"Best of the Fringe: Part II," published in the NEWS of Delaware County, Sept. 12, 2007

The Philadelphia Fringe Festival continued through its first full week, with productions that ranged from the lackluster to the spectacular. Since the bad ones aren’t worth writing about, here’s some of the best I’ve seen:

Drexel Hill’s Music and Motions dance group’s performance of Red exploded in a series of color and movement, displaying a vibrant versatility of styles that incorporated and fused ballet, jazz, hip-hop, and gymnastics. Here, Stephen Weisz’s choreography showed a creative mastery of these genres, both in elegant and moving duets and dazzlingly complex group numbers. Why he’s not earning more money directing music videos is both a mystery (his hip-hop pieces were energetic and alive in ways you won’t find on MTV) and a testament to his artistic devotion to the future of his craft.

The Fringe is often a place for works too controversial and challenging to find theatres willing to take a risk on these productions during their regular season, and this year’s festival is no exception. New York’s Stone Soup Theatre Arts troupe led the more challenging of these works with their production of Edward Bond’s Stone. Bond’s play draws the audience on an allegorical journey that fuses vaudeville song and mythic writing (not to mention a striptease), in an existential look at the apparent futility of life. A fascinating production, with Chris Wild giving the best acting performance I’ve seen at this year’s Fringe.

Diving deeper into the controversial, New Jersey’s The Riot Group presented the world premiere of Adriano Shaplin’s Hearts of Man. This compelling new work takes a stance on which few theatres would risk offending their mostly moderate audiences: the notion that Megan’s Law and cyber task-force stings—the kind featured in the “To Catch a Predator” series—often ensnare lesser types than the hard-core pedophiles, and in those cases do more harm than good. Shaplin’s play sparkles with lines of true poetry (he was the first playwright-in-residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company), and Riot Group’s Stephanie Viola and Kristen Sieh give powerful and heart-rending performances as the legal team trying to defend the worst cast-offs of society.

I’m split on my best pick of the week, neither of which posed a controversy, and both of which fall into the category of musicals. Philadelphia’s BCKSEET Productions played their rock and roll Hung on a Blonde Ponytail, about the tragic (and I don’t use that word lightly) breakup of a rock duo on the eve of their greatest success. Brilliantly structured as a mystery, the exhilarating performance of Greg DeCandia (singing his own lyrics), features original compositions by Joe Horak in an evening that explores the often devastating history that lies in the life behind an album. With better quality singing and songs than you’ll find in any current top 20 lineup, I can’t recommend this performance enough.

But Brooklyn punk legends World/Inferno Friendship Society gave by far the hippest show I’ve seen at this year’s fringe in Addicted to Bad Ideas, their punk rock operetta about the life of troubled actor Peter Lorre. Their ninety-minute set took the audience on an odyssey through not only his life, but also the styles of music—ranging from swing, jazz, blues, and rock, and from big band to punk—of the entire 20^th Century. Jack Terricloth’s charismatic singing fused the silky voice of Brian Setzer with the mesmerizing fury of the Sex Pistols, backed up by an overpowering nine-piece band of horns, percussion, and electric guitar. Though their run already ended, catch them on their return tour through Philadelphia on Friday, Sept. 21 at the First Unitarian Church, for what will probably be the most invigorating and wildest show of the season.

Review of "Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical," published by EDGE Philadelphia

Poor Debbie Benton. She’s got a great life as captain of the cheerleading squad, and a chance to make the Dallas Cowgirls when she graduates. However, her parents consider cheering a form of “outdoor burlesque,” and won’t help provide the money she so desperately needs to relocate to Texas. What’s a girl to do but form her own company (aptly named “Teen Services”), and bleed the pockets of all the sexually frustrated and lonely men in town?

When I was in high school, all the cheerleaders worked as cashiers or waitresses. Then again, my life (regrettably) didn’t follow the plotlines of a 70’s porn classic.

Such though, is the story of Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical, the hit off-Broadway show written by Erica Schmidt and Susan Schwartz to Andrew Sherman’s music, now performed by To The Wall Productions as part of the 2007 Philadelphia Fringe.

