“Welcome to the After Party. A wild, musical ride into the belly of the Hollywood beast, hosted by the blessed and the damned of LA LA Land.”
The best way to describe Saint Hollywood is to lift a line spoken by Vuzar, the Mexican drag queen phone sex operator paralyzed from the waist down, and one of the nine characters portrayed by Willard Morgan. This show is “over the top. Everybody loves over the top!”
The one man show tells the story of a New York comedian who migrates to Los Angeles “searching for funny, money, fame and work.” After failing in an Off Broadway show in which the lead contemplates suicide, Willard Morgan the show’s writer, subject, and lead performer says. “I considered suicide or moving to LA and then thought, what’s the difference?”
Los Angeles and New York City (the pre-scrubbed version) are two cities often described as being just too ___________(insert your own bewildered adjective in the blank). With so much to see and hear, newcomers often feel an overwhelming wave of sensory overload. This installation piece cum ethno-drama provides the viewer, and sometime voyeur, the opportunity to feel overwhelmed in a really good and amazing and interesting way.
When I first arrived at Ideal Glass, “an interdisciplinary industrial space for development and presentation of unusual works,” I thought I’d missed the building. The front of the space was covered in a massive technicolor collage of portraits of the strangest collection of people ever found together on a wall. Each subject interpreted by visual artist Ayakamay, in the very Catholic style of portraying the saints; each had a halo of some sort and their eyes were cast upward. Why as saints? Because of all the people who migrate or live in LALa Land, “The saints of Hollywood are the ones who choose to stay.” It was part high art, part graffiti, part religious iconography, part Los Angeles and very East Village. The piece was an instant win in my book. Anything that employs the art of collage gets an automatic gold star from me.
The interdisciplinary industrial space… (calling it only a theatre feels like a cruel misnomer) was set up in the proscenium style with seating facing a stage. As audience members entered, Morgan moved and often danced about like a curator or impeccable host, greeting and welcoming us all. It was clear the fourth wall would never be constructed much less broken. Scattered about both the stage and the audience area were Lucite display columns filled with miscellaneous brick-a-brack and funhouse props, while nightclub/lounge music pumped through the space and lighting echoed the effect. All this before the show even began.
The stage was framed in copies of the portraits plastered on the front of the building each image the focal point of its own altar created and illuminated as differently as the individual captured. What appeared as thematic offerings under and around each station later became props or costume pieces Morgan donned as he transitioned through playing each of these people he dubbed saints. The iconic portraits made the impersonations/characterizations tougher to believe. If examined through a race-class-gender lens, some of his representations of the saints felt more like caricature than homage. The portraits hanging alongside the performance space caused me to look over to see if they approved of their representation.
Any style of art you can think of was employed in this show: music, art, film, dance, song, poetry, vixenish background dancers, comedy, hand puppet opera, an onstage DJ, theatre, stop action animation, yes….there was EVEN a sexily-clad catfight played out between his two Los Angelene love interests played out while Willard and his background ladies sing “Boyfriend Heaven.” Done TOTALLY IN CLAYMATION.
The show is the bastard child of Anna Deveare Smith and Flight of the Conchords with a multimedia makeover. There’s everything one’s heart could desire in a show from marabou to melancholy and everything in between. There is so much going on in this kitchen soup of a show that it feels like drifting too far over the top, but that somehow adds to the charm and makes Saint Hollywood stay with you long after you’ve walked away from the collage.
Saint Hollywood
Willard Morgan
Ideal Glass Gallery
22 East Second Street
212-598-3030
