping as Donny and Sarah Poleshuck as Pam enter the play and revive the flat atmosphere. Their dynamic together was excellent, believable, and refreshing. Poleshuck evoked Maggie Gyllenhaal's 'Sherrybaby' pretty flawlessly.
The set was wildly specific, as usual, but I felt a little disappointed in the costumes of 'Adult Entertainment.' They didn't feel 90s enough, which was the setting according to the program. Even though it was late 90s, I could have expected some shoulder pads in Aranguren's lawyer powersuit, or at least sharper lines. The blazer should have been a little oversized instead of perfectly fitted. Ping's track suit could have been a more hideous color combination.
The play itself, by George F. Walker, had some strange and gratuitous moments, like a dream sequence and a rape scene (which felt really long, even though Ping and Poleshuck nailed this really difficult situation, I'm sure thanks to Easley.)
'Adult Entertainment' was unmemorable overall, except for Poleshuck's retching in the functional bathroom.
The violence felt tired and half-hearted.
Great blood make-up.
Way too many bits of business. Actors were *constantly* playing with properties, changing clothes, and Maldonado was putting his gun holster on for eternity.
The cell phone was too modern.
Actors missed live in-the-moment opportunities. Poleshuck knocked a loaded gun off a table, and responded with a "woah" which almost worked, but I think could have been bigger. The scene just kept going. I respect when actors don't plow through material when something as brilliant as a gun falling to the ground happenes. Fear? Time limit of the piece? Actors, like critics, are observers.
Moving on, to 'Featuring Loretta.' I loved the touch of the maid cleaning the set during the intermission. Lovely way to connect two very different plays. Brava Ms. Easley on that! And Keelie Sheridan (Loretta) on stage before the house goes down, also a great bridge.
This play has a very different tone than its predecessor. The comedy was big, but not overdone.
The costumes were much more 90s in this act. I wondered why, and I just saw in the program that each play had a different costume designer. No wonder. Nikki Cammack on 'Adult Entertainment' missed the mark, but Angelica Borrero struck gold on 'Featuring Loretta'!
Great use of space and physicality.
At first, I felt dashing hunk Aaron Mednick was miscast as the creepy dweeb Dave, but I grew to see him as a Christopher Reeve/Clark Kent.
Keelie Sheridan is the master of staged phone conversations and big hair.
I know some of the actors worried about being able to write their theses on this episodic production, but these characters had so much juice -- especially the characters of 'Loretta,' maybe even too much. As the Russian Winona Ryder type, Fiona Criddle (Sophie), tells us, "People kill themselves from this too much information. The pressure squish down on their heads."
I thought the night clearly belonged to the women, but then Patrick McCormick brought an adorable charm to his sleazy character, Michael. It was hard to dislike him or the dangerous sociopath almost-boyfriend, Mednick, because Sheridan's portrayal of Loretta was a woman very much in control of her circumstances.
I think that because of her predicament, her character could be played with far less business-like determination, but that clarity of purpose (or ambiguity, as the Russian girl, Sophie, suggests) sold it for me.
I loved the details in 'Loretta,' such as Sheridan stuffing her stuffed animal into a drawer so as not to witness the less-than-dignified sex scene the character was about to partake in.
When leaving the theatre, I could really see the fantastic detail of the set, the bits of crap behind the bed's headboard: watches, candy wrappers, and other motel detritus. Props to set designer, Scott Mancha on that kind of insight.
So, all around, 'Suburban Motel' was weird, gangly, and awkward like its own character, Michael (McCormick), kind of creepy like Dave (Mednick), flabby and tired like Max (Maldonado), but also at moments sharp like Sophie (Criddle), specific like Jayne (Aranguren) and Pam (Poleshuck), and surprisingly complex like Donny (Ping) and Loretta (Sheridan).

Micro-Mini Maxi Mystery Theater: En Total

10/5/2012

Going for something a bit different this time. This show is a dance piece, not a play, and it's one I've seen before in a smaller scale at Circus Amok. This time, I also got to observe some of the rehearsals, and therefore see episodes out of sync from its "en total."