However, the only overlap lies in the plot (there’s no nudity), and only the goofiness of the piece matches the style of a 70’s porno, except with much better music. Schwartz and Schmidt wrote this as a send up, and director Dawn K Cowle treats it as nothing less. After her first encounter (“Ten Dollars Closer to My Dream”) with frustrated adults willing to pay far more than minimum wage for what girls now give away for free on spring break videos, Debbie (Kara Senich) pauses philosophically to remark, “I suddenly feel as if everything is clear to me and I know how I must live.” The ridiculousness builds by degrees from here, as the girls slowly take offers for teen services from all of their various bosses, and song and dance numbers become just so much hysterically simulated sex on stage. Even the sensuality is contrived, as the leering of the adults more resembles Mr. Furley than Jack Tripper. (Sorry, can’t help with the 70’s references here.)

And while DDD contains a few oblique references, both literary (to the Scarlett Letter, no less) and political (one of the girls longs to run for Senate, and worries that she needs a spotless background to enter politics), most of the humor requires a less urbane audience background. Due to the nature of the show, most of those seated in Sister’s nightclub this evening were 20-something members of Generation Porn, all of whom laughed in full comprehension at the jokes, having no trouble understanding the reference during a water-gun fight when one of the girls mock-erotically cried out, “get it all over my glasses.”

Thankfully, Cowle never lets an opportunity for humor go unused, and makes this musical as much about a porn film as Legally Blonde represents the legal field. A few rare intrusions of semi-serious sentimentality (when a voice-over announces, “and now, a song from the heart”) break the mood with no real effect, and display the only moments of awkwardness in a thoroughly ridiculous send-up. Of course, too much of anything wears thin, but by the time Debbie’s plot takes its last twist—having her give up her virginity for more money than she could dream of—this cast has so successfully created a spirit of ludicrousness onstage, that the self-referential attempt at the fringe festival becomes more of a nuisance than a joke. (Not that anyone stopped laughing though.)

Although this show might not make Senich a star (it’s one of the jokes), this production should certainly bring some much-deserved attention to everyone in the cast. Senich delights in her bubbly, naïve portrayal, and an impressive ensemble makes a wild evening out of this material, with Caitlin Reilly (as the future first lesbian Senator Tammy) and John Greenbaum (in multiple roles) delivering hysterical character-based performances.

I hope that Cowle restages this show later in the season—hopefully in a place with better sightlines—so that larger audiences can better see the wild physical humor of this show, and experience the smash production she’s made of it. Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical was some of the most fun I’ve had at this year’s Fringe.

Review of The Riot Group's production of Adriano Shaplin's "Hearts of Man," published by EDGE Philadelphia

In his preface to Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov wrote that there are three subjects that modern society won’t tolerate in art: a work that depicted interracial relationships, a work that glorified the life of a degenerate, or a work that non-judgmentally (or favorably) dealt with the (sexual) relationship between a grown adult and a young person.

While changing social norms reflected in books, plays, and movies have shown the acceptance of the first two, I think it’s fair to say that the last topic still remains a taboo in art.

Or, as Adriano Shaplin’s Hearts of Man’s criminal defense attorney states even her reluctance, "I don’t do politics, and luring’s a politicized crime."

In Hearts, a police sting arrests the mid-thirty-something Rabideux (Drew Friedman) attempting to meet a 14-year old boy after dozens of suggestive online chats that they’ve recorded (and conducted). The initially self-serving DA (Paul Schnabel), goaded on by the lead detective (Dennis McSorley), the media, and the community activist leader of "Jill’s Group" (Tara V. Perry), indicts him on every possible charge. Rabideux’s sister Kris (Kristen Sieh) interns at a law firm, and convinces crusading defense attorney Vicki DeFazio (Stephanie Viola) to take the case.

Most people who go to the theatre wouldn’t think twice about condemning even a potential child offender, even one who’s engaged in online luring only (reinforcing Nabokov’s point). Yet Shaplin’s play takes the opposite approach entirely-indicting everyone but the perpetrator for their self-righteousness, their gun-jumping approach to justice, and their leering voyeurism in the popularity of programs like "To Catch a Predator."

But Shaplin’s also very careful to draw his character and his crimes in a way that not only implies potential innocence of a man victimized by an overzealous police sting, but to craft the language of the internet chat’s in a highly ambiguous not-clearly-sexual manner. And his play argues (much like an essay argues, but not always like a play argues), that anti-child endangerment programs and Megan’s law often ensnare lesser types than the hard-core pedophiles, and in those cases do more harm than good.

