Tag: Performance

Admittedly feeling a little “witchy” that evening, Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce begins metaphorically by throwing some things into a cauldron.  E coli from romaine lettuce was tossed in.  Then the zinger follows and it’s classic Taylor Mac.  judy (his preferred gender pronoun) marvels at how four people died from e coli and, within 24 hours, all the supermarkets across America were cleared of this menace to human life.  Thousands die from guns each year but nothing happens.  That’s all thrown into the cauldron (mixed with a few other choice targets) hoping to make something good.  Judy succeeds.

This particular show skewers Christmas as only a politically charged, emotionally communicative and wildly talented drag performer can do.  On the raunchy side, there’s the never-to-be-forgotten sing-a-long version of “O Holy Night.”  In a Bollywood-esque variant, Mr. Mac aggressively sings about “tidings of comfort and joy” from “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman.”  This version is angry.  There are a lot of bad memories from his youth related to Christmas and religion in general.  His grandparents stopped inviting him when it became apparent he was gay.

Similar to his monumental A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, this show puts a glitter microscope on the heteronormative narrative of America and religion as a  patriarchal fable.  Holiday Sauce is very funny, musically accomplished and often silly but there are chestnuts of wisdom here and there to give the evening some real depth.  A song began “Six o’clock in the morning / I feel pretty good…”  The tempo was different and I could not place the lyrics but knew them.  At the refrain “I’m flying in Winchester Cathedral / Sunlight pouring through the break of day,” I had a little Christmas joy remembering this great Crosby, Stills & Nash song I had long forgotten.  The words still have bite forty years later, presented here as an anthem:  “Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here! / Too many people have lied in the name of Christ / For anyone to heed the call / So many people have died in the name of Christ / That I can’t believe it all.”

Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce is dedicated to his drag mother, Flawless Sabrina, who passed away last fall.  In the true meaning of Christmas, he recounts her wisdom and the love of family found.  Flawless Sabrina, I later learned, was a pioneering drag artist in the 1960’s and toured the country hosting drag beauty pageants.  The Queen was a documentary about the Miss All-America Camp Beauty Contest filmed in 1967 and presented at the Cannes Film Festival.  Drag is now a much bigger business and RuPaul’s pile of Emmy Awards is proof of its more mainstream appeal (at least in big, open hearted cities).

What else to add?  Oh, the costumes!  There are not many of them but they’ve been created with a dash of the divine by Machine Dazzle.  One particular outfit must be described as Sally Field “Sister Bertrille” couture with her signature headpiece populated with a mini-forest of snowy evergreen trees.  This show has lots of moods not unlike the holidays that it hates and adores.  I left the theater understanding why “Cathedral” was part of the show.  “I’m flying in Winchester Cathedral / it’s hard enough to drink the wine / The air just hangs in delusion / but given time / I’ll be fine.”  judy is indeed fine.  I’d add that Mr. Mac is very merry as well.  This particular Holiday Sauce is clearly not for everyone.  As our host reminds us, there’s always the exit.  That’s the definition of a free country.

Taylor Mac’s new play, Gary:  A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, opens on Broadway this spring.

www.taylormac.org

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/a24decadehistoryofpopularmusicpartI

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/a24decadehistoryofpopularmusicpartII

Every first Monday of the month, the Bindlestiff Open Stage Variety Show takes place at Dixon Place downtown in the East Village.  I ventured in to see what was described online as a “non-stop variety show experience that may include world famous magicians, gender bending jugglers, circus legends, trained rats, clown bands, aerial artists, wire walkers, sideshow performers, stripping clowns, living cartoons, physical comedy, contortionists, performance artists, emerging burlesque starlets, and more.”  Could there really be more?

In the lobby bar before the show, I overheard two men talking.  One said he was performing in an ice show in Washington.  The other mentioned that he was travelling to Christchurch, New Zealand for a show in January.  In our seats, the young lady next to us wasn’t performing that night but had come to show support for her fellow artists.  I have always been attracted to stories of the circus, its people and its history.  Geek Love by Katherine Dunn is one of my favorite novels.  Side Show is an underappreciated, spectacularly fine Broadway musical.  Ladies and gentlemen, let the show begin.

Keith Nelson is the host of this show, introducing the acts and performing in between them.  His spinning top routine made a strong case for the toy as a rediscovered classic, not that anyone could replicate what he did.  A recent guest on The Late, Late Show with James Corden, Mr. Nelson was equally talented and funny.  The acts he introduces change with each performance.  This particular evening opened with an aerial modern dance by Jennifer Anne Kovacs.  Dixon Place is big enough that these artists have ample room to dazzle in many forms.

