Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
The year of its telling is unknown, but the story takes place in the 300,000th year of its calendar. As advertised, the play Bears In Space is about bears in space, specifically a pair of recently defrosted pals, Volyova and Bhourghash, and their still-frozen captain, Lazara. They wake in orbit of the city planet Metrotopia, ruled by the megalomaniacal Premier Nico and his right-hand man, Gorax. The news that greets them is that their ship is running out of energy, and soon it won’t be able to support the cryo-systems keeping Lazara in stasis until a cure can be found for her mysterious illness. Theirs is a tale told with much light and music by an isolated band of cave dwellers whose only purpose in life is to tell just such stories.
The Story Keeper, played with quirky narcissistic flourish by Cameron Macauley, introduces his three sons: “Bertram, Darcy, and Lady Susan Vernon. They are slow of wit, but I assure you I have bred them to enjoy nothing more than bringing stories to life.” And do they ever, though by appearances somewhat more begrudgingly than their “father” insists. While Macauley narrates and plays electric guitar, the three futuristic and admittedly morose minstrels, played by Aaron Heffernan, Eoghan Quinn and Jack Gleeson (Game of Thrones fans will recognize this last performer), take up their raggedy avatars and step into the light.
What follows is 80 minutes of absurd (and absurdly creative) hilarity, with references drawn from and caps doffed to dozens of Sci-Fi sources. As the Story Keeper says in the beginning, his collection contains all stories worth telling. That doesn’t mean there can’t be many stories in one. Despite the abundant homage — a dash of Hitchhiker’s Guide here, a hint of Star Wars there — there are so many creative and comedic touches to surprise and delight that the end product feels both fresh and timeless.
Cameron McCauley
Both funny “ha-ha” and funny “strange,” and at a certain point in Bears In Space ceases to be about bears in space and becomes more about the nature and pursuit of love. Platonic love, romantic love, intellectual love…the bases are covered as the boys power through three acts of high-energy allegory. It’s a very thoughtful and layered play, much to the credit of its playwright, Eoghan Quinn again, and all four performers’ agile talent.
It’s true they have the force of youth in them, but they move about the stage breathing life into characters constructed of rags and imagination with more skill than their years would suggest reasonable. They’re sharp and quick on their feet, and when they lift their voices in song the harmony cuts through the dark like a knife. Aaron Heffernan in particular makes overlapping lines and half a dozen accents seem like a breeze.
Director Dan Colley has done wonderful things making the play interesting and accessible. Between the various alternative set pieces, all the different kinds of puppets and the creative uses of light and shadow, the show never lags, never exhausts and delights without faltering in its tone or sacrificing character development for laughs, though it gets plenty of those, too. It has a big, silly heart and isn’t afraid to flaunt it.
Bears in Space Written by Eoghan Quinn, directed by Dan Colley Produced by Collapsing Horse and part of 1st Irish at 59E59 Theaters Through Sunday, October 2, 2016
Photos by Idil Sukan Top photo: Aaron Heffernan and Eoghan Quinn
It takes a special kind of person to stand before a crowd of strangers, risking emotional immolation and the searing pain of a silent room, and just…be. Let yourself be known. And among those people it’s an even odder type who lays it all out for laughs, a prize as ephemeral and fleeting — and addictive — as anything you’d find on a dodgy street corner in the bad part of town. Producer Ira Glass (the creator of essential NPR listening, “This American Life”) and writer/director Mike Birbiglia (Sleepwalk with Me) have created with Don’t Think Twice, a smart, heart-felt tale about that breed apart. It’s a look at how hard it is to “make it look easy.” It speaks with begrudging acknowledgement that sometimes what it takes hard work, sometimes it’s charisma and selfish grandstanding, but sometimes it’s good old-fashioned luck.
Improv 101 teaches the concept of “Yes, and…,” which means that whenever someone presents an idea, everyone else takes the ball and runs with it. The group has to accept a premise and be willing to make a leap with it even if they don’t know where their feet will land. It’s a leap of faith, which may also be why improv done well is so exhilarating — for the performers as well as the audience. In Don’t Think Twice, the players, The Commune, step toward the wings, literally touching one another, connecting physically as a sign of connecting emotionally, and say, “I got your back.” Don’t Think Twice is about what happens when these people who have spent years together all of a sudden stop having each other’s backs?