For such odious subject matter, this is a very compelling new work, especially in this world premiere by New Jersey’s The Riot Group (as part of the 2007 Philadelphia Fringe Festival).

Shaplin’s obvious gift lies in his use of language to shape characters, which ranges from the coarse, streetwise vernacular of the detective, to the Biblical alliterations of his Chris Hansen tele-clone Rex (Friedman, double-cast), to the intense, near poetry spoken by DeFazio. Phrases like "you log one half a dirty phone call and call it police work" mingle with "I knew these laws were wrong, but I hid and did nothing...and now I must defend those human remains whose corpses even seagulls would avoid" to create an effect that’s half Law & Order, and half C.S. Lewis style religious prose drama.

For the most part, the actors underscore the text with sincere, nuanced performances. Friedman is just pathetic (and guilty) enough as the alleged predator, while McSorley presents a cantankerous, too-funny-to-dislike detective. Only Schnabel fails to present a convincing role in his DA, either in his reticence to push the case, or his half-hearted attempts to get the media to back off when he barks, "the law is not your sentiment."

However, the women outclass all of the men in this production, though not enough to provide a noticeable imbalance, as Perry’s roles all line up morally opposed to the parts played by Sieh and Viola. Perry shifts effortlessly through multiple, disparate roles, and Sieh’s concerned, yet doubting sister gives an insightful haggling of her emotions from denial through rationalization, while still making the audience feel her shudders when faced with a brother who may have tried to lure a teenager into his bed.

Yet it’s Viola who gives one the best performances of the entire fringe in her attorney’s mix of Christian zeal and legal righteousness. Her quick, nervous movements across the stage generate more tension that what’s on the page, and she makes her final sequence of scenes a heart-rending experience to watch as she crumbles under the weight of the "you’re fucked either way" statutes set up to condemn any defense of these offenders.

Regrettably, it’s this aspect that Shaplin didn’t focus upon more in his play-the frustration experienced by many (mostly drug offenders) slammed by a prosecutorial system in this country that indicts defendants with "attempted" and "conspiracy" charges on top of the actual acts themselves-all in an effort to railroad them into pleading guilty to a lesser charge. Instead, he veered off course to indict too many other sources-the media, the internet itself, the "Jill’s group" type community activists-all of which diffused the injustice initially brought about by the overzealous laws and their highly politicized enforcement.

The play ends with Rabideux, arriving back at his apartment, after pleading guilty (and receiving a long probation) to a lesser charge, only to find an activist has already posted a flier labeling him as a sex offender all over his neighborhood. Rabideux’s guilt remains indeterminate, and I’m inclined to pity him for the self-inflicted wound he’s put on his life, but not because he’s suffered an injustice.

This is partially the fault of the story, and partly the fault of the playwright. The plot never let Rabideux defend himself in a trial, and his early protests of "I didn’t do anything wrong" aren’t the same as innocence. However, Shaplin errs in trying to do too much (the whole media indictment became one monologue of a dead end), and as a result, only touches upon the source of the potential injustice he wants to point out, alerting us to a problem like a town crier vaguely saying, "there’s a fire...somewhere."

Review of Uncut Productions "Assembly: Junior High," published by EDGE Philadelphia

What do you remember learning from junior high school assemblies? “I learned that I should be scared everywhere I go” answers one of the students emerging from the first half of Uncut Productions presentation of Mark Dahl’s Assembly: Junior High. After listening to songs about “the terrorists among us,” getting raped in cyberspace, and watching 1950’s sex-ed and safety films re-edited for maximum effect, you’d be scared of everything too.

But this is the theatre, and this is the latest work from Uncut Productions, the local masters of all things satirical in Philadelphia. So while the characters on stage get frightened out of their tidy-whities and training bras by the educational performing troupe “Scare Tactics,” the audience nearly falls out of their chairs with laughter.

Split into two halves, the play starts with the principal’s announcement for all students to meet in the auditorium for an “emergency assembly” designed to shock and horrify the students—conveniently occurring right after the school has subjected them to the latest rounds of personality tests borrowed from the FBI. This slightly eerie beginning quickly explodes into hilarity, as the five-member crew of “Scare Tactics” performs Dahl’s original songs that parody the Pledge of Allegiance, Homeland Security and the lurking dangers that are only one mouse-click away.

