Vampire (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!  

Okay this review is late.  No excuses.  As I write this, only one performance of Vampire from the Fuzzybottoms Theater Company remains--I am told it is nearly sold out and so please hurry to get your ticket!

Vampire takes place in the closing days of the first world war, then known simply as The Great War, or (more commonly) simply "The War."  It centers around the struggle of House Dracul to break free of the power of the Council into a modern age, as embodied in Boris Dracul (Kurt Merril) the current leader of the House.  His blood brother Dmitri (Nathan Douglas Shoop) longs for a more primal existence for vampires.  

But unknown to pretty much everyone, a refugee from the countryside named Adriene (Amanda Vidal) is in fact the love child of Dracula (Josh Noori) himself.  She is the stuff of legends, the Dhampir Stone whose power will reshape the age-old war between Witches and Vampires.  Even she does not know the truth about herself, only knowing she must take a certain medicine every single day.  But she has very few doses left, and no money with which to buy more ingredients...

Now that sounds like a cool set-up, right?  It is!  But the full extravagance of this show pretty much must been seen--no, EXPERIENCED--to be fully appreciated.  On the one hand, there's a relatively simple explanation of the show.  It is a very feminist, very gothic, very life action Anime.  I mentioned this description to some cast members and they all laughed and/or nodded, agreeing.  On another level, though, is is more visceral than that, but in a lighthearted way belying the often grim, unsettling subject matter.  Fuzzybottoms had developed the skills to have the most extreme, cartoon-ish (almost) violence on stage complete with splashing of blood spraying into the audience!  Now, this is simply colored water that will wash out with a good rinse.  But it is does make for a startling and goofy way to be part of the fight, to feel the impact of the battles on stage on many, many levels!  

At the same time, lots of folks might find this more than unsettling, but actually triggering.  The depictions of sexual assault, casual murder and cruelty, savage acts of revenge (a few of which had the audience cheering)--these are Adult Fare. 

But that is not a criticism.  Simply a recognition of what many would like to know going in--to see a huge cast of characters brought to live by a very talented cast (April Littlejohn, Alec Frasier, Stephanie Mayer, Karlee Currin, Christine Celozzi, Nathan Bock, Philip Wheeler, Heather Boothby, Amanda Kaye, Meagan Cavasar, Victoria Gluchoski, Christian Thomas, Lex, Valima May, Monaye Moyes, Sean Alan Mazur, Elisa N. Ellis, and Samantha De Galicia) who do what theatre people do best--pretend with all the power of a child, and all the discipline and awareness of an adult.  Then, invite you to join in.

I really enjoyed their last show.  Really enjoyed this one.  Can hardly wait for the next!

Vampire plays one more show, at 5pm October 30 at The Sherry Theater ,11052 W Magnolia Blvd  in North Hollywood 

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Masculinity is a subject I often think on with a roll of my eyes, despite my own gender.  In fact, going on a diatribe about how our images and preconceptions of what the word even means forever remains possible.  Be warned.  Just sayin'

Then The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity appeared, from the Chance Theatre in Orange County, and there's no longer much need!  This play, set in the world of professional wrestling, pretty much says all I would desire.  Kristoffer Diaz crafted a fable on stage, a piece of ritual about a boy becoming a man, and how that process takes a long longer than one might imagine.  Many never really achieve it.  Most of those think they have, but remain frozen like an unarticulated action figure.  They are boys.  And remain boys--children.  Charming when young, tragic on so many levels in an adult.  Director Jeremy Aluma helped make that so utterly crystal, without ever saying it.  Not out loud, anyway.

Macedonio Guerra aka "Mace" (Steven Lihares) tells his story, directly to the audience, about a little boy's dream come true.  He became a professional wrestler.  Along the way, as he shares with us, we meet a variety of others--not least the title character (Duane Robinson), who as a handsome and charming and super-well-built figure is STAR of this show-within-a-show.  Despite the fact he can barely wrestle at all.  

At all.

But that is just part of the show business, right?  Just as other characters (played by Aaron McGee and Matt Takahashi) play their roles, and in the process are paid/used by the tycoon Everett K. Olson aka EKO (Jeff Lowe), a prima donna (or primo don maybe) who wants money and will do whatever it takes.  Into this mix, where Mace is happy and proud, enters Vigneschwar Paduar, aka VP (RJ Navarra Balde II) with the kind of special charisma Mace recognizes as worth GOLD.  He is correct.  

