A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick

You know how some hyperbolic critics insist that certain performers are so good that they'd be happy just listening to them recite the phone book? Well, it's simply not true. Because even though William Jackson Harper is one of those actors who is easily convincing and charismatic, listening to him level out-of-the-blue accusations about the poor processing practices of Nestle and other water bottlers isn't as enjoyable as Kia Corthron wants it to be. In fact, A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick is so all over the place, that I don't blame director Chay Yew for trying to turn some bits into pure fantasy--he needed to escape the show-killing agitprop.

In the first act, things run fairly smoothly. Abebe (Harper) has come from Africa to pursue an education in America, though we ironically first meet him in the middle of a drought in the US. (The smile on his face as he flushes the toilet--what a convenience!--is priceless.) He's been taken in by Pickle (Myra Lucretia Taylor), a boisterous woman given as much to her widowed madness as her religious squeals. He's also frequently at odds with Pickle's stubborn, atheistic daughter H.J. (Kianne Muschett), who cares little for his ecologist protests against the wasteful industrialization of what should be a free resource (well, it creates jobs for her community) and even less for his missionary preaching (well, her brother and father died because of Katrina, so where is God?). We even see Abebe care for a young, violently orphaned boy named Tay (Joshua King), to whom he has become a sort of big brother.

Everybody is so delighted to be there, especially the infectious Harper, that they gloss over the silliness of some of the scenes, like the way H.J. agrees to let Abebe practice baptisms on her in the bathtub (no, there's nothing sexual about it). But by the end of the first act, things are so weighted with false significance that Corthron essentially reboots for the second: skipping seven years ahead. However, in doing so, she cuts the good parts--the interactions between Abebe's naive high-mindedness and H.J.'s desperate practicalities--and focuses on shallow critiques of the industrial complex that are justified in their accuracy, but dramatically unjust. H.J. is religious now, which seems to have sapped her of her opinions, and Pickle isn't crazy with grief, so there's no more faces popping out of cabinet walls (a neat effect with Kris Stone's set). As for Tay, he's gone, which tells you how important he was in the first place. Instead, we get Keith Eric Chappelle, first as Abebe's dead brother, Seyoum, floating in a symbolic African river straight out of The Lion King, and then as H.J.'s ex-husband, Tich: in both parts, he's just going with the flow.

There are still charmingly clever bits, with Abebe scaring everyone with his driving skills en route to a baptismal spring, or with his buried missionary spirit, flailing a basketball around as he tries to repair what should be an eternal union between Tich and H.J. But--ironically for a play about water--they're drowned under Corthron's unsubtle significance: that spring has dried up because of the evil bottlers; instead of setting up Tich and H.J., Abebe rails against the man for doing the inventory at the Nestle plant, and even simple comic scenes in which Pickle keeps sneaking Abebe slices of cake are interrupted by the sound of tractor trailer horns pulling in and out of the industrial plant. We get it, we get it: the shadow of industry looms darkly over everything, even when we don't realize it, and we may never realize how valuable water and other natural resources are to us until they're gone (or far more expensive). But if the only way you know how to demonstrate is to pollute your own show, to create a dramaturgical drought, then you're not part of the solution--you're part of the problem, and it's a shame, because there is so much that's otherwise good in A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick.

Tuesday Night Poker

Hold on a second: posters of Jaws, The Warriors, and an MTA subway map, a poker table with a few chips, some cards, and plenty of Colt 45 . . . are we sure Tuesday Night Poker is a play, and not just a poker game between frat brothers? Oh, wait: Brennan (Matt Brown) just came on stage, and he's talking to a cop, Daughtery (Che Walker)--with that bit of heavy-handed foreshadowing out of the way, this is pretty clearly a play. Luckily, when the show sticks to its actual title--the regular Tuesday night game these five friends have been playing since their college days five years ago--it's a fairly good, energetic, and organic play (fresh enough to bring back flashes of Blair Singer's The Most Damaging Wound). And that's as it should be: it was developed by the cast, and it wouldn't be surprising to learn that some of the more vivid anecdotes--about the lurker in the bathroom, or the vomit queen--were straight-up memories.

It's unclear how much editing Jon McCormick (who is credited with the script, but not the story) and how much directing Ray Virta (who often has characters upstage themselves, or stand idly about) have done, but let's credit them with the excellent pacing of the actual poker scenes, which not only serve to quickly establish character, but make you want to go over there and ante up. It's as Beta (Nick Hulstine), the family man of the group who tries his best not to curse, says: "Good hands don't win pots, good players do." And these are largely good players, particularly Delta (Mike Hauschild), the whinger of the group who has a soft spot for ursology, and his rival Alpha (Adam Couperthwaite), the short-fused one who thinks the world is against him: he even accuses the sports video game he plays of "cheating" against him. As for the other two, McCormick seems to have shortchanged his own character, Chi--the easy-going rock of the group--but at least plays him extremely well. The same can't be said for Brown, who never gets a grip on how to play the killjoy straight guy of the group: he keeps weighing the show down with unearned significance instead of living in the moment.

This is not to argue that Tuesday Night Poker shouldn't strive for meaning. Nor is the central plot unrealistic, with Alpha convincing his four, equally unsuccessful friends to rob bars with him. Those scenes are actually funny, because this is by no means a well-oiled or hardened group of toughs. The problem is that after playing so much of the show for laughs (and rightly so), the neo-noir interruptions with Daughtery are hard to take seriously (there's a jazzy brass playing in the background), as is the big finale, which starts with easy, impactless resolutions, and ends with the unfortunate choice to stage the climax off-stage. This is Texas Hold 'Em, not blackjack: your aces can't be ones and tens, and there's no wilds. Ultimately, the cards speak, and while Tuesday Night Poker aims to portray a full house, it ends up with just a respectable two pair.

metaDRAMA: Why So Negative?