The second half of the show shifts its tone to focus on five junior high students, one from each decade—from the Eisenhower fifties to the Clinton nineties. These students struggle to cope with first periods and crushes, sexual and drug experimentation, and their identities, gender or otherwise, with all of their (mis)information filtered through the lens of the various assemblies and school films by which the first half has educated them. The result, of course, is one of awkward missteps, ignorant malice, and general confusion—students mistaking bulimia for morning sickness, and Chlamydia for flowers.

Carried forward by humor, the highlight of the first half was Dahl’s “The Ability Song,” where a wheelchair bound member of Scare Tactics laments his condition, and where the lyrics (rightly) skewer our society’s current means of inducing tolerance in children by celebrating the unfortunate circumstances of the handicapped. Joining him in song, a girl with flipper arms (from her mother’s thalidomide use) delights in resembling a goldfish, and a boy with one giant sized foot proudly announces his success in kickball. Just when I was writing in my notes “this is the kind of genius that made Avenue Q possible,” out comes one of the members of Scare Tactics attached to a puppet representing his conjoined twin, gleefully boasting of a difference that in class "lets them see 360 degrees.”

The heavily re-edited school films do no less justice to Uncut’s brilliant multimedia work, particularly Jena Serbu’s original short safety film, “The Buddy System.” For those who aren’t aware of the efficacy of partnering to avoid danger, Serbu shows two kids, hand in hand walking through a playground filled with snipers and machine guns, walking unscathed, protected from all harm by following the rules. It could’ve been Philadelphia, or Baghdad, in either case, in an age of terror and violence-filled streets that requires something better than sleep-inducing propaganda, her film provided a moment of much needed, hilarious insensitivity.

Of course, Dahl does have a slight, though sinister message hidden in his play. The hesitant and unsure behavior of Act II’s Junior High’s students stands as the direct result of witnessing the very types of assembly spouted drivel and films presented in Act I. We can laugh at them, but for five decades worth of kids growing up on this paternalistic pulp, the results aren’t nearly as funny.

If only the two halves weren’t so disparate. I loved Assembly, and could tell from the ever-ascending pitch and volume of laughter that the audience loved it too. And while certain parts of Junior High both evoked laughter and clearly disturbed (a woman behind me blurted out loudly, “this is so wrong,” when Dahl’s 80’s Valley Girl described her bulimia as “Karen Carpenter in reverse”), overall, I think everyone kept waiting, as I did, for the second half of the program to reach the tenor of the first.

Otherwise, the entire evening seems like two plays linked by location and Dahl’s theme of the deleterious effects of institutionalized ignorance. The brilliantly over-the-top satire of the Assembly strikes almost painfully against the Junior High’s more muted tones, so much that they don’t even appear as written by the same person, but rather a collaboration; one half fashioned by a satirical genius, and the other crafted by the painstaking efforts of a historian.

In this regard, Dahl’s play is still a work in progress, though I wouldn’t have missed Assembly for any other show in town. The writers of the Onion could not have done more justice to this first half than Dahl’s songs (and a highly talented pair of ensembles) so cleverly achieve. And no artistic directors in Philadelphia slaughter the sacred cows of society with as much verve and hilarity as Dahl and Serbu, and no show at the Fringe made me clutch my sides in laughter as much as the first half of Assembly: Junior High. See it.

"Best of the Fringe: Part I," published in the NEWS of Delaware County, Sept. 5, 2007

The 11^th annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival kicked into high gear over the Labor Day weekend. Bringing the spectacular, the wild, and occasionally the truly bizarre productions, the 2007 lineup features all the elements of the live arts in both seasoned productions, those on the verge of major success, and young companies just starting out and testing the waters with new works.

This year’s festival offers over 170 productions, with artists from all over the country, and removes as far away as Vietnam, the Congo, and Europe renting every performance venue in Philadelphia available (some even appearing in the street, or in one case, in the backseat of a car). Scattered among this nationwide and international artistic representation, several Delaware County based artists and arts-ensembles will ply their trade during this year’s Fringe.

My Fringe weekend kicked off seeing Upper Darby based actress Meghan Heimbecker appear as part of a stellar cast in 11^th Hour Theatre Company’s production of “Six of One.” This chamber musical by Paul Loesel (music) and Scott Burkell (lyrics) deals with the friendships and relationship struggles of six people on the verge of turning 30, still trying to figure out how to handle the interpersonal disasters that plague their lives. Strong performances from the cast, combined with the clever and often funny lyrics make this exploration of trial marriages and pre-mid-life crisis memorable.