He is not correct, however, in his expectations of what will happen, not least what VP will do and what he'll refuse to do.  That journey is about so many masks being ripped off, torn away, left in the dust--sometimes literally--in the life of our hero.

It is awesome, and humbling, and beautifully sad to watch--and to take part within, since the audience in this show is definitely part of the show.  They play...the audience.  So obvious.  So meta.  So...disturbing.  Because watching Mace one by one lose all his excuses, all his illusions, all the reasons and justifications behind his life--it hurts.  Just as it is so powerful to watch, up to and past that glorious moment when four men forget he's the one who makes them good, when they gang up on him.  Yeah he wins.  But he loses.  And by losing, he wins.

And it hurts.

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity plays Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. & 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. until October 23, 2022.  At the Chance Theater, 5522 East La Palma Avenue, Anaheim CA 92807

The Wild Party (review)

Spoilers ahoy! 

Almost three years ago, I was invited to see The Wild Party, the latest musical from the Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica--and I so looked forward to it!  Then, Covid hit.  But, the folks running this theatre had their plans and they kept to them!

Andrew Lippa's musical, based a poem written in the 1920s, is really almost an operetta.  Like Evita for example it has very nearly no dialogue at all.  Instead we get one intense, entertaining, often startling, sometimes disturbing musical number after another, setting up the event of the title, and most especially our hosts--Queenie (Serenity Robb) and Burs (Hamilton Davis) a dysfunctional couple in the 1920s, a pair who came together like a pair of serpents and then tied each other into a series of emotional and sexual knots.  But when Burs goes too far, Queenie suggests a party.  It will be fun, she says, and he agrees!  Her plan however is to humiliate and hurt him, as part of this dangerous, powerful, ugly yet addictive dance they do.

The party itself makes up the bulk of the show, and of course things do not go according to plan.  Keep in mind this is the 1920s, in the wake of the 1918 Pandemic (the most terrible in history) as well as a what seemed like a never-ending war.  Women were fighting for political rights, new artforms and styles were emerging, racial and economic tensions were sky high, while deep into Prohibition booze still flowed and subcultures defiantly flourished.  Sound familiar?

Central to what follows are Kate (Kaitlin Doughty) and her dashing, quietly handsome beau for the evening Mr. Black (Deonte Allen).  Because Kate, frenemy of our hostess, has the hots for Burs and intends Mr. Black as bait to drive him into her arms, in revenge or a rebound.  Initially Queenie thinks this young man, who feels out of place among this bohemian crowd, the perfect catspaw, even as he himself finds her extremely charming.  

Then, she actually starts feeling something for him, as he does for her.  Worse (or better?) Burs begins to suspect as much.  This might be a way out for them, an escape from the spiral of bitterness and lustful pain at the heart of their life together.  She wonders, can I just leave?  Why haven't I before now?  He in turn wonders why he cannot let her go, cannot even face the prospect.  

As I suspected early on, somebody is not going to survive this party.  It will spiral into all kinds of directions, inhibitions and lies shed more swiftly (if more awkwardly) than garments as the night goes on and on and on.

Again, the music, dance and singing is very nearly non-stop.  It helps create this amazingly decadent world, one equal parts fascinating and repulsive, beautiful and toxic, free and in some ways enslaving.  Through pretty much everything--direction by Kristin Towers-Rowles, music direction by Daniel Koh, choreography by Michael Marchak, fight choreography by Amanda Newman--the party and its members (somehow not really guests) come to vivid life.  The double triangle remains in the center ring of this circus, with all four leads wonderfully alive and real across a range of emotions and situations.  But the entire ensemble do splendidly as well.

Some standouts include Emily Sotelo as the delightfully (?) predatory lesbian Madeleine, Spencer Johnson as the boxer Eddie, and Mirai as Mae, Eddie's mini bombshell of a girlfriend.  These and other characters get solos or sometimes numbers of their own, many of which make a kind of dream sense as the party (and show) continues, with reality slipping away, giving way to the terrifying delights of Truth.  Everyone deserves a mention--Eric Eberle, Sam Gianfala, Jonathon Saia, Steve Weber, Holly Weber, and Kelsey Weinstein. 

