Author: Joe

Turn on your television, read a printed article or go online.  Today it is easy to inform oneself about voting rights and a woman’s right to choose.  With both under siege, The Eccentric Theater Company presents Deeds Not Words.  They believe now is the right time to retell two women’s suffrage era satires.  This small scale production at The Tank reconsiders plays that would have been performed regionally in a time before radio.  A note in the 1868 original edition for The Spirit of Seventy-Six; or The Coming Woman makes the point clearly.  “This play is not written for the stage… but simply for amateur performances.”

Entertainment designed to push buttons and encourage thinking.  Both of these short plays use broad satire as the vehicle to poke fun at the establishment.  (Pun intended.)  Clearly and loudly, these pieces champion a woman’s right to vote by ridiculing the status quo.  Back in the time before radio, these short pieces would be one way to spread forward thinking ideas.  How the Vote Was Won by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John was one of the most popular and well known suffrage plays, first produced in 1909.

In her well-to-do London living room, Ethel Cole is fretting about working women going on strike for the right to vote.  The government has said that women do not need votes as they are all looked after by men.  Unfortunately for Mrs. Cole, the maids sign on to the cause and flee.  How will dinner be served?  When husband Horace comes home, raw meat is on the table.  Making matters worse, previously self-employed women now turn up to be supported by their nearest male relative.  Mr. Cole finds distant cousins at the door with their suitcases.  A woman’s right to vote may be appealing after all!

Ariana Randolph Wormeley Curtis and Daniel Sargeant Curtis wrote The Spirit of Seventy-Six in 1868.  The “supposed period of this play is the year 1876.”  A future tale of horror indeed, not incidentally set at the one hundredth anniversary of America’s independence.  Thomas Carberry returns home after spending a decade in China only to find a society where women are firmly in power.  The men bemoan the past when their biggest problem was a lady’s dressing and spending.  “When we had it good.”  Apparently, “the ballot box has crushed the hat box.”

Character names are humorous such as tax assessor Mrs. Barbara Badger and Judge Susan Wigfall.  Her Honor has to leave a conversation abruptly to hear a proposal from the Chair for the Suppression of Male Dinner Parties.  What does the future look like?  At election time, the women have no time to tend to babies.  That responsibility falls to the men.  Back in the day, this must have been raucous fun, especially read by a group in their gracious drawing room.

Directed by Chelsea Anderson-Long, both plays have been updated to 2036 and 2076, underscoring concerns over women’s rights in this century.  The revisions are mostly additive such as the use of cellphones and the Chinese government’s suppression of news on the internet.  This production is only running for two weekends.  I enjoyed traveling back in time (or into the future) even if the staging is underdeveloped.

Satire is not easy to pull off.  The actors, especially Hannah Karpenko (Ethel Cole and Barbara Badger), each have individual winning moments.  More panicked frenzy might capture the hysteria felt in today’s America, the land which picked misogynistic Donald Trump as its President.  Women are marching again and suffrage again feels like the stuff of rage.

www.thetanknyc.org

www.eccentrictheatercompany.com

The sound of rain accompanies Tom Petty’s song “You Got Lucky” at the start of Barefoot.  “Good love is hard to find” informs the spirit of this comedy which describes itself as a “daring new sexual escapade.”  The door opens to a West Village townhouse and Sylvia (Kate T. Billingsley) enters.  Obviously wet and with her mascara smearing, she flicks off her shoes.  After all, the sign by the door says this is a Barefoot House.  Sylvia make a beeline for the Grey Goose bottle and chugs.  She’s seemingly very upset and screams into the couch pillow.  A knock at the door follows.

Ms. Billingsley is both the star and co-author of this wildly raucous, 21st century drawing room comedy.  She seems to be channeling a spoiled, ill-tempered, boozy, foul-mouthed Katherine Hepburn.  There’s more than a whiff of “it’s going to be a bumpy night” Bette Davis feel to this set-up.  When Sylvia answers the door, her soon-to-be husband’s mistress Teddy (Elissa Klie) enters.  Also wet, she’s apologizing for, essentially, being a slut.  Sylvia gives her silk pajamas to wear while drying off which enables Teddy to open her bra announcing “here’s my tits.”  The reply?  “They’re big.”  Eventually Teddy becomes uncomfortable with all the intimate details being discussed.  Sylvia’s quip:  “We already share a penis.  What’s the problem?”

