Rating: Huh? Huh? Huh?
Yet again, I'm faced with the situation of a bunch of well-meaning and talented people who put on a show that's reasonably well acted and nicely produced, but just doesn't have much of a script. I want to be supportive, but I'm left unsatisfied.
In Brief is made up of a few brief sketches--I won't even call them plays--that run the gamut from slapstick to the serious. The dialog was pretty good, and the acting wasn't bad, but what was missing (again) was some kind of point. I didn't get the feeling that the author was trying to say something. It was more like they banged out a script overnight so the actors would have something to say.
The final sketch--a monologue of a soldier recounting an atrocity in which he participated, was disturbing and riveting. It was the only piece that really had me paying attention. The rest of it just had me wondering what I had just seen had to do with anything.
Again, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I kind of prefer it when a play matters to me--when it doesn't just seem like something coming out of an acting workshop. This show doesn't suck--not at all--it just doesn't really grab you. Except for that soldier bit...
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Review posted by blork on Sunday, June 23, 2002
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Rating: Huh? Huh?
The blurbs for this show urge us to "see the show that NY audiences have been raving about for three years." Right away I'm suspicious. Think "Rent," or worse, "Cats."
For the most part, my worries were not necessary. However, watching this lively and entertaining show I found myself thinking about parenthood. Specifically, I wondered if people who have many children become increasingly less interested in their children's development as more and more of them grow up and struggle with the various rites of passage. Surely, your first daughter's first period is a monumental event for the whole family, but by the time it's your ninth daughter's first period you're thinking "yeah, whatever." To that ninth daughter, however, it's as miraculous (or terrifying) as it was for daughter number one.
So there I was, with six mid- to late-20's women putting on a show about trying to accept your big ass, the things you do to try to fit into a size 10, all that stuff about body hair, and men troubles. And don't forget the "Yes, it's OK to be Hispanic". I felt like my ninth daughter had announced her first period.
The show was saved by the fresh and lively performances. After all, there are no surprises left in Romeo & Juliet, yet a good performance of it can still bring me to tears. You can really tell it's an out-of-town show, however, because there was a full hour of girl empowerment and not a word about lesbianism. If this were a Montreal show, at least half of the women would be lesbians and the others would be bi (and if it were a Concordia U. production they wouldn't even let a het girl in the room). Wow, it was refreshing to see straight girls for a change, but I'm so conditioned that I found myself thinking "what are they holding back?"
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Review posted by blork on Thursday, June 20, 2002
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Rating: Huh? Huh? Huh?
Years ago, I organized a screening of the old Rolling Stones movie "Sympathy For The Devil." There were four reels to the film, and the dopey projectionist screwed up and forgot to play the third one--jumping directly from reel two to reel four.
Nobody noticed.
That’s a bit how this show felt--like something was left out, like that thing that ties it all together and gives it a point. What we got was a number of fun and childish short monologues from Cali, supposedly a nine-year old girl, interspersed with some really funny and clever videos that were of a more gown-up nature. But what was missing, was, well, you know...
The monologues--or more appropriately, kid stories--were cute and fun but essentially pointless, and from what I could tell, completely unconnected to each other. I kept waiting for the big thing to happen--you know, the big thing where it all comes together and you go oooooo, ahhhhhh. There was hope with the recurring theme of Cali's dislike of her mother’s boyfriend, ("the loser,") but nothing significant came of that--except maybe for that bit at the end--which isn't really the right word, as this show didn't really end. As if it were the final reel that had been forgotten, the show just--stopped.
So I'm left shaking my head. Ginette Mohr, the writer/performer, was entertaining to watch, and gave a fresh and lively performance, but like Seinfeld, this was a show about nothing. Even more aggravating was that it was really two shows about nothing, presented as a dog's breakfast, all mixed up together. The nine-year-old-girl thing would have been great on its own (if it had had a point). And the videos would have made a fabulous backdrop to something, or even a show on their own if something were there to tie them together. But presented as they were--mixed--it felt like channel surfing between Sesame Street and Conan O'Brien.
