Represent!: BASH'd

Just survived four days of the Fringe. Am footsore and bottomsore and heartily sick of slices (though thanks to Eric Grode for the kathi roll recommendation, yum!), but the days were not without the occasional high points. A much more thorough review will appear in the Voice pages, but wanted to put in a quick plug for BASH'd, likely the best gay hip hop opera about contemporary sociopolitics that you'll see all Fringe. or, well, ever. Trenchant, obscene, and pink.

Perhaps they've all read different reviews

It's always intriguing when a play receives a markedly divided response from critics. That's certainly the case with Josh Tobiessen's farce Election Day. I had some inkling when I attended the play last weekend and found myself exiting with a reviewer acquaintance of mine. As we walked down the stairs, I said, "I expected that to be really painful and it wasn't." "I beg to differ," he said. "Come on," I said, "there's painful and there's painful." "I thought it was the latter," he said, "or the former. Whichever's worse." Actually, many of the critics thought the play deserved praise stronger than my faint ones. The New York Times adored this comedy about a genial slacker barred from casting his vote in a mayoral election. Neil Genzliger wrote that the current presidential election will "have to go some to be more entertaining than [the] outrageous comedy by Josh Tobiessen." But in the Star Ledger, the reviewer described the show as "going on a blind date with a cute frat boy who gets drunker as the evening wears on." Your thoughts? I found it formulaic and strained, sure, but occasionally inventive and liked quite a few cast members, especially Halley Feiffer and Michael Ray Escamilla.

The Civilians want you!

I sneaked an extra show into my itinerary this week, the remount of Gone Missing by the Civilians. I found its earlier incarnation rather wonderful and am looking forward to this remount. The Civilians are a documentary musical company who in the words of their theme song (and any Civilians, if you are reading this, could you provide me with the complete lyrics) thinks pretty hard about stuff, decide on a subject, do little and mostly inconclusive research. And then... they make a show of it! I'm eagerly anticipating the show that they're at work on now, an exploration of mega churches in Colorado, to be titled "This Beautiful City."

A three-hankie matinee

I'm not often reduced to tears, but when made to weep (hi, Mom), I prefer to cry my eyes out in private--face buried in a pillow. But there are a few plays that have me sobbing every time I see them. Mary Rose, revived earlier this season, is one. Arcadia is another. I once started crying at a performance of Private Lives, though there were extenuating circumstances (hi, Mom--again). I wasn't at all surprised when, during the second act of Sylvia Regan's Morning Star, which I'll write about in the paper next week, I found myself screwing my fists into my eyes.

What are your favorite stage weepies?

But where are the sequins?

I've seen a couple chamber musicals this week--10 Million Miles at the Atlantic and Horizon at NYTW--and I'm due to see another, Passing Strange at the Public tomorrow. I'm sure I'll see the new version for the Civilians' Gone Missing as well. I enjoyed the first two, I'll likely like the next two also. But I'm starting to detect an odd prejudice in myself, away from the intimate and delicate and towards the sequinned and bombastic. I certainly don't feel this way about straight plays, often exactly the opposite, but ther's something about a musical, the fierce unreality of suddenly breaking into spontaneous yet perfectly rhymed song that makes me hungry for dance numbers and really cool light effects. Am I alone in this>?

Barefoot and poignant

In the adult swim that is New York theater criticism regarding Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, I'd like to so my laps in a middle lane, somewhere between Charles Isherwood's encomium and David Cote's harangue (n.b., they're both critics I respect and often agree with). I found that the play does suffer from some of the whimsy and triviality that dirtied up The Clean House and that makes me impatient. Yet this is a far more affecting script. At the matinee performance I attended, many audience members were in tears--and they couldn't all have been mourning Scott Bradley's unfortunate set. If The Clean House glossed over or prettied up difficult emotions, Eurydice sits with them. There's treacle here, yes, but bitterer and more interesting flavors as well. And whatever criticisms one might make certainly don't stick to Maria Dizzia, who is luminous in the title role.

Nailing it

I may like the ladies of Clubbed Thumb too much to be perfectly objective about the works they produce. But I enjoyed the performance last night of Amy Fox's One Thing I Like to Say Is. It does occasionally give way to cutesiness, or a species of whimsy I can't quite countenance, but I admired its temperate approach to familial mysteries and struggles, as well as fine performances by Amy Staats and Polly Lee. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that my date (hi, Mom) fell asleep, but I was wide awake for the proceedings.

The scene of my undoing

Actually, I was quite a sensible girl and stuck to my two-drink limit at the Offstage Voice party, so as to be cheery and alert for Lear deBessonet's St. Joan. Gentle readers, you should join us next time. If my sparkling conversation and that of my colleagues isn't sufficient inducement, I have two words which may serve: Open Bar. While sipping my deliciously free champagne, I chatted with writers, directors, producers, and a pair of very attractive actresses. I look forward to the next.

Drive Time

Though I only review one or two plays every week, I see another two to three on top of that, sometimes out of professional courtesy, sometimes out of genuine interest, sometimes in the service of OBIE obligations. When I'm not writing on a piece, I do often exercise my freedom to leave at intermission. It doesn't necessarily mean I detest the show, simply that I'd rather spend my evening elsewhere, perhaps in the company of my rabbit. Last Friday was a case in point. I sat through the first act of Studio Dante's From Riverdale to Riverhead and knew fairly quickly I wouldn't stay for the second. I've certainly seen worse (although, as my sweetheart reminds me whenever I say that, "That's going to be true every time but one"), but the sibling bitchery felt overly familiar. And though capable actors featured, the performances felt hermetic, enacted more to please themselves and each other than for the audience. After an hour spent in the car with three bickering sisters and a niece, I was delighted to aval myself of public transport.

It's in the Bag: First Night

Have now traded light London fog for oppressive New York humidity, but a few shows remain unremarked. Last Sunday I saw a piece by Forced Entertainment, a collaborative theater company much admired in England, but largely unknown here. (P.S.122 did host a show of theirs a few years ago). Having read and heard so much about them, I entered the Toynbee Studios with ridiculously high expectations, which weren't disappointed.

First Night is largely an exercise of theatrical bad faith between actors and audience. A cast of seven is dressed in sequins and shiny suits, sporting polished suits and lots of eye make-up, but they largely refuse to entertain. Their gestures are mechanical, their smiles a distressing rictus. They purport to perform a series of music hall variety acts, songs, dances, comic sketches, but these activities are thwarted and warped. During a mentalist act, one of the performers takes of her blindfold and begins calmly forecasting the means of death for nearly everyone in the audience, a few hundred people. (I'm due for a brain hemorrhage, apparently.)

Rarely has the actor/audience relationship seemed so strained, so nasty, so desperate and parasitic. As spectators, we're forced to endure the failed, the fruitless, the cruel. And we applaud it. In the play's final moments, as the performers wave goodbye, one exhorts us, "Ladies and Gentlemen, don't drive home safely. Drive as fast as you can."

A much safer entertainment is Marc Camoletti's Boeing Boeing, revived by director Matthew Warchus....