Two Lansdowne Improv groups gave back-to-back performances, which will continue next weekend. Tapestry Theatre presented the two-woman show “Cecily and Gwendolyn’s Fantastical Balloon Ride,” an improvised adventure about two English women (Karen Getz and Kelly Jennings) travelling through time and space to seek out the lost heir to the British throne. Taking cues of places and objects from the audience, while forcing them to participate, Tapestry’s production provides great fun, and is highly recommended for kids and families.

Lunch Lady Doris practiced the art of “long form improvisation" in their impressive (and regularly sold out) show Sunday evening. In their performance, five comedians take a simple suggestion from the audience (song title, childhood memory), which they quickly turn into a series of sketches ranging from the absolutely hysterical to the surprisingly sophisticated and poignant. Their hyperactive wits and effortlessly sharp timing definitely impress in one of the most entertaining improv acts I’ve seen anywhere.

The local improv theme will continue next weekend in “LEAP! The Actor’s Improv Experiment,” where Havertown’s Ben Lloyd joins a cast of some of Philly’s best actors in a ten-day improvisational comedy boot camp. Local improv coach Bobbi Block (part of Lunch Lady Doris) will force Lloyd and four other actors to drop their script addiction, and learn how to create a compelling text seamlessly and out of thin air. Look for this to become one of the most interesting (and best-attended) Fringe productions. Lloyd and the others can certainly act, having several Barrymore Awards amongst them, and I can’t wait to see what they will do without any lines to read.

However, the best show (by far) I’ve seen in the first few days of the Fringe hailed from a little outside Delaware County, in the Philadelphia based Brat Productions show, “Fatboy” by New York City’s Fringe co-founder John Clancy. In Fatboy, South Park collides with Michael Moore in a piercing satire of modern America’s imperialist ambitions, the average consumer’s infinite desires that drain the globe of resources, and the U.N.’s inability (if not complicity) in doing anything but offering to get someone a round of drinks. Suitable for voters of any stripe, politics fall by the wayside here, as the over-the-top crazed performances and blitzkrieg humor of the script catapult the audience through Fatboy’s wacky quest for world domination, driven onward by his insatiable appetite for pancakes and bacon. An absolute must see.

Review of "Batch," published by EDGE Philadelphia

Those who see a work of avant-garde theatre and don’t get it, often refer to the intellectual gap that lies between the mind of the artist and the more common understanding of the experience their art describes. Sometimes this common judgment contains a note of accuracy and rightful condemnation, at other times, the artist has truly broken away from society and pioneered a new pathway of understanding that humanity must now tread behind and follow.

Most often, those complaining against the artists are referring to works like Alice Tuan’s BATCH: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacle, now in production by New Paradise Laboratories (NPL). However, in Tuan’s case, a condemnation of her artistic dissonance is completely justified.

None of this condemnation stems from Batch’s failure to titillate the audience, or attempt to display the kind of reckless hedonism that takes place at these parties (though personally, this play counts as one more example of American Puritanism in art; in Europe, families with children wouldn’t hesitate in attending this play).

The fault of the play lies in its inability to move away from mere surface level exploration of the concepts presented as comprising a typical Batch party. Though Tuan litters her play with images, references to, (and occasionally acts) of bisexuality, hermaphroditism, remorse, wantonness, etc., she fails to achieve any greater integration of these into some exploration of a deeper concept or theme (such as the will towards self-destruction, transgression, Dionysian impulses, etc.). Instead, Batch plays like the Ph.D. dissertation of an academic who sits in her armchair and uses her imagination to explore the "concepts" of a bachelor/ette party, while never attending one of these drunken spectacles in person.

Sorry, but sociology, literary theory, and psychology can’t properly substitute for art. NPL makes a wicked attempt to get into the psyche of Batch’s participants through image, sound, concept, and multimedia memories, but the actual result is flat, as concept laden and untranslatable into real experience as an MRI of the brain. Both cases show what the mind might be doing, without showing the sensory phenomena of the actual experience itself.