This is the sort of farce that requires a complete suspension of disbelief.  After a far too long scene between these two, the fiancé and Teddy’s boyfriend (Will Rosenfelt) arrive.  Now the sparks are set to fly.  Why all the heightened tensions?  The wedding between Sylvia and Robert (Judah Tobias) is only two weeks away and the gifts are already piled high.  In a drawing room comedy a century ago perhaps the story would involve flirting or a stolen kiss.  Updated for the much franker sexual politics of 2019, Sylvia describes her beau Robert as “a man with homosexual tendencies and tiny calves.”

In the intimate off-off Broadway Gene Frankel Theatre, there are many laughs to be had in this play which has been directed and co-written by Thomas G. Waites.  The four principle characters poke at each other and when there is a direct hit, the humor is very funny indeed.  Another door knock occurs. The Pizza Man arrives (a very amusing Trent Cox) and this farce nears its peak.  If every performance landed on broader caricatures, the result might further amplify the lunacy.

Barefoot came into this intimate theater produced by Black Rose Productions as a late replacement for another play.  With another swig or two of vodka, these actors might chew the scenery even louder.  This brassy comedy might then be able to turn the corner from chuckle-inducing to hilarious.

www.genefrankeltheatre.com

I received a tip about Slash and decided to do a little research.  I quickly learned that Vogue wrote a story about this play and its audience.  Brilliantly, not only are boldface names showing up but also “a few adorably sulky teenage hipsters, a clutch of serious New York theater impresarios, and a number of confused millennials.”  Bingo!

Off I go to the fifth floor Chinatown walkup MX Gallery for a piece described online as “scavenged from the fandoms of Star Trek, Sherlock, The Beatles and beyond, Slash guides the audience through an infernal fantasia of perverted intertextuality.”  Essentially this piece is derived from the slash subgenre of fanfiction where characters are appropriated and written by fans for fans into other stories.  Slash fiction, hugely popular in China, depicts male romantic pairings ranging from bromances to more highly sexualized relationships.  This subgenre is primarily written and consumed by young women.

Emily Allan and Leah Hennessey are the creators and stars of this play.  This is their first full length production and the room was full with about one hundred people the evening I attended.  As “The Dark Haired One,” Ms. Hennessey begins the performance brushing her wig and repeating these lines as if into a mirror:  “I am beautiful.  I am sexy.  I am fashionable.  I am a brunette.”  Eventually “The Blond” comes in and she’s in a funk.  Riverdale High has gone on too long and both Betty and Veronica are tired of fighting over Archie.  They decide to do some cosplay featuring homoerotic straight men, their favorite game.

A scene with Dr. Spock and Captain Kirk culminates into the following exchange: “Would it be insane if I kissed you?  Yes… to anyone except you.”  Other less well known couplings follow including Morrissey and Johnny Marr.  One of the funniest reimaginations involves Sherlock Holmes, a young wizard who is a highly functional, drug addicted sociopath.  In this show, skits also feature female pairings from Wonder Woman and Catwoman to a riff on a 1992 CNBC Talk Live conversation between Susan Sontag and Camille Paglia.

Musical interludes are also thrown into the blender including “Communist Do,” a song snippet performed by Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin to the tune of “Jellicle Cats” from the musical, Cats.   An incestuous Ivanka Trump arrives with her porn star sister Tiffany and screams at the top of her lungs:  “DAD KNOWS I’M NOW A BIG FUCKING JEW.”  If slash fiction is generally all over the map, then this might be a faithful roasting of the genre.

Since fanfiction is about fans writing for fans, what happens when you don’t know who certain people are?  In variety show style, the creators cover a wide assortment of, mostly, much older celebrities.  I know who Brian Eno is but will everyone?  I guess it really doesn’t matter because that section with David Bowie was boring even if familiar.  Admittedly, I did laugh a few times and the conceit for Slash is promising if currently overstuffed.

This show has been selected for the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival in January 2020.  My suggestions:  further sharpening the characterizations, rethinking or reworking the musical interludes and perhaps adding a hilarious speech or two about the subgenre from a fan or psychologist’s perspective.  As of now, this show does not generate enough laughs to sustain ninety minutes of satire that a larger audience may or may not really know or care about.

I know Vogue said “it’s fast and campy, and as clever as anything the New York stage has seen in some time.”  Don’t believe them.  There was not nearly enough laughter coming from the often stone-faced, sitting very still audience.  In a world with no men, this show asked about a kiss, “what does safe taste like?”  More of that wit would be most welcome.

www.mxgallery.com