FringeNYC Roundup #2
Considering Andrew Lloyd Webber’s long-running Broadway hit Cats is already a long-running joke in (and outside) the theater world, and considering the pop opera was finally put to sleep three years ago, it hardly seems necessary to keep making fun of it — but, well, it’s just so much fun. And what an easy target! Lloyd Webber’s mega-hit, which set the text of T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats to music, was a nearly plotless extravaganza which had chorus boys and girls made up as cats, dancing the night away on an oversized trash heap. I mean, come on — this beat out A Chorus Line to become Broadway’s longest running musical?
Aware of the public’s continuing bloodlust for Cats, the creators of Cats Talk Back find a simple enough way to make mockery of it, by creating a mock panel made up of five former cast members. There’s Stephen (Brad Heberlee), who was with the show for seven years; Hector (Frank Liotti), the pompous actor who is a little too passionate about his role as Rum Tum Tugger, and who refers to everyone from Eliot to Lloyd Webber by their first names; Bonnie (Bridget Flanery), the ingénue who joined the cast right before the show closed; Monique (Jackson Gay) is the den mother, having been with the show through its entire run, and having permanent claws for hands as a result; and Reed (Derek Milman), the sensitive former Mungojerrie who has been rendered grief-stricken by the musical’s demise. The five actors — particularly Liotti — do a fine job here with the deadpan comedy, and also show off their considerable skill as dancers in a segment in which they recreate a hilarious sequence that was cut from the musical.
Throughout the show, the conceit that this is a real panel is maintained, from the introduction by New York Times columnist (and supposed Cats fan) Jesse McKinley, who acts as panel moderator, to the plants in the audience who fuel the Q&A session that makes up the second half of the show. Though it does lose a little steam in the latter half, the show is extremely funny as it ridicules the musical everyone loves to hate, and the pretensions of actors who take their work too seriously.
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In this “one-person documentary play,” writer/actress Eliza Jane Schneider, best known as the voice of numerous female characters on the animated series South Park, describes how she went out on the road to capture on tape the dialects of America, but came back with a great deal more.
Setting out in an ambulance, of all things, Schneider traveled everywhere from California to New York, talking to artists, college students, junkies, gang members, polygamists, and more. Using her skill as a voice artist, she recreates conversations with these people, weaving an oral tapestry of America’s unique population. These people — some of whom are very strange, others who are gloriously normal — are fascinating, but equally interesting is hearing Schneider recount her own growth during this process. Her tale reminds us that the key to caring about our fellow humans, no matter how different they may be from us, is simply to talk to them, to listen to them, and to try to understand them.
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Escape From Pterodactyl Island
(Photo © Carol Rosegg)
Escape From Pterodactyl Island
Running a full two hours and featuring some fine production values (well, by Fringe standards), the tuneful Escape From Pterodactyl Island is one of the Fringe’s most elaborate offerings. Billed as “a monstrous musical adventure,” it’s a send-up of a variety of old B-movies that feature daring explorers, mad geneticists, prehistoric creatures, cave women, and desert islands that aren’t actually deserted.
The plot is somewhat complicated, but the short version is that British explorer Prof. Robert Worthington, his fiancee Margaret, a deckhand, and a kid get shipwrecked on an island where pterodactyls and, more eerily, pterodactyl-men live. The “pterodactoids” are the most advanced creations of crazy-bitter-vengeful scientist Dr. Devo, who envisions a world where genetics can be used to create perfect men. He befriends the island’s new visitors, but soon wants to experiment on them as well. He turns Maragaret into a pterodactoid queen, and soon the pteros all turn on their master — at which point, everyone, with the help of a beautiful cave woman, try to … escape from Pterodactyl Island.
The show is imperfect, but there’s a lot of talent here. The cast, which features Broadway actors like Tim Jerome as Dr. Devo and Joey Sorge as Prof. Worthington, is excellent; Alexandra Carlson as Margaret, Douglas C. Williams as lobster-man Claude, and Frederick Hamilton and Joe Carney as pterodactoids Daedelus and Icarus are standouts. Michael Jeffrey has a knack for writing catchy tunes; Peter Morris’s book is quite good and often very funny, though his lyrics aren’t as impressive, and are often repetitive. Markas Henry gives the cast, especially the pterodactoids and Claude, some wonderful costumes, while Eric Wright provides amusing puppet designs.
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In her play Broken Things, writer Veva Dianne Lawson shows us the piteous spectacle of a young man desperately fighting for control of his own body. His name is Adam, and he’s autistic. The play, which takes place in Adam’s mind, occurs during the hours leading up to what will be a difficult separation for Adam, as he will leave the home where he has always lived with his mother and brother, and move into a community of others like himself.
During this time, Adam flashes back to other times in his life, and we learn that his father left his mother for a younger woman. We experience consultations with doctors, one of which — to her horror
— counsels the mother to put Adam in a home and move on with her life. Adam tells us himself that, despite his handicap, there is much he can do: He can read, he’s taking classes at a community college, and he works a part-time job as a bag boy at the grocery store. Yet so often his mind (which is also impaired, but to a lesser degree) struggles against his body, which he curses for its deformity.
To illustrate the conflicting inner and outer lives of an autistic person, Lawson has Adam played by two actors, one (Colin Clarke) who acts as his mind, and another (Yvonnick Muller) who, mute and masked, acts as his body. Director Ken Terrell does excellent work orchestrating this outstanding dual performance, which has Clarke (exhibiting many of autism’s characteristics, but at a more manageable level) bemoaning his lack of control and taunting his uncooperative body, while Muller absently tears pages from a book, lumbers around awkwardly, or furiously hits himself.
Broken Things isn’t always easy to watch, but it is a compelling and worthwhile piece of theater.
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in Medication
(Photo © Elisabeth Furtado)
If Richard Homan’s one-act Medication was roundly appreciated on the night I saw it at Under St. Mark’s (and it was), that might have had something to do with the make-up of the crowd. A bit older than your average Fringe audience, many looked — and, by their guffaws — sounded like people who have been dealing with the absurdities of the health care system for some time. And Homan’s HMO diatribe appeared to be just what the doctor ordered.
Personally, I found some of the jokes way too corny, and, at this point, poking fun at the (often frustrating) HMO system seems a bit old. After all, the sight of careless and self-absorbed doctors is nothing new — more’s the pity for those of us who deal with them. But Medication does have a lot of heart, and though some of the jokes are dopey, others are sharp. Homan has a crazy sense of humor, and his two-person cast — Bricken Sparacino and Michael Birch (who also directs the production) — ably takes on his collection of oddball characters.
Chief among them are a woman whose daughter is in a coma and the doctor who, in an effort to win the heart of the woman, sets about to cure the comatose kid. This episodic play, which clocks in around 45 minutes, makes its serious subjects endearingly silly and ends happily. It’s not a must-see, but you may find it a nice diversion while waiting on hold to sort out your latest rejected insurance claim.