To give another example: a voiceover punctuated each of Batch’s various rounds, making inane statements like "Batch: a time machine where time stands still," and "Batch: a place to create memories you may not want to remember." As satirical send-ups of Vegas ad slogans they’re inconsistent with the attempt of the play; as real expressions of the character’s mental states or intentions, they’re just one more inane portrayal of the mindsets of the participants. In either case, Tuan confirms her distance from her subject matter, treating concepts as genuine attitudes.

Moreover, the most interesting concept of the night-the notion that the affianced couple "haven’t even touched each other at all"-Tuan leaves completely undeveloped, setting it as a mere sentiment or boundary for understanding, if as anything at all.

I can’t blame the performers for any failure in this production. I’ve rarely seen a group so committed to their craft, particularly Aaron Mumaw (the groom) and McKenna Kerrigan (the bride), the latter of whom gave an absolutely dazzling performance. Whoever they might be offstage, all of them dissolved completely into their onstage personas, with no awareness of any reality save that of the text and each other.

Nor can I fault Whit MacLaughlin’s direction, with his hyperkinetic movement and energy, testosterone-charged attitude, and applied mix of aggression and sexuality. Moreover, I’ve never seen a better-orchestrated or enacted set of multimedia segments woven so seamlessly into a play.

When I walked into the theatre, the set and lighting directors had already achieved an intoxicating mood, one that could’ve by itself engendered a work of genius. Disco balls and trance music spun in the background, and a raised boxing platform surrounded by rows of chairs dominated the stage. Huge multimedia displays hung behind the chairs on all four sides, and a recording showed Mumaw walking through their frames looking inward, giving the audience a knowing smirk. Kerrigan appeared on the stage, barefoot in a red party dress, fingers crossed on one hand held behind her back, shooting flirtatious smiles at the audience, occasionally taking enough time to let her thoughts and gaze return to her parading fiancé. Waiting for the production to begin, I prepared myself for one mind-fuck of an evening.

But the evening devolved quickly from there. Sometimes, the (artistically) healthy experience of thousands doesn’t need an artist to come along and break it down into concepts, especially a play that became not just a simple (and tolerable) deconstruction, but a work by a playwright who took the totality of a batch party and reduced it to the level of an algebra lesson.

Review of "Sweetie Pie," published by EDGE Philadelphia

Many playwrights dream of rewriting a Greek tragedy, updating the plot and forces of fate to the conditions of modern life. Adapting the plot becomes a minor problem, altering the characters and storyline to fit contemporary life. The hard part lies in generating a tragic effect-motivating the plot and characters in such a way that the audience experiences a sort of terror and despair at the end of the play.

Yet this is what Philadelphia playwright Madi Distefano attempts in Sweetie Pie-a 21st century punk rock retelling of Sophocles Oedipus (with an early smattering of Romeo and Juliet to kick start the action).

In Sweetie Pie, seventeen-year old lovers Joey (Tobias Segal) and Barbara (Melissa Lynch) inhabit the same precocious world of their contemporaries, with a slight twist: she’s the rebellious daughter of a rich, powerful (corporate? mafia?) tyrant, he’s a runaway living in an abandoned warehouse in Metro City. Strangely enough, she’s still concerned enough about Joey’s future to insist that he get a job to support her-after all, she’s pregnant-but not so pregnant as to take hits off a pipe (crack? pot?) in between her persistent nagging.

Nonetheless, they’re both smart enough to realize that what they’ve found is The Real Thing, and they make a vow, cutting, then tying their wrists together to exchange blood in a pledge to always stay together. Dad (Tom Tansey) finds out, locks Babs in the basement for nine months, has the baby disposed of, and gives Joey ten grand to leave town on a funded, though permanent exile. Joey leaves reluctantly, reciting his pledge to find Barbara again and live out their lives together.

Of course, this is where the problem begins: no one believes in vows (or believes that others will uphold them) enough to maintain them over thousands of miles and two decades, especially when you never hear from the guy again. And sure enough, sixteen years later (a very awkward, poorly effected transition), Barbara, now Bebe (Distefano), has grown into a minor local punk rock celebrity, attracting runaways as groupies, and moving on with her life, at least where new lovers are concerned.

One of these young hangers-on is Mark (Segal, double-cast), who, in classic Oedipal style, falls for this idealized version of womanhood (for him at least), and when she rebuffs him, he (through sheer passion, since that’s how it’s done, of course), masters the guitar and wins her admiration in due course. Bebe takes him under her wings, produces his first album into a huge success, he becomes the type of famous she always wanted for herself, and half the Oedipal prophesy (never made in Sweetie Pie though) comes true-as the son’s now sleeping with his mom.