Kate Micucci (Allison), Tami Sagher (Lindsay)
The thing about improvisational comedy is that it works best when performed by people who know each other well. Really, really well. History isn’t essential, but it is important to hook into what they refer to in the film as the group mind. The reason improv performers don’t think twice is because they’ve become so comfortable with each other that they know how to create sparks in one another’s minds — or at least have an idea of what can grow out of the seed of an idea. And when someone knows you that well, they know what makes you great as much as what makes you vulnerable.
In this case the vulnerabilities, put into basic terms, include hubris (self-aggrandizing Miles, played by Birbiglia), greed (showboating Jack, played by Keegan-Michael Key), sloth (ever-procrastinating Allison, played by Kate Micucci), gluttony (pot-smoking, still-living-at-home Lindsay, played by Tami Sagher), envy (sad-sack Bill, played by Chris Getherd), and the outlier, Samantha (Gillian Jacobs), who lets fear of an uncertain future keep her from taking any steps forward. Don’t think these aren’t wonderful, delightful characters. They’re all people you’d want to hang out with on a Saturday night. They’re funny and insightful and genuinely good people. But they’re also flawed, and no one reaches the end without having a light shone on the things that make them so sadly human.
The film is predicated on the premise that The Commune’s beloved home, Improv America, a Second City–style theater known for developing the best and brightest comedy minds in the country — the kind who get picked up by SNL knock-off Weekend Live — is shuttering after long years of well-respected but financially modest success. Change is thrust upon them, and they are surprisingly ill equipped to deal with it. Things get even trickier when one of their number, Jack, makes it to the big show. The others are struck by the seeming unfairness of it all. They’re a group; their success has always been mutual and dependent on each other. At this crossroads they have come to the point of realizing that oftentimes talent just isn’t enough. When the unified front falters, however, it’s enough to shift the dynamic from mostly good-natured rivalry to a full-on battle of wills and words.
Mike Birbiglia (Miles), Kate Micucci (Allison)
This cast is a modern comedy mega-band. Every single one of them has contributed something significant to the genre over the last several years to varying degrees of recognition, both critical and as in “hey, it’s that guy!” status. They’re a more disparate group in the real world than they are in the film, but they are all astonishingly good at what they do. As actors, which some of them are more than others, they’re so smart and look so comfortable in front of the camera that it feels like the entire film could have been improvised. When the audience doesn’t play nicely, you can feel the air go out of their sails. When they’re all tuned in, it’s a thing of beauty.
Birbiglia is known for delivering laid-back, sometimes meandering monologues that begin with an idea and follow it through step by awkward step until it reaches its simple but unexpected conclusion. (The thing is, like the best standup routines, these stories have been carefully fine-tuned in order to sound so off the cuff. It’s said that George Carlin went to far as to write when he could take a breath into his performances.) Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice script is another creature entirely. It’s punchy and painfully honest about the various categories of creative types. It also has a level of heart and vulnerability that his standup fans could have suspected possible but might not have seen in full bloom.
The comedic/dramatic tension balance is so good, the characters so believable, that it’s almost possible to feel them holding their breath to see if their lines will land in friendly territory. Perhaps that’s why it feels so terrible when it’s made clear that success and friendship may have to remain mutually exclusive. It’s a hard lesson told with care and honesty. You don’t have to be a comedy buff to appreciate what this very creative team has accomplished. If you have the opportunity to see it, don’t think twice.
Top photo: Counter Clockwise: Keegan-Michael Key (Jack), Gillian Jacobs (Samantha), Chris Gethard (Bill), Kate Micucci (Allison), Mike Birbiglia (Miles), Tami Sagher (Lindsay).
Mike Schlitt’s one man show, Patriot Act, is pretty much what you would expect to hear if you asked for the first of a three-part series in “how we got to here, politically.” From the Founding Fathers — specifically Adams and Jefferson, presented as somewhat foul-mouthed and deranged-looking hand puppets — through Jim Crow and all the way to the concept of corporate personhood and what the Constitution means when it says “All men are created equal.”
