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.

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.