Acts performed at the Bindlestiff variety show may be works in progress or developmental experiments.  All one has to do is sign up for a timeslot.  Over the course of two hours I saw Donald Trump dancing with and defiling an Earth balloon (Glen Heroy), an operatic singing trapeze act (Elizabeth Munn) and Zeroboy as Johnny Z, a Corleone-style gangster with impressive sound effects.  Wearing her undersea gear and flippers, Eva Lansberry presented a small round suitcase puppet show as a visual aid during her aquatic dance.  I was instantly reminded that is has been a long time since I’ve watched Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Tanya Solomon opened the second half of the show with what seemed to be a simple variation on a boardwalk magic ball and cups trick, only to surprise and delight with a great finish.  There’s an air of dress rehearsal to some of these performances but the risk taking is what drives the energy in the room.  At nearly two hours long with a ticket price of $12.00, the entertainment value is, to quote the defiler, “huuuuge.”

The audience was filled with performers who are invited to share what they are doing and where they are performing next in a short group chat after intermission.  The ice show man going to Washington, it turns out, is in the Cirque de Soleil show, Crystal.  Other venues mentioned include the Muse in Brooklyn, the Spiegeltent, The Tank and Nut/Cracked, the holiday show at the Flea Theater.  Artists plugging their gigs and sharing their talents with their community.  While Ringling Brothers may have shuttered, the circus is definitely alive all over New York City and at prices that scream “come inside, curiosity satisfied.”  Start spreading the news…

www.dixonplace.org

Located in the East Village, Dixon Place is an incubator for emerging artists in theater, dance, music, puppetry and burlesque, to name a few.  Bottom Feeder was created by Julia Rose Duray and Lukas Papenfusscline.  The piece concerns itself with garbage.  What we throw away.  This experimental work registers as a little odd yet heartfelt in its combination of sincerity and silliness.  What do kids today have to say about trash pollution?

After a pre-show pantomime where garbage is artistically sorted through movement, a mother and daughter are trying on a wedding gown.  The daughter doesn’t want her mother’s dress but instead this one made of plastic garbage bags.  Another woman with 75 cats reads a poem and then proceeds to tell us that her cat, Princess Ying Yang, will lead us in communion.  That communion is a dance break, both cute and ridiculous.

Bottom Feeder is filled with vignettes with varying degrees of success which comment on the past, present and future but vaguely.  The tone is less “trash talking” and more spiritually resembles a “garbage-apalooza.”  Not everything in the line up is as good as the better material but the performers were committed.  At the end of the show, there was another dance break to entertain and leave us exiting on a light note.

Dixon Place is always a reliable choice for seeing new works in sometimes very early stages of development.  From my seat, Bottom Feeder needed a bit more focus but portions were inspired gobbledygook.

www.dixonplace.org

The Peoples Improv Theater is dedicated to the instruction, performance and development of original comedy.  Dickie in the House is described as the “possibly true, entirely fabricated, probably wrong story of Watergate as told by two girls who really don’t know what happened but gave it the old college try.”  The piece is clearly a distant cousin to the often riotous Drunk History television series.

Olivia Atwood and Maggie Seymour wrote, perform and directed this assortment of loosely written sketches and musical numbers.  I did laugh at some of the antics particularly those of Ms. Atwood who reminded me of a young, underdeveloped, mildly feral Carol Burnett.  Her face has the same ability to morph.

Mashing up the President Richard Nixon scandal is a fairly ripe opportunity to mine some serious laughs in today’s political, autocratic environment.  Leaders who believe themselves above the law.  In Dickie in the House, Mrs. Nixon even wants him dead.  The general problem with this material is that is doesn’t come close enough to skewering its source material and wanders all over the place.  Long stretches are silly but not funny enough to sustain the audience’s visibly waning interest.

When President Nixon resigned, he left the White House in disgrace.  When this play ended, I left the PIT a bit befuddled.  The intended target was HUUUGE but the zingers sailed past without a scratch.

www.thepit-nyc.com

Sleep No More has been mesmerizing audiences in The McKittrick Hotel for a seemingly neverending run.  That immersive piece is a multi-floor mash up of Macbeth and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.  Follow a character or wander aimlessly through rooms, it’s your call.  Other special events are presented such as this year’s Flight, the personalized diorama of the immigrant crisis.  The brand new entertainment is called The Lost Supper, billed as “An Unlocked Room.  An Enigmatic Hostess.  Titillating Performances and Tantalizing Fare.”