Maybe I just expect too much. Given that the live part of the show was entirely from the point-of-view of the non-linear and tangential imagination of a child, perhaps that was the point--to be childlike and all over the place. But then why the videos? And you know, I’m a big kid now, and I need to have some kind of framework.
Don't get me wrong--I didn't hate the show, or even dislike it. I just wanted some burger with the bun. Mohr is a wonderful and vibrant performer, and she deserves better material than this--or shall I say, she deserves to have her material worked on so it adds up to something and is deserving of her acting talent.
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Review posted by blork on Thursday, June 20, 2002
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Rating: Huh? Huh?
So far, the 21st Century kinda sucks, what with all the war and terrorism and murder around the world, not to mention those damn anti-globalization protesters--the militant ones I mean--who give a bad name to all us sincere anti-globalists who would like to do more than just get drunk and break things. And don't even get me started on the weather...
On the other hand, we so-called westerners are leaving behind a few 20th century artifacts that are best left for the archaeologists of the future. The excesses brought about by second-generation freedoms, for example.
By second-generation freedoms I mean this: the turmoil of the 1960s opened up a lot of new freedoms to those who had previously been marginalized--basically everyone who wasn't a right-handed male heterosexual Christian. When those "women's libbers" took off their bras, for example, it meant something.
Nowadays, a generation or so later, to strut around braless for the sake of emancipation is downright silly. People do so for reasons of fashion, comfort, or naughtiness, but not just as an exercise in "freedom."
And that's the point of this play, I think. Our hero, an avid devotee of the Art Deco-era French writer Anaïs Nin--the very symbol (to some) of women's sexual emancipation--is stuck in a rut. She can no longer achieve orgasm. Nor can she crap.
She parades out her cadre of sexual toys, devices, and fantasies, all the while sipping Metamucil. She's done it all, this girl, in the name of sexual freedom, and none of it inspires her anymore. She has fulfilled her duty to be all the slut she can be, with Anaïs Nin as her guide and mentor. But just like when you turn 16 and all you want to do is drive, drive, drive, you eventually turn 17 (OK...50) and the thrill is gone--or has at least changed. Matured even. It's no longer something you do because you weren't allowed to before--if there is still a thrill, it's in the thing itself, not the significance of it.
And that's where second-generation freedoms can be confusing. What does sexual freedom (or any freedom for that matter) mean to a 25-year-old who has never known its absence? That may be the subtext of this play--that we sometimes become prisoners of our emancipation when we allow ourselves to be ruled by it. It's not a matter of letting go of the freedom, but of letting go of the need to feel duty-bound to exercise it.
This short one-act, one-woman show had me chuckling and even guffawing at times. It's cleverly written, nicely set, and well executed. Make no mistake--this is a comedy, and that's exactly how it was delivered. The performer (who may or may not be Linor David) is no Meryl Streep, and thank God--if Streep did this play you'd want to kill yourself, or at least never jerk off again. But she is totally believable in the role of a mid-20s educated, clear-thinking, literate, and somewhat repentant omni-sexual slut.
Nicely paced, well timed, and fully of dildoes and naughtiness, this show is a good laugh and a good think. Recommended.
Warning: Spoiler-> Highlight the following lines with your mouse to read it... The one thing that left me unsatisfied is that we never found out if the Metamucil worked. You can't promise scatology and not deliver... It would have totally killed the audience if the show had ended with the sound of a toilet flushing.
Tip to guys: if you want your girlfriend to look hot, buy her some black satin two-piece pajamas!
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Review posted by blork on Tuesday, June 18, 2002
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Rating: Huh?
Remember "Iron John?" No, not the fairy tale from the brothers Grimm--the book by the well-meaning but annoying Robert Bly, the one that had us men sitting all fat and naked in the woods pounding on drums and picking burrs out of our arses while we howled at the moon in an attempt to reclaim our inner warriors.
