Battlesong of Boedica 2023 (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!

(and lots of misspelling of the name "Boudica")

First mounted for the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2022, Battlesong of Boedica impressed me so much I put it on my "Top Ten" for that year.  It has been remounted, and my short review comes down to one sentence:

They did it even better!

If you don't know, Boedica was a Queen (or War Chieftan) of a Celtic tribe in Britain during the reign of Nero.  Faced with oppression more than she and her people will tolerate, she raised tribes in revolt, destroying London then slaughtering hordes of Romans until at last falling in battle.  The stuff of great story-telling, indeed.  More, though, in this case that story is told with all the matter of theatre one could hope for.  Dance plays a major role, as do masks (telling of course how ALL the Romans wear them, while the Britains do only rarely).  Combat itself becomes a dance, while the raw theatricality of it all keeps growing and growing.  At one point, Boedica herself (Jen Albert) dares to summon a Goddess of Battle, brought to more-than-life in a uniquely theatrical manner (and btw better than anything Weta Workshop or CGI could ever hope).  

What I describe sounds like spectacle, and indeed this show is that and more.  Be warned--plenty of violence, some extremely gruesome, some of it frankly triggering (the worst, thank all the gods, off stage--yet just as horrific).  

Yet without a story full of real people, what's the point?  Boedica begins as a harshly practical ally of Rome, having to persuade her husband Prasutaugus (Daniel Admonian) to put up with the company of a Roman Governor.  But in the wake of her husband's death in battle, fighting Druids in the name of "civilization" which kills its own citizens for sport, Boedica's home is looted, herself literally whipped and her daughters sexually assaulted.  

And war erupts.  I want to emphasize how almost every named character, from the Roman officials in their careless arrogance to Boedica's daughters who embrace yet sometimes question their mother's quest, even to relatively minor characters like a Celt challenger to Boedica's leadership, the young warrior in love with one of the Chieftan's daughters, the official looking at the wreck of all he believed permanent and inviolate, all have individual arcs, all we see live emotional truths--see and recognize those truths (in once instance, startlingly funny). 

The consistency of all this earns kudos to the writer/director Christopher William Johnson, as well as the entire cast--Christopher Neiman, Tristan Rewald, Dawn Alden, Allegra Rodriquez Shivers, Colin A. Borden, Lucy Schmidt, Tom Block, Jack TenBarge, Payton Cella, Jesse James Thomas, Sara Gorsky, Frank Tirimacco, Brad. D. Light, and Dan Wingard.  All to this Chloe Madriaga who accompanies the entire show with drum and other percussions.

More than Lord of the Rings and the entire Star Wars saga, more than Game of Thrones this grand performance deserves the epitaph "epic" not least because it stirs the imagination the way film almost never can.  I actually found myself moving in rhyme and rhythm with the the dance of war.  Likewise the hair on my skin rose more than once, and I tasted the despair of both the Romans and the Celts as each approached their doom.

And one leaves the theatre, remembering Boedica.  As one should.

Battlesong of Boedica plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm until April 29, 2023 at the Hudson Backstage, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038.

Content warning -- Blood violence, whipping, suicide, depiction of animal sacrifice and verbal description of sexual assault.

Cabaret Macabre (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

The last show I reviewed prior to start of the pandemic was an earlier iteration of this very burlesque, at the same venue.

Cabaret Macabre at ZJU consists of a series of dance pieces, most of them ensemble in some way (with some dazzling, disturbing solos) with a very gothic sensibility and sense of humor.  Under the direction/choreography of Brittany DeWeese, the entire cast offers a real tour-de-force not only of dance skill, but acting, and integrating both together.  This makes for no small feet!

Previous viewers of this show will probably recognize two pieces which have been done before--a triangle of preaching and temptation involving a preacher and two women (one of whom might be a lesbian succubus, maybe kinda/sorta), and the wonderful tangle of danger coupled with sensuality titled simply "Poison" (to a personal favorite tune).  

There are so many wonderful things I could try and describe about this show, the naughty hautiness of the our mistress-of-ceremonies, the ballerina whose insane smile hints at her spider-esque contortionist skills, the amazingly spooky solo between a dancer and a shadow, all done to a slew a songs such as "These Boots Are Made for Walking" and "Hotel California".  In fact I just did that.  Just as I will praise all the cast:  Michael Baker, Suzette Labra, Elle Martinez, Samantha Steiniger, Darian Stranix, and Bailey Swogger.

But the bottom line remains this is an amazing one hour show for anyone with an appreciation for dance and a wicked sense of humor.  I took a friend when seeing it this time, someone who's fairly new to Los Angeles.  He was dazzled, amazed, and delighted.

Odds are your reaction will be the same.

Cabaret Macabre plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30pm until May 28, 2022 at ZJU Theatre Group, 4850 Lankershim, North Hollywood CA 91601.

Love Sucks! (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Love Sucks, the latest entry from the True Focus Theater, proves to have a slightly misleading title. Appropriate, completely so, but given the tenor of our times maybe we expect a harsh condemnation of how relationships go wrong.

This proves to have nowhere near so narrow a focus.

Directed by Vanessa Cate and Angie Hoover, Love Sucks turns out to be a series of vignettes in different forms -- scenes, poetry, pantomime, dance, even a ten minute play by Cate I'd seen before (one of the perhaps three plays such length I've ever thought genuinely good).  The choreography in various pieces from Natalie Hyde and Cheryl Doyle showed a real power, and in the former's case (whose dancing I've seen for years now) an impressive pushing at boundaries.

Photo credit: Vanessa Cate

Sometimes what we saw was hilarious, for one reason or another. I'm still trying to figure out what special chemistry made Tucker Matthews singing a pop song (straight--he did nothing overtly funny) so very funny.

Another particularly hilarious bit had not a word of dialogue, but told the simple (okay not simple but incredibely perverse) story of a blind date that seems like one of those instant moments of clicking between two people.

Other moments were sweet, at times very sad.

Yet other moments, scenes and things shared with us other--sometimes very strange--aspects of this compulsion we seem to have, to find someone with whom to share the loneliness, to taste the days and nights together. Why do we do that, one might wonder? Is it really so instrinsic to human nature that we seek out someone, looking for that perfect companion, that other side of our wounded soul?

Photo credit: Vanessa Cate

This play doesn't seek to answer that question. It rather explores the beautiful foolishness, the silly and horrible mistakes, the hunger we keep trying to fulfill one way or another. We see a breakup so terrible and humiliating we want to crawl under our chairs--yet we laugh. How very human.

Remembrances of love gone away, for one reason or another. Unrequited love creating a seemingly hopeless triangle, which then becomes something...well, crazy. Maybe. But it might work. We'll never know.

It all seems very familiar, though. At least it did to me. Because even though my life has not had nearly as much romance as I'd've liked, this all rang true. Very nearly too much at time. The experience I find most powerful in any form of drama is recognition of myself. A promiscuous lesbian, a loser lying about having crabs, a young man kept as a slave, a married woman yearning for the girl she left behind, a gay man hopelessly in love with a straight one -- what Love Sucks made me feel was how each of these were me. Each of them were all of us, if only we'd admit it.

Love Sucks plays Sundays at 7:30pm at Zombie Joe's Underground Theater, 4850 Lankershim Blvd (just south of the NoHo sign)., North Hollywood, CA 91601 until August 30, 2015.  Tickets are $15 and in my opinion well worth it.