Schlitt goes about breaking down the terms “men,” “created,” and “equal,” acting much like a teacher — albeit the “cool” teacher — leading the pre-exam discussion. There are question and answer breaks and people are called on to voice their opinions about cultural equality and political representation. Heck, there’s even a snack break. This is all to say that it isn’t really a “show” show. It’s more of a survey in basic American political science told amusingly but somewhat awkwardly by someone who feels passionately about what we’re going through as a nation and concerned about where we’ll go from here.
What Schlitt makes up for in content he lacks in organization. There’s clearly a lot to say on the subject, so he set his desktop countdown clock for 47 minutes before diving in. As the discussion continued, he continued to note the remaining minutes with increasing concern. One missed phone cue and a couple of lost thoughts into the performance, as the clock neared the five-minute mark, he actually seemed surprised by how little time was left and much content left to cover.
Emergent panic does nothing for performance quality. What I will say is that first shows, like the one I attended, are usually the ones performers use to see what works, what doesn’t, and get out the kinks. Considering his ample experience and body of work, it’s likely that this will just get better with practice. If the least you get out of it is a history refresher, that’s not a bad thing either. And there are always the cookies.
Photography by Shawn Stoner
Remaining performances: Wednesday August 24 @ 9:15pm, Saturday August 27 @ 9:15pm, and Sunday August 28 @ 5:15pm at Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company (70 East 4th Street – Lower Level — Bowery & 2nd Avenue).
Sometimes it’s really hard to hold your applause until the end. Such is the case with HELD: A Musical Fantasy, now playing at Drom as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Kelly Maxwell (book and lyrics) and Meghan Rose (composer) have worked their own kind of magic, crafting a lovely fairy tale filled with sophisticated, beautifully layered songs. HELD is about love of all sorts as much as it’s about selfishness, jealousy, sacrifice and forgiveness.
Three friends — Mera the soldier (Katie Bakalars), Bardo the baker (Alex Van Handel) and Korin the Dreamer (Hannah Ripp-Dieter) — have been trapped by an unknown “Blood Wizard,” who has kept them suspended, without hunger or thirst, for weeks. Their cell is a cold stone room without windows or a door, and the only escape is into memory, where they put together the pieces that eventually solve the mystery of their captor’s identity.
Hannah Ripp-Dieter and Alex Handel
Mera and Korin have been best friends since they were girls, though their families discouraged the relationship. Mera knew she was destined to kill or be killed, and Korin, as a Dreamer — a kind of magician — is supposed to protect and sustain life. As a child, Bardo had followed them to the clearing in the woods where they often met and ever since the three have been inseparable. Now, however, war approaches their village and Mera and Korin are called to take up their family mantles. Their destinies are at odds, but the source of their greatest strain has remained secret until recently. As it happens, Korin loves Mera, who loves Bardo, who loves Korin.
The non-linear structure and parallel narrative may confuse at first, but as the plot builds toward its inevitable conclusion the symmetry becomes the means of ramping up tension and feeling. It’s easy to see what’s coming from the hints dropped like breadcrumbs along the way, but that doesn’t hinder the enjoyment of the story or change the fact that the music and performances are all excellent. The three leads’ voices complement one another with crispness and bell-like clarity.
The production I attended suffered from some sound inconsistency, mainly uneven microphones, which wasn’t as terrible as it could have been thanks to good projection on the singers’ parts and the somewhat intimate performance space. However there were moments when one voice was almost lost among the other two. Thankfully these moments were infrequent and the singers did well compensating vocally to make up for a lack of technology.
Alex Handel, Katie Bakalars, Hannah Ripp-Dieter
The music was played live on stage, with Rose at the piano and accompanists Jake Ripp-Dieter and Kristine Kruta on bass and cello, respectively. The combination of voices and music is both effective and affecting, with lots of emotion infused into every song.
Director S.C. Lucier uses all of Drom’s small stage as well as bringing the actors out into the audience at times. The back-and-forth nature of the story makes it a challenge to divide the scenes without the use of scenery and lots of props, but it was done well enough with small changes to lighting, costume changes, and by moving two small cube ottomans around the stage.
Maxwell’s choice to make the women the more dangerous and powerful characters, leaving the man to fill the role of gentle baker and consoler, was a nice means of shaking up the standard fairy tale tropes. It also makes a nice statement about pursuing your truth, no matter what others think of it.