Meanwhile, Joey (Tansey, also double cast), roams the land, writing songs and performing self-deprecating open mic night comedy about how miserable he is without the young girl he still loves. Eventually, he straggles back to Metro City, and encounters Bebe on a fire escape outside a club. She spurns him for leaving, he accosts her for going on without him, and Mark witnesses the tail end of it, enraged enough to fulfill part two, and make his way down the iron railing to knife his (unbeknownst to him) father.

An investigative journalist pries too deeply into events, uncovers Mark’s past (abandonment in a trashcan), and Bebe begins to put two-and-two together (which still requires the ad hoc device of a dream to become wholly clear). Though able to cope with a life of frustrated ambition, she nonetheless kills herself during a concert, at the subconscious suggestion (no proof) that she’s, well, with her son. Mark races in, sees the corpse, and having enough (of this play?), gouges his eyes out to see no more.

Faithful to the plot? Absolutely, and a brilliant updating at that, intriguing and capturing my attention throughout-though mostly to see how Distefano pulled off all of Sophocles elements (and I loved seeing her well-integrated chorus in a modern play).

Entertaining? Wildly so at times, and terrifically funny, especially whenever Tom Tansey wandered across the stage, either picking born-to-lose fights with drunks, or performing (if that’s the right word) songs about the emptiness of his life without Barbara. Moreover, Lynch gives the very image of bulldog-like tenacity in her teenage rebel, and Segal’s Young Joey is humorously pathetic enough in his whiny playing against her.

But tragic? Unfortunately not. Too much tongue-in-cheek humor spoiled the tragedy, the one aspect I thought Distefano was really shooting for in her play. There’s nothing wrong with laughing at misery on stage, half of the theatre (comedy) is predicated on that notion. However, Distefano’s play, and John Clancy’s direction failed to make an overall tragedy out of the script.

(Which is why I couldn’t treat this review any differently than I did.)

If only both of them had taken this play either more seriously (or less so). Clancy could have succeeded far more in engendering an overall tragic effect if he had treated the material with greater sincerity-not leaving out the comedy, but not letting it become over-the-top either. Clearly, he could’ve gotten more out of Distefano’s portrayal of Bebe as well. She does a great job muddling her response while playing a woman strung out on booze and Xanex, but by not displaying real emotions when faced with Joey’s death (or even in her envy of Mark’s success), she lessens the impact of her play’s tragic attempt.

Great use of language dominates the script, both in the individual actor’s lines (Barbara’s Father threatening young Joey by spitting out, "you will pay the price of being a teenage boy with a cock"), and in the chorus, who describe events as "burning like hot cum on a whore’s stomach."

But the language never translates into tragedy either-for which some loss, or sense of inevitability, or set of decisions that could’ve been altered but weren’t, is necessary. Along the way, Distefano tries to insert at least four different attempts at this into her script, but they’re either inconsistent or underdeveloped, no matter how poignantly written or well effected by the chorus.

For whatever it is, Sweetie Pie isn’t a tragedy. Someone has to care, or see themselves in these people for that to happen. In Sophocles version, he almost made it easy for himself-picking an adored King in time of crisis, blinded only by his overly confident arrogance toward the world. When a Greek audience saw that the gods laid low someone so noble, using him almost for sport in the fulfillment of fate, there was reason for everyone in the audience to feel terror and woe.

However, in Sweetie Pie, Distefano chose a pair of junkies, inhabiting a subterranean offshoot of what’s already a marginal subculture. Certainly, people identify with their story-particularly the young lover episode that began her play. But she develops no real sense of loss, has it played poorly by both herself and Segal (as Mark), and litters the script with too many jokes. In the end, the notion that Joey’s, Mark’s, and Barbara’s lives constitute a tragedy falls far too short of believability

Review of Uncut Production's "Disaster the Musical"

“You’re going to have to prove that you are undoubtedly sane, and singing songs about disaster is not going to help.” So echoes the theme of Disaster:The Musical!, the brilliant theater and multimedia work-in-progress brought to the Fringe by Uncut Productions. In this biting satire, the story follows Brea Bee as Kelly Depooter, a starry-eyed and hopeful American who wanders about the globe from one disaster to the next, trailing the fictional DNR news crew in her quest to achieve fame as a news reporter, find true love, and stave off an insanity that threatens to ruin her. Staged in what felt like a U.N. disaster-relief tent, this piece takes a penetrating look at the news media’s sensationalism of tragedy, and devastating effects that such a desensitizing attitude can bring about.