Fortunately, "BE A MAN" isn't like that. Mind you, a lot of it is cut from the same source code, so to speak, but just as being a man means so much more than that, so too is this show--more. It's got it all--Stan Rogers folk singing, soccer, girl trouble, masturbation, cars that won't start, more girl trouble, pornography, abortion, homophobia (seen from both sides), even more girl trouble, wrestling (not wrasslin'), love, cussin' and swearin', Dad, and of course, hockey.
Never was it trite or cheesy. At 75 minutes, this show is long by Fringe standards, but it is tight. Way tight. It never a missed beat, with perfect segues and transitions between each short segment. It was obviously very well rehearsed, yet it was fresh and energetic throughout--never tired and nothing fell flat.
There's a lot going on in this show, and it's not all in the dialog. What they accomplish with only four chairs and a soccer ball is amazing. There's a scene in which, without a word, two of the actors ceremonial strip down to their underwear and begin to wrestle, in the old-fashioned formal style. It is reminiscent, although less erotic, of the Oliver Reed/Alan Bates wrestle scene in the Ken Russell film of D.H. Lawrence's "Women in Love." Without so much as a breath of dialog this short scene says much about the nature of challenge, competition, virility, and love between men.
If I gave stars in my reviews, I'd give these guys a galaxy. Bravo dudes!
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Review posted by blork on Monday, June 17, 2002
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Rating: Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?
This show bills itself as "A new kind of play." I disagree. Imagine if some young playwright saw seven Beckett plays in a row, then went home and did a few lines of blow for enthusiasm followed by a handful of Quaaludes to calm down, and then tried to write "a new kind of play." That's basically what we have here.
To make mattes worse, it was delivered in the also-not-new "Captain Kirk" style of dramatic acting.
Add to the mix that the script was 80% existential riddle, and you end up with dialog like this:
[Perpetually scowling kid] But... how do you know that...?
[Yet-another-wise-homeless guy] How... does a peach... know... it's a peach?
To be fair, a couple of times I saw the faint glimmer of an idea, often in one line that was never followed up. Then there were the mystery elements, such as the narrator, who spoke only every ten minutes or so, yet who stayed onstage, fully lit (brighter than the actors) for the whole performance--until the final scene when for no explained reason she left. Perhaps she had to pee?
Also, the entire opening scene, in which we find out that the kid's dad is leaving the family, could have been accomplished in ten seconds in the next scene by simply having him tell the homeless guy "My dad left my mom today." Oh--we also found out in that scene that the kid is a whiney pissant, but that's perpetuated throughout the entire show.
There's that longstanding discussion about "accessibility" in art, and this one is way far off the "inaccessible" scale. I wish young playwrights would realize that it is very difficult to do high-falutin existentialist stuff well. The vast majority of it is incomprehensible navel-gazing. A few charitable people will applaud such drek, either because they are so embarrassed for the production that they don't want to make matters worse, or because they think it is they who lack something--they think they didn't understand it because they're not smart enough.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm not smart enough. But I can recognize over-eager, inexperienced, well-intentioned goo when I see it, and unfortunately that's what I saw tonight.
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Review posted by blork on Sunday, June 16, 2002
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Rating: Huh?
Wow, this show was fabulous! Yes, we've heard all that "body acceptance" rhetoric before, but never quite like this. For once, these ideas were thought-provoking and meaningful without resorting to whining or male-bashing. In fact, it was downright fun. Naked girl Maria Glanz is a natural and engaging monologist, accompanied by a droll and understated John Osebold on drums. The show is lively, interactive, thought-provoking, and funny look at the nature of nudity, nakedness, and the body. Very original.
