Three very different works in this entry to my Seclusion Smörgåsbord series viewing of streaming theater. A solo memoir about a disastrous musical flop. A disturbingly effective solo piece about the monstrous depiction of black men in American film and culture. And a short dystopian play featuring the last two surviving humans.
Desperately Seeking the Exit
In 2007, a $6 million musical based on the Madonna film Desperately Seeking Susan featuring the hit songs of Blondie flopped in London’s West End. Peter Michael Marino shares his story of creation and demise in Desperately Seeking the Exit. This monologue was performed live on Zoom with the audience able to be seen and heard. For a comedy, the laughter was additive to this amusing tell-all.
Mr. Marino and a friend were smoking pot and came up with what they believed was a fantastic idea. Broadway needed a cool show. A Mamma Mia! but edgier. This musical could open with the song “Dreaming” to introduce the bored suburban housewife. “Call Me” would introduce the rocker girl character of Susan. Despite no previous writing experience, the Old Vic in London signed on. Joe Mantello agreed to direct. (He left later when he needed more money.) The Sardi’s luncheon meeting with Debbie Harry went well.
No one ever asked the creator if he ever wrote anything before. A new director and the choreographer (Andy Blankenbuehler who would later win three Tonys) stopped communicating during rehearsals. The director Angus Jackson kept “making huge moments tiny” while Andy made “tiny moments huge.” The mess culminated in the review headline, “Desperately Seeking the Exit.”
Mr. Marino is a funny, self-deprecating host. Theater folk are likely to relate to a dysfunctional creative process. Investors should probably be irate at the unprofessional shenanigans. The silver lining? A Japanese production four years later somehow got it right. The opening night performance received five curtain calls. A little clip of each production followed this light and enjoyable monologue.
Despreately Seeking the Exit was presented as part of the two week Cincinnati Fringe Festival which ended on June 13th.
Disposable Men (HERE Arts Center)
James Scruggs created and starred in this multimedia piece aimed at confronting the historical depiction of black men in American culture and media. HERE Arts Center streamed this performance from February 2005. The show is a mixture of monologue stories and projected imagery. While many of the moments were familiar, the ones that opened my eyes were devastating.
I have seen the movie King Kong many times in my youth. Film clips were interspersed with period pieces which clearly demonstrated the storytelling was about powerfully built black men from Africa as a menace to society and a danger to white women. The slave auction imagery versus King Kong in chains. A white woman screaming at the sight of this very black “monster.” The minstrel-like monkey face in closeups, notably the eyes and lips, compared to other visual images of the day. Seeing this classic film in this way was revelatory and shocking.
The balance of the show was broad and diverse. An imagined job in a New York City restaurant called Supremacy 1860 Mississippi. One of the best jobs is “lynch nigger” who helps reenact those abominations to “make it as realistic as possible to get big tips.” Another segment considered the American government’s Tuskegee Experiment when the government deceived poor African American sharecroppers to analyze the effects of untreated syphilis for thirty years.
“How to transition to manhood?” That question was asked and not easily answered. If you are not college, military or religious material, what is your route into adulthood? A $5 bottle of crack cocaine was cheap, affordable and addictive. “One by one, all of us got recruited by big brother.” And then “one $5 vial got me fifteen years.”
People who cannot understand the Black Lives Matter movement just don’t want to face this starkly grim reality. James Scrugg’s absorbing and ultimately sobering work is a fine place to journey into those perspectives in a richly complex and dramatic form.
Disposable Men was presented as part of HERE Arts Center’s Wednesday live streaming series. The video remains accessible on their Facebook page.
Godforsaken (The Tank)
Two men are having a conversation at the start of Godforsaken, a short play rewritten for streaming. Are they alone? In limbo? One says, “I keep hallucinating you.” Was the end of the human race caused by nuclear holocaust, ozone depletion or cybergenocide? Even if the two men were able to find women, “would it be wise to bring children to this godforsaken place?”
An encounter with a mutant being begins to clear up the mystery. Or at least explain their intention for these two men. Frank J. Avella’s writing is playful, enigmatic and darkly humorous. This play nicely contrasts real versus imaginary as well as optimism against nihilism. All three performers (Carlotta Brentan, Rob Brinkmann and Marc Lombardo) were very good in presenting this quirky and interesting tale.
The Tank, an Off-Off Broadway arts incubator streams many experimental and varied works each week.