The humor in this piece could not have been any more on target. Imagine the comedy of The Daily Show coupled with the political commentary of Orwell, and you get some idea of what Uncut presented at the Fringe. In between every staged episode, a simulated news cast flashes upon a large screen above the stage. Here the audience bears witness to an over-sexed and flagrantly insincere parody of Dan Rather in Mark Dahl’s “Mr. Stone;” a mocking portrayal of Ann Coulter in Brenda Logan’s “Julie Junck;” an “I-feel-your-pain” manic-depressive (and hilariously over-the-top) “Susie Whinfrey” by Crystal WhyBark; Newel Gatrell as the hysterically bitchy fashionista “Micheal Knight;” and Scott Yelity as “Scotty G,” who takes nothing seriously, using each disaster as an excuse to steal from victims, flirt wildly, and get drunk. This ensemble works together brilliantly and seamlessly, as they deliver one send-up of events after the next. The material is written so well that the only surprise comes from how much the audience laughs at this cast’s satirized portrayal of the tragic events that unfold.

This commentary on the media is where Disaster succeeds most, as this production captured the false hyper-reality of television’s persistent pretension of seriousness. Touching upon Chernobyl, the Ebola outbreaks in Africa, AIDS, Columbine, Waco Texas, and the Asian Tsunami disaster, the DNR crew shows up, takes pictures, and pokes fun at the victims before returning home to provide the “serious” commentary for their viewers. On the beaches after the Tsunami, they pick the pockets of their victims, take “wish-you-were-here” style photographs, and find the tragedy of thousands of deaths in the singular loss of model Petra Nemcova’s photographer boyfriend. Yet this is only one example of the contrast Disaster provides—showing brilliantly that all journalism does anymore is find the sensational in tragedy, just so long as the people affected are not us. They drive this point home towards the end of the first act, when they touch on but refuse to deal with the 9/11 events—giving a showstopper if there ever was one, with Bee mingling mourning and hope as she sings of the victims, promising not that we will never forget them (a patriot’s cry), but that we will always remember them with our love. One of the best moments of the piece, this contrast interjected into the satire completely devastates, as it mercilessly forces the audience to realize that half the joke of Disaster is on them.

As a musical, the production consisted only of Bee (and the ensemble) singing familiar hits, ranging from Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” to “Buttons” by the Pussycat dolls. But this apparent lack of originality on Uncut’s part only enhances the musical’s theme. Bee plays a young woman on the verge of an insanity brought about by the culture in which she lives, so it makes sense that she could only understand her own feelings through the popular culture that defines, reinforces, and allows her to interpret them. The choices of some of the songs presents a slight problem in this regard (would she have known a song by the Bangles?), but the intent only further skewers and illuminates the degenerate impact that the media has on people’s lives. Bee shows a real dexterity in her wonderful voice, which completely obscures the fact that hers is the only character that sings in this piece.

The play only broke down at the point when it shifted from the satire in an attempt to focus on the subplots of Kelly’s relationship with Mr. Stone (still funny though), or with Knight’s very real concern over the tragedy of AIDS, or Junck’s nasty competitive feud with Kelly. Uncut managed some of these elements better than others, and the lapses here only reminded that they presented a work-in-progress for the Fringe. The unfinished aspect of this work detracted slightly throughout; leaving the news team as underdeveloped stereotypes, plot elements lacking integration, and an ensemble of dancers that does very little. But these flaws go mostly unnoticed in a production that succeeds so well as clever political satire.

Disaster The Musical! doesn’t so much make a point, as it illustrates an idea—fleshed out in the very self-defining understanding of events in one woman’s mind, dictated to her through the lens of arrogant media sensationalism. In the second act, she goes mad, and the question Disaster invokes is not why this happens, but how even the most cynical mind could escape her fate. I hope that Uncut Productions takes this piece and fleshes it out fully, restaging something more polished, focused, and finished than the flash of brilliance they presented at this years Fringe Festival. Disaster is one of those rare new productions that works.