Chic, surreal or festive attire is encouraged, darlings.  I use the word darling since the welcome email I received before attending was addressed to “My Darling.”  You already know whether this entertainment will be your cup of tea.  For the young woman sitting at our table sporting her stylish hat of black feathers with her husband in a bowler, the answer is most definitely yes.  For the man at another table in khakis and a sky blue t-shirt who was checking his phone a lot… well, not so much.  For me, definitely yes.

Like all performances I’ve attended here, this one is hyper-stylized from lighting to costuming.  This one, however, incorporates food as part of the show (you get an appetizer and entrée choice).  Think surrealistic dinner party interspersed with period songs or creatively executed performance pieces.  What period?  With pantomime this smile inducing, who cares?  The food is fine, the environment is the real draw.  One waiter/performer recognized me as Iron Jaw Joe, the famous boxer.  Six tables of ten means there is a nice performer to diner ratio.  But not if you’re the t-shirt guy.  For everyone else, a tantalizing supper to remember.

www.mckittrickhotel.com

theaterreviewsfrommyseat/flight

At the McKittrick Hotel where Sleep No More has been ensconced for years, additional performance pieces are staged.  Last year there was a very entertaining barroom musical from the National Theater of Scotland called The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart.  Vox Motus, another Scottish company, created Flight whose ticket states that this is “a new form of theater.”  From their website:  “Ours is a theatre of story-telling visuals, transformational design, magic, comedy, music, physical performance, puppetry, multi-media and most importantly thrills.”  Performances for Flight take about an hour to experience and are scheduled in 45 minute increments.  Most importantly, is that enough time for thrills?

The answer is yes.  Flight is based on the book Hinterland by Caroline Brothers.  It tells the story of two orphaned children fleeing Afghanistan on foot to a better life.  The goal is London.  Ms. Brothers was a journalist and while her novel is fiction, all of the events portrayed are based on interviews.  As you might imagine, the journey is difficult and sometimes harrowing while often moving and hopeful.  Told in a documentary style, this tale brings you in to face the human drama underneath the politicized news cycle of these struggling people.

And face it you do, alone.  One at a time you are brought into this experience.  You are seated in a chair separated from others  by dividers and instructed to put headphones on.  What follows is a sort of large cyclindrical diorama which tells the story of Flight in miniature.  Small sections light up as the story progresses past your eyes, just for you at that moment, before moving to the next person.  The experience is quite unsettling (as intended) but beautifully rendered.  Dialogue, sound effects, dramatic visuals and lighting are well executed in support of the material.

Flight humanizes the horrific plight of refugees through an intimate story of two boys.  It also puts a mirror to humanity’s intolerance as we watch the bravery and determination of these children.  The unique and creative design used to tell this story elicited strong emotional reactions from me, including anger and despair.  All from a fantastic cyclindrical diorama and a pair of headphones.  Maybe the moniker “a new form of theater” is debatable but there’s no denying that Flight contains “thrills.”  The raft scenes alone are worth a visit.

www.mckittrickhotel.com

Zoinks! is the word that is used online to announce this show.  If you immediately know what that means, then you, like me, might feel a need to check out What’s New, Groovy Gang?!  A small company called Improvisational Repertory Theatre Ensemble (IRTE) decided to tackle the legend of Scooby Doo.  If you are like me, you’re no longer in touch with the groovy gang and need an update on their comings and goings.

First aired in 1969, Scooby Doo, Where Are You! was a huge cartoon success.  Nielsen ratings reported that at least 65% of Saturday morning audiences tuned into this gang of mystery solvers.  Another surprising fact:  the characters are still running in new shows.  Be Cool, Scooby Doo! just aired its final episode this month.  The gang is living it up the summer after their senior year in high school.  Along the way, they run into monsters and mayhem.

All aboard for an improvisational hour of comedy!  Let’s jump into the Mystery Van (with a cocktail) and go for a nostalgic ride.  When we take our seats in the teensy tiny performance space, we are greeted with a soundtrack that includes the ever classic theme song from Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space.  “Mars, stars, the milky way, when they’re groovin’ who can say.”  Ready, set, house lights down, let’s do this!

I am very sad to report that this improv group is terrible.  The effort is amateurish, unprepared and unfunny.  So many targets to hit and they barely took aim at any of them.  Fred as a drunken frat boy was a funny idea.  Put a scarf on him and make a joke already.  The company’s Artistic Director Nannette Deasy was Velma, the only performer who came close to being reasonably in character throughout this short exercise.  As an unwelcome bonus, there’s a visiting guitarist who sings four original songs while selling his hot sauce and CD (not as a joke and I’m not kidding).  Zoinks indeed.

www.irte.com