Even if the plot was somewhat predictable, it was told with care and creativity. All told, HELD was one of the best Fringe shows I’ve seen. Get a seat while you can.
HELD: A Musical Fantasy Fringe Venue #5 Drom 85 Avenue A, New York, NY 10009 (between 5th and 6th) One last performance: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, August 25, 2016 For tickets: Fringe NYC
“Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.”
Everything that has a beginning has an end. In today’s terms, when it comes to love and marriage, odds are nearly even that the end will come sooner than later. In Matthew Freeman’s play That Which Is, we meet two people who have committed themselves to a relationship that is failing spectacularly. Under a tree in a field far away from their city home, they share a conversation, only possibly knowing that it’s the final unraveling of their troubled marriage. Later, a conversation in a restaurant fills in some of the details of what happened after that night.
Helen (Moira Stone) and Jim (David Delgrosso) sit with their backs to a tree. They don’t know what kind, but that is just another subject to argue about that night. Not that it even matters. They have hurt each other; that much is clear with every motion, every look, every clipped comment and every sarcastic retort. They seem calm, but that calmness is belied by shaking voices, by the way in which they over-annunciate when speaking to each other, by the level of feigned consideration one takes on when making a point with words to someone they would rather impale on a knifepoint.
There is distrust. There has been infidelity. It may have been one of them though it was probably both. They are alike in that, but despise each other for their similarity as well. For a moment they are suddenly reminded of what it was that first drew them to each other, they can let the past go and live for a time in the other’s embrace. But time is fleeting, and by the time the sun rises a decision has been made.
In this first act there is a lot of frustrated hair ruffling, a lot of upturned palms imploring the other person to understand and empathize. But empathy is impossible when you’re walking on eggshells and looking for offense at every conversational turn. It isn’t pleasant and it isn’t comfortable but it smacks of truth. The dialogue can be stiff and awkward, but again it makes sense in the situation with two people who run cold when they’re angry.
The second act actually is the stronger of the two, despite there being so little movement around the space. Helen and Jim’s friend Marcus (Mick O’Brien) sit together in a restaurant. The reason for the meeting isn’t initially clear, and only after a lot of awkward conversation — with both parties trying to play it straight while emotions swirl and rage just under the surface — does the situation emerge.
When we see her again, Helen is dressed sharply; she walks confidently, with purpose, exuding an aura of power and imperviousness. Marcus, meanwhile, stammers a bit and fumbles for answers to Helen’s often-probing questions. He’s clearly shaken by the situation and the position he has assumed, as well as by the fact that he’s out while his wife and young daughter wait for him to come home.
What comes out as the dinner progresses is evidence that Helen’s steely appearance is just that, a front she has put up to protect her from having to feel too much. She’s a cynic who doesn’t like getting close to other people for fear of getting hurt, but that’s not something anyone can avoid completely. Her act is so good, in fact, that what she portrays, frankly, is a cold, hard bitch. And she knows it. She pushes Marcus to say it, to tell her what he thinks of her, to reason out why Jim’s sister hates her so much. It’s so clear, but equally so is the disappointment she holds on to for her decision to be like that.
Director Kyle Ancowitz presents the play as a series of vignettes, using fading lights to distinguish the passage of time between scenes. Often they come up mid-story, or even midsentence, so the audience has to do some work to keep track of what’s going on and rely on cues like the table settings to work out how much time has passed. It’s an easier thing to do in the restaurant than out in the field where only the relative positions of bodies to each other demarcate the theoretical hours that pass.
Freeman’s script is like a literary iceberg, with much of its context floating dark under the surface and requiring some extrapolation based on his characters’ exchanges. The threat of setting it up that way is that sometimes the gun that’s introduced early on may never go off, or do so too subtly. There are questions that are left unanswered or only ambiguously addressed. Though you wouldn’t know the fullness of the story if you were, for example, the waiter present to listen in during service or water refills, as an audience member invested in understanding the full complexity of the work it would be nice to know at least what each character is talking about. What we do get, however, is fascinating.
Despite the uneasy nature of their characters’ meeting, Stone and O’Brien work in really nice counterpoint to each other. They look as if they each have a lot going on inside as they let the conversation unfold, but also look like they’re really listening to each other. Helen and Jim are at odds, and Stone and Delgrosso press through the first act looking like they have their hackles up, listening as much as they need to in order to argue back — listening but not really hearing. It makes their scenes feel stiff and awkward, but then the relationship is stiff and awkward.