Generally, weirdo dance/mixed media pieces throw me for a loop in ways I don't like, but this one, by J Dellecave (my friend), in collaboration with Niknaz (video elements) and Daniel Rosza Lang/Levitsky, did the loop throwing in all the right ways. And I'm not just saying so because J's my friend. Everyone knows I have no reservations in saying something stinks even if I like the stinkbomb's creator. So, I say again, this one is no stinker; it's a total 5 syringe win!
What can make such a weirdo naked humping alien dance win 5 syringes? Quite a few things, actually. This piece was surprisingly consistent in its use of seemingly varied media and images. Not only was the dance troupe itself a single-organism ensemble, but the entire piece was a living breathing body unto itself. Niknaz in their video space pod and live musician Avi Fox-Rosen up the balcony were both characters in the performance, although they were both separated by space and form (they weren't part of the primary choreography of the dancers, but they were certainly elements of choreography, like limbs on the body [corps]), right?
The music choices were excellent matches to the internal narrative (and I use the term narrative loosely). 'Starstruck' by The Kinks sets the tone for the character of Sarah, some kind of alien warrior woman, and probable ex of the story's narrator, J. Later, as the ensemble humps the floor, Avi Fox-Rosen sings the ballad 'No Modern Romance' by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a song that says straight out, "there is no modern romance." This theme is introduced by J who asks, "Isn't this romantic?" as she humps the floor.
I connect with this piece as a meditation on heartbreak, although it is infused with bright colors, wild video plastered on top of the bouncing bodies of dancers in fluorescent neon tights, fishnets, micro-mini skirts, fluorescent face paint, pig tails, and goggles. It always sounded to me like the story of a breakup... in outer space. The songs reinforce the sadness and loss of the lover, the never-seen Sarah, who supposedly speaks of wide open spaces, aka a future together that is never realized.
Lyrics of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' are also mixed into the piece. I'm not sure of its relevance other than adding another layer to the idea of the breakup/leaving/being left. The intention for the song to be recognized seemed clear because the tall dancer who didn't particularly sing it, but sort of shouted it trance-like, cut it off "Goodbye everybody, I've got to--" leaving out the word "go," which we, the audience, fill in.
That kind of intentionality is behind the 5 syringes. Throughout the piece, icons (costume elements like the goggles and props of stars and hearts), choreo, lyrics, music were all introduced and then returned to again somewhere later in the piece. The piece used simple themes and simple icons to create tremendous complexity and texture, texture which is there psychically but also physically in the design of textile stars and hearts and the design of the space pod and the wheely chair narrator J rolls in on. One piece of evidence of this simple/complex is the use of a repeated line from a children's rhyme: "I just want to dance in my underwear." So, they do. They dance in their underwear. They change costumes on stage and strip to their underwear. They dance only in their underwear. They dance semi-nude or TOTALLY nude. Layers and layers from just one simple line. The bouncing boobs of one dancer as the group jumps in place interestingly mirrored and balanced Zachary Wager Scholl's (the only dancer to be clad in a jock strap) bouncing butt.
The live media also, of course, added to the layers.
Now I need to say this, and it may seem like an exaggeration, but I think this is pretty accurate. This may be the best use of a full space that I have ever seen. I've already established that there's a corps dance ensemble, a space pod video jockey, a live musician on a balcony, and a narrator who rolls in on a wheely chair, BUT that's not all. Wager Scholl and another dancer take polaroids and hang them on a miniature clothing line that wheels into the space pod where Niknaz can then put them on video. As they do this, the two dialogue back and forth in what could be an acting exercise (this element was a major part of the piece, when at another point, the entire group chants "but why?" as a single individual comes up with responses that begin "because I said so," and then transform into unique lines some of which seem scripted, but most seem improvised on the spot). Wager Scholl's responded to the polaroid "but why" with "we're developing," which was completely amazing. But then, the two go on a tour of the space, not just the stage itself, but the WHOLE space, walking around the audience, and behind it into the dressing room, to come out at the other end, having chanted the "but why" exercise all the way through. The sound, of course, muffled brilliantly when they were behind walls, but one of Wager Scholl's probably improvised line responses to "but why" was "I'm lost," which just seemed to nail the whole thing, but in a really intentional way. (Btw, another Wager Scholl response to "by why" was "we're really intentional." I love that because I know that that's true and I love when an artist can take the piss without being mean or alienating.)
The last comment I wanted to make kind of repeats an earlier thought, but I want to say it by itself. Ensemble. I wonder about the creation of this ensemble, and if they did exercises just on ensemble building. It was incredibly tight, with precise choreography that required the group to listen to each other, whether it be bounces, humps, or chanted dialogue. It was excellently done, and it is certainly something that is easy to blow.
Overall, MICRO-MINI MAXI MYSTERY THEATER: EN TOTAL, was a master mystery theater of layer, dimension, precision, ensemble, use of space, consistency, theme, and texture. J Dellecave et al. have left me "flushed, flustered, and overwhelmed with universal harmony."

Dramablurb

AliceGraceAnon

Suburban Motel: Adult Entertainment and Featuring Loretta

Micro-Mini Maxi Mystery Theater: En Total

Cole

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