The Wild Party plays Fridays andSaturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m  until October 9, 2022 at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre, 2627 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica 90405 

Beach People (reivew)

 Spoilers ahoy!

I want to flatly admit my fandom of City Garage in Santa Monica and of the playwright of Beach People, their latest production, Charles A. Duncombe.

Having said (or written) that, I am also a highly opinionated s.o.b. and have been disappointed by people I admire ere now.

Not this time.  Having gone into the show on opening night with no specific expectations (save what I could glean from the title and the poster image), I sat in the theatre waiting to see what the next 80 minutes would bring.  Think it safe to say I was startled.  Who ever heard of an existentialist rom com?

Anna (Angela Beyer) and Paul (Henry Thompson) sit on lawn chairs near a beach in all their pale, soon-to-be burned glory with dark glasses and dark swim suits.  The first line "It's hot" becomes a point of debate/discussion quickly going to almost absurd lengths.  Anna likes the heat.  Paul does not.  From that point on, we see the problem--and the point of mutual comprehension--with this married couple.  Paul, we soon realize, is afraid of his emotions and finds himself increasingly dazzled/horrified/challenged by a super-intellectualized concept of the universe.  He ponders "infinity" and finds the whole idea personally upsetting.  Yet Anna, her fears and obsessions are on the finite, the intimate, her own imagination spiraling into an avalanche of fears and vocabulary, mostly in reference to Diana (Naomi Helen Weissberg in the opening night performance, Marissa Ruiz in some others), totally gorgeous girl in a very scanty bikini that looks like it might, just might fall off at any moment.

It does not.  This is not that kind of play.  But Anna reacts badly to her presence, even as this gorgeous creature begins to offer some (potentially, maybe) useful advice about how to achieve happiness.  Paul soon distracts with a lot of seemingly endless (ironic that) about infinity, summoning images and scenarios which (of course) he can only experience in the abstract.  

They don't seem unhappy.  Neither do they come across as happy.  Meanwhile one wonders why these two palefaces are at the beach, especially as Diana and Rex (Kasey Esser), an equally bronzed and scantily clad waiter, wander in and out.

What happens next is a bit subtle.  I got it.  Not sure everyone would.  Here it is, for those who might miss what happens next.  Halfway through the play, time goes backwards.  We suddenly are transported back to another day, when this beach first opened to the general public, when Anna and Paul first came there.  When they met.  When Anna's attempts at flirtation stumbled, her own initial reaction to Rex was almost precisely what she will accuse Paul of later.  When Rex coaches her on maybe trying to find a way to attract this man's attention.

This is a fun idea.  More, though, it is a funny show.  Part of that, no doubt encouraged full bore by director Frederique Michel, lies in the physical comedy, both broad and subtle.  For example, Beyer (whom so far I've always seen as a serene and self-assured beauty in her roles) successfully comes across as someone who cannot believe anyone sees her as attractive.  (Oh, girl, I FEEL you!)  Anna's attempts to be coquettish prove so over the top, yet in the end work!  Likewise Thompson as Paul gloriously portrays a lot with a series of frustrating grunts and shrugs, eventually giving way to the anxiety driven egghead in search of meaning amidst a vast universe that doesn't have any!

Or does it?  Most folks miss that about existentialism.  If the universe has no inherent meaning, then we can create whatever meaning works for us.  Is that not hope?  Just as the angst of loneliness and fear, desire and frustration, trying too hard and getting it all wrong--is not that fact the whole reason why we are the only animal who laughs?  After all, we're the critters who need to.  Which, again, is hope.  

Because this is not a play about despair.  The possibility of despair exists, of course, but not the certainty.  Anna and Paul connected once, and if they have stopped or gotten out of the habit, they can learn again.  Indeed, watching them connect in the second half is genuinely delightful as well as silly (and painfully true).  

Hence the closing lines, which seem almost to come out of nowhere and yet emerge absolutely out of all we have seen so far.

Watch the show and find out what those lines are.  You might be as quietly intrigued and pleased as I was.  It remains possible.

Beach People plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until September 11, 2022 at the City Garage, Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Aveneu, Building T1, Santa Monica CA 90404.