As advertised, That Which Isn’t is a heartbreaking work. But when you leave I’ll bet you’ll want to hug someone you love and feel grateful for what you have.
Photos by Kyle Ancowitz
That Which Isn’t The Brick 579 Metropolitan Avenue between Union and Larimer Streets Williamsburg Call Ovation: 866-811-4111 Through Saturday, August 20, 2016
Chef Katsuji Tanabe is a character, and the food he’s serving up at his new location in New York is every bit as bright, colorful and authentic as he is. The much-beloved Top Chef alum worked in a number of top kitchens in and around Los Angeles before he opened his Pico-Robertson taco shop. After five years and a series of Midtown pop-ups over the last couple of years, Mexikosher has found a new home on 83rd Street.
The Menu
Though he doesn’t come from a kosher background — his father is Japanese and his mother Mexican — Katsuji grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Mexico City. After he had become a cook he found himself drawn to kosher cooking and embraced by the kosher community. I guess it’s true for everyone that the way to the heart is through the stomach.
The open-face burrito, unwrapped for your visual pleasure
Everything you find in Mexikosher is made in-house, from the beef and duck confit carnitas cooked to tender perfection over 18 hours to the perfectly seasoned carne asada and grilled chicken to each of the many toppings and sauces. Choose from a selection of pickled vegetables, including red and gold beets, radishes, onions, and jalapeños; nopales (cactus leaves); pico de gallo and more.
A range of simple, fresh, delicious toppings
Homemade salsas include spicy peanut, sweet smoked chipotle, mango habañero, creamy bacon, roasted tomato, Serrano aioli and tomatillo, and all are available in large, easy-to-access squeeze bottles, so you’re sure to never run out.
A wings appetizer, sweet and spicy on the outside, juicy and tender on the inside
The menu is small, but the flavors are phenomenal. The hot wings are a must if you enjoy both heat and sticky sweet sauce. They’re complex, with a hard fried dough layer that gives way to incredibly tender meat.
Burrito under construction
An order of tacos includes three well-stuffed, double-layered soft tortillas with a choice of toppings, but you can also get all of the same ingredients in burritos, salad bowls or topped nachos.
One order of carne asada tacos
One addition to the New York menu is the Torta Ahogado, or “drowned sandwich.” A generous portion of 16-hour-braised birria with mixed chillies is stuffed into a classic sub roll, and then the whole thing is plunked into a vat of spicy red gravy and allowed to soak for a few moments. The torta then gets lifted (carefully) into a takeaway box and topped with another generous serving of pink pickled onions. This item is limited, so if you’re planning a trip you may want to get there early to snag one for yourself.
Saucy smothered torta ahogado
If Mexikosher New York works like its Los Angeles forbear, the chef and his crew will be free to create regular off-menu specials. Highlights from L.A. stops run the gamut from the normal — a variety of tasty and unique burgers — to the extraordinary, like one memorable visit for fried calf brain tacos.
Even if it sounds strange, the truth is you can trust Katsuji to serve only lovingly crafted, completely delicious food. His creativity and willingness to experiment has served him (and us) very well. His touch with ingredients borders on supernatural, and you can take this from a lifelong extreme onion hater who looks forward to the thought of her next pickled allum–spiked torta. And remember: They don’t serve hummus.
Mexikosher 100 W 83rd Street New York, NY 212-580-6200
You know the traditional story: A girl wanders through the woods, finds a house and makes herself at home. Then the owners, a family of bears, arrive home to find their chairs sat in, their food eaten, and their beds tried and occupied by the simple interloper. Erin J. Reifler’s Goldilocks: A New Musical takes the premise and reworks it as a modern tale of Milennial angst, sexual discovery, and acceptance. Playing as part of The Thespis Theater Festival, this Goldilocks is a frisky adventure tale of an innocent office drone cutting loose his binds and diving into the world of Drag. Like the Goldilocks of old, it exhibits a lack of foresight and ends up having to cut and run at the end.