One of the most interesting aspects of the show is when Glanz interacts with the audience and essentially tries to get people to take their clothes off. Given the nature of this sexy town we live it, she's just liable to do it one night. At her first performance--Friday night--she managed to get some shirts off, and almost had some pants off. That, and other interactive elements, means every performance of this show will be a little bit different. This is one Fringe show that I'll probably see a second time, and if I've had a few Martinis first, I might even sit in the first row with a few buttons undone.
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Review posted by blork on Saturday, June 15, 2002
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Rating: Huh? Huh?
I'm not sure why this show didn't really work for me. Steven Karwoski, the writer/performer, gave a pretty lively one-man show that was, as advertised, "The Rants of a Post-industrial Hybrid." But it was, as rants go, sort of unfocussed and not particularly coherent. What should have been conflicts (in terms of narrative devices) came across as contradictions.
For example, his background is one of working class America where one stands apart from the crowd by being good with your hands (or fists), yet the character wants to rise above that. He goes to school and plans a career using his head. But he never achieves much success in that and always ends up working dead end jobs, like driving a truck or waiting tables. Yet he accepts this. So we never really know what it is that he really wants.
The show is no comedy, although it has a few comedic moments. Some of the scenes, however, seem to center, or even climax, on a knee-slapper, which seems out of place in this supposedly dramatic monologue. Again, we don't know what he wants, but in this case it's the writer who's confusing us, not the character.
I didn't dislike this show, I was just a bit disappointed with it. I never really figured out where it was going or what it was about. The final scene, however, was not only the longest and most involved story, but the best. It really came together, and was delivered very effectively. I hope Karwoski looks at that scene and figures out why it worked so much better than the others, and takes the cue. He's a good, effective performer when he has good material. He just needs to take much of what he's working with and take it beyond rant into effective dramatic narrative.
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Review posted by blork on Saturday, June 15, 2002
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Blork's Fringe Notes
[It's getting expensive]
 During the 2001 Montreal Fringe Festival, there was this scheme by which you had to buy a Fringe pin for a couple of bucks, and you couldn't get into a show unless you had one. Although the pin cost less than the price of a beer, and one is all you needed, the reality was that the pins were easy to lose, or to forget, so I ended up buying at least five of them over the course of the festival. Not only that, I witnessed at least once a scene in which a couple of people were at the box office for a $7 show, and all they had was $14, yet they were not allowed to buy tickets because they didn't have pins, nor the extra $4 to get some.
Thankfully, this rude Fringe Tax is nowhere to be seen this year. Instead, we have the less rude but more expensive "service fee" of $1 or $2 per show. It really bugs me that the organizers of the Fringe are using the same kinds of dirty tricks that the tight-assed thieves who run the nation's banks use to continually milk us with service fees. And don't get me started on politicians and their taxes.
What's really noticeable this year, however, is the high ticket prices. Most are $9. Festival organizer's arguments that it's way cheaper than Broadway fall flat for three reasons. First, it's also a lot more riskier than Broadway. A lot of shows are lame, and even the good ones are usually short--on the order of 50 minutes, and in cramped, hot, airless rooms, with crappy chairs to sit on. Second, loyal Fringe-goers like me expect to see 10, 12, or more shows over the course of the festival. Nobody sees that many big production shows in a ten-day stretch, so the comparison is completely bogus. Finally, and most importantly, the audience for the Fringe festival is a lot different than it is for mainstream big-budget theatre. Most of the folks you see around the fringe are significantly under 30, and many are un- or underemployed because the focus of their lives is on creative work, not business or engineering careers.
As Festival organizers will point out, the ticket prices are set by the artists, not the organizers--which causes me to wonder what the artists are thinking. What I noticed this year is that many of the posters and advertising material for the productions are professionally designed and printed in expensive four-color offset. In previous years, advertising was low-budget but probably just as effective considering it didn't require a jacking-up of ticket prices.
That said, it's good to see that a lot of productions are still relying on the oldest and most reliable form of advertising--the seat-filling "mature content" advisory!
+++++++++++
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Review posted by blork on Saturday, June 15, 2002
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