The office drone is Paul (Morgan Bartholick). When his girlfriend Lisa (Laura Lebron Rojas) tells him she’s pregnant, the reality of his normal, boring life and the normal, boring future he imagines as inevitable come crashing down. He quits his job, wanders the town, and eventually ends up at a drag bar where he catches the eye of star performer Alexandra (Carson Rammelt). With the help of three “bears,” – or at least two bears and a “cub” – and a handful of lovely worker bee queens she plays the part of fairy godmother, lifting him out of his emotional hole and showing him how to bloom.
Reifler’s songs have everything you could want in a musical comedy. They’re fun, they’re catchy, and there’s no denying the impressive and abundant vocal talent gracing the tiny Hudson Guild Theater stage. From 60s-era girl group (and girl power) songs to sneeringly unapologetic, self-adulating ballads, the variety of styles is as impressive as the amount of humor infused into each number. Of particular note, the quartet of Rojas, Christina Ames, Dae Lettman and Kiara Hines make a great team, their clear, powerful voices layering in seemingly effortless harmony while delivering some wonderful backhanded lines.
On the drag side of the cast, Nigel Rowe does a wonderful job as the de facto MC, engaging the audience and inspiring giggles while looking absolutely fabulous. Where Bartholick is clearly a boy in a dress, Rammelt and Rowe make it look effortless. The bears, well, they’re a much-appreciated touch, like a leather glove, for anyone in the audience who enjoys a bit of masculine eye candy.
At only 45 minutes long, Goldilocks: A New Musical is half of a really great cabaret show. Only half because the point at which one would expect a pre-intermission cliffhanger actually resolves far too easily and quickly — so quickly in fact that when the lights came up it took several moments for the audience to understand that that was it. It was almost jarring, as if the deadline for the script hit and all the ends were just quickly pulled together without any discernable explanation or emotional truth. Would a woman, much less one pregnant and unsure whether she even wanted to have children, just smile and applaud and get over the shock of her partner having a meltdown and making several major life-changing decisions without her? All because he has decided he wants to be a drag performer and isn’t cheating on her like her friends suggest?
The kind of major moral and emotional questions that would make a second act sing (literally and figuratively) instead remain unresolved and forgotten. If Lisa’s discovery, her gasp and him tearing off the wig, were the end of the act, that would have been just right—a “To Be Continued” with actual oomph. After an intermission a second act could address things like whether they even want to have a baby, does he mean for this to be his career from now on, a lifestyle change, how to handle potential financial difficulties, even how to relate to each other now that one of them is open about who he really is.
As a composer and lyricist, Reifler clearly has the skills to continue the story. As it is, there is a lot to be desired in terms of script and character development. With more time and work, there’s potential to make this a real show. At the moment, however, it feels incomplete. Many of the actors and members of the creative team are either doing this in their summer break between college terms or are recent graduates, and while their inexperience shows, it’s also clear that there’s a lot of talent among them. If they keep at it, they may have something really good on their hands.
Photos: Danielle Perelman Top photo: Right to left: Alex (Carson Rammelt) and Paul (Morgan Bartholick) 2. Paul (Morgan Bartholick) and ensemble 3. Right to left: Brian Graziani, Nigel Rowe, Carson Rammelt, Morgan Bartholick, Trevor Nalepka, and Stella Mensah 4. Lisa (Laura Lebron Rojas)
Goldilocks: A New Musical Remaining Performances are at the Hudson Guild Theater at 441 West 26th Street, Saturday August 6 at 8:30 p.m., Sunday August 7 at 1 p.m.
Harmon Leon has lived an interesting life. His surprisingly happy-go-lucky production, Harmon Leon’s Big Fat Racist Show, invites listeners to follow along as he wanders the country in search of some of the more extreme members of American society. Leon is a semi-professional — or at least habitual — infiltrator. Using assumed names and assorted hairstyles, he has placed himself brazenly into a number of uncomfortable positions. For example, has been a contestant on a number of reality competition dating shows, presenting the most obnoxious versions of himself to see how far he can go before anyone suspects a fake. As it turns out, quite far.
In this presentation — I hesitate to call it a show as so much of it is participatory and conversational— the VICE writer and roving journalist discusses his multiple and various forays into the world of deep-seated bigotry. He has met with Ku Klux Klan wannabes to see what it would take to join their organization, tagged along with the Westboro Baptist Church on a protest to try to figure out what makes them tick, and he walks into a machine gun event populated by aspirant Confederates and Second Amendment zealots.
Technical difficulties caused a delayed start and forced the staff at 59E59 to improvise a bit, which may have thrown Leon off his game for the first several minutes, but as soon as he relaxed things started to flow.
When settled, Leon is a natural and engaging storyteller. His powers of observation, coastal liberal sensibilities, and overabundant chutzpah make him a great witness to the xenophobic and isolationist tendencies to be found in many parts of Middle America. He talks about his fear going into each situation, his first impressions, and how banal it can all be at times. Nevertheless, when faced with situations of extraordinary oddness, even if menacing, it’s hard not to be taken with the lengths people will go to in order to feel better about themselves.
The problem with this performance is balance. Leon has over 150 visual cues, but we never see how he has presented himself on any of his self-assigned missions. He has taken photos to document these excursions, but they don’t always capture what he’s really talking about. Instead, a lot of time and energy is spent on the interstitial shtick between the stories. A silly recurring game of Racist/Not Racist and video clips of puppies are his attempts to reduce tension. Perhaps he doesn’t understand that the tension is what makes each of his stories good. The tension is what draws people in. That’s where the realness lies, and video of a smoking baby is not the way to transition between tales.
His stories have interesting premises, interesting middles, but more often than not end abruptly and without denouement. The audience is left to make what they will of these anecdotes, but really what I wanted was more detail, more depth, more about what he saw and learned and took away from each mission. Leon has an understanding that you can talk about tricky subjects and be funny, because he does and he is. Racist Show has the potential to be a really great project, but it would benefit from a thorough editorial workup. A little less repetitive silliness and a little more pathos will make the difference between something amusingly interesting but unessential and something with the power to stick with the audience after they’ve left the theater. In this political climate, with race and guns at the crux of so many debates over the direction in which the country should go, as the elections draw closer, Leon’s piece has the benefit of prescience and timing. With a little more work, possibly over the course of his run in Edinburgh, he’ll have something relevant and vital. I would look forward to seeing that again.
Harmon Leon’s Big Fat Racist Show is running as part of 59E59 Theaters’ annual East to Edinburgh series.
Schlitt goes about breaking down the terms “men,” “created,” and “equal,” acting much like a teacher — albeit the “cool” teacher — leading the pre-exam discussion. There are question and answer breaks and people are called on to voice their opinions about cultural equality and political representation. Heck, there’s even a snack break. This is all to say that it isn’t really a “show” show. It’s more of a survey in basic American political science told amusingly but somewhat awkwardly by someone who feels passionately about what we’re going through as a nation and concerned about where we’ll go from here.
What Schlitt makes up for in content he lacks in organization. There’s clearly a lot to say on the subject, so he set his desktop countdown clock for 47 minutes before diving in. As the discussion continued, he continued to note the remaining minutes with increasing concern. One missed phone cue and a couple of lost thoughts into the performance, as the clock neared the five-minute mark, he actually seemed surprised by how little time was left and much content left to cover.
There is distrust. There has been infidelity. It may have been one of them though it was probably both. They are alike in that, but despise each other for their similarity as well. For a moment they are suddenly reminded of what it was that first drew them to each other, they can let the past go and live for a time in the other’s embrace. But time is fleeting, and by the time the sun rises a decision has been made.
Director Kyle Ancowitz presents the play as a series of vignettes, using fading lights to distinguish the passage of time between scenes. Often they come up mid-story, or even midsentence, so the audience has to do some work to keep track of what’s going on and rely on cues like the table settings to work out how much time has passed. It’s an easier thing to do in the restaurant than out in the field where only the relative positions of bodies to each other demarcate the theoretical hours that pass.
The problem with this performance is balance. Leon has over 150 visual cues, but we never see how he has presented himself on any of his self-assigned missions. He has taken photos to document these excursions, but they don’t always capture what he’s really talking about. Instead, a lot of time and energy is spent on the interstitial shtick between the stories. A silly recurring game of Racist/Not Racist and video clips of puppies are his attempts to reduce tension. Perhaps he doesn’t understand that the tension is what makes each of his stories good. The tension is what draws people in. That’s where the realness lies, and video of a smoking baby is not the way to transition between tales.