Flavorpill, picking up the thread of Steve Almond's reflexive look at the use of negative reviews, posts this "Defense of Negative Reviews." The point of theirs that I really agree with is #4: "Keeping the critical conversation lively and diverse." I started blogging here (and editing for Theater Talk's New Theater Corps) because I wasn't seeing any of the shows that I saw getting covered anywhere else, and to me, that spoke to a lack of diversity in the critical conversation. I also wasn't finding many young critics, which spoke to the apathy of my generation toward theater, but also to the under-representation of my demographic in ensuring that shows like Looped don't clog up the stage.

The goal would be, then, to do whatever it took to put the word out about worthy shows--though I soon found that I couldn't write nothing about shows that I didn't like, and moreover, that I couldn't lie, either, accenting only the positives, or presenting them in disproportionately to how I felt. Eventually, I settled on the idea that as a critic, I would simply stick with One Man's Honesty--not an end-all-be-all summation of the show, but as clear a critique as I could manage of what I liked, disliked, and most importantly, WHY. (This is also why I used to write about the need for a Metacritic of the stage, and why I was delighted by StageGrade.) The hope, of course, would be that others would chime in and discuss, or take me to task for what they disagreed with, as with the lively back and forth about Inge's The Killing here.

Anyway, although the Flavorpill article is mainly about music, here's what I take from that:

1. A critic should be a fan.
You've heard this before in critiques of, say, Charles Isherwood: "so-and-so doesn't even really like theater." I'm hoping this is rarely true, but especially now that money is vanishing from the theater community, you really shouldn't be writing about a subject unless you really love it. This doesn't mean that you need to like every type of theater--I don't much care for burlesque/cabaret and I'm overly fond of clowns--but if seeing a show is a commitment to you, your writing is going to sound like that of a man desperate for a divorce, but too fearful to ask for one: passive-aggressive shit.

2. Fuck snark.
I wrote about this last week. It remains true, and often reflects my first point. This isn't "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all"; this is, by all means, say bad things--but more importantly, explain bad things. The artist is, by nature, surrounded by people who support their work; what's important, then, is for the artist to be able to hear honest, unbiased critiques of it. At the same time, we're reflexively over-defensive, so for your comments to be effective at all, you can't give the artist a reason to simply tune out.

3. It's all about the experience.
A lot of reviews I read--and admittedly, write--describe the show. Depending on our backgrounds, that may be in a way that focuses on the script, or on the actors, or even on the aesthetics. That's all well and good, but it's crippling theater, which is more than just the sum of its parts. The gut has been, ironically, gutted from a lot of mainstream reviews because it doesn't fit house style, or because the editor has a "just the facts ma'am" approach to anything that goes in a newspaper. But it's crucial that we find a way to preserve and provoke the feelings that we encountered while seeing a show: it's not easy, but it's important that we at least try. Often times, we may discover, in the process, what we really thought of a show, particularly some of the complex experimental works that may otherwise leave us at a loss for words.

The Soup Show

Photo/Lauren Sharpe

Though both shows are a mix of gimmicks and truths, the biggest difference between The Soup Show and The Vagina Monologues is that the former, with its blend of non-illusory neo-futurism and revelation, is more sincere, more daring, and more specific. Both sample from the wide range of difficulties women face, quoting from a large pool of found text (a Disembodied Voice), but The Soup Show largely avoids anonymity, focusing on the specifics of creators Desiree Burch, Cara Francis, and Erica Livingston. Under the direction of Lauren Sharpe, it's also filled by well-paced action--including some audience interaction--that makes the show more immediately compelling (and far less tame) than Monologues.

The biggest difference, in other words, is not that all three performers are fully naked throughout the show, and that's as it should be, since to sum a show up by something that's really not that shocking after all would be pointlessly reductive. Or, as Livingston puts it at the opening of the show: "Don't assume you know me by this, this nakedness. I will show you who I am, but this is not it alone." For them, their nakedness is proof that they're not hiding anything, a high point in the unabashed repertoire of the New York Neo-Futurists.

Taking their structure from the medicine shows of old, each "scene" is based on a freak-show attraction, at the end of which, an "elixir" created during that performance is bestowed upon an audience member. After the vaudevillian Sword Swallower number, in which Francis sings about a formative experience with "good old fashioned cock," she hands a bottle to someone "for strength." During the Hysterical Woman, the actresses run the gamut of derogatory jokes against women ("What do you tell the woman with two black eyes?" "Nothing, she's already been told twice."), but from the comfort of an inflatable tub/cauldron at the center of the stage, sipping tea as they do so. The show is constantly upending expectations, most effectively during the Mermaid, which mocks pageantry: here, for the first time, they are dressed up, and here, for the first time, they skirt the truth (during the Q&A portion of the pageant), forced smiles plastered across their faces. It's funny because it's true: the women we crown "beautiful" are those who avoid, at all costs, the truth.

Under that banner, even the weaker scenes, like the Human Pincushion's "Burch 2010" politics, redeem themselves with open arms and honesty, literally: "What if you had simply opened your arms and welcomed in someone who needed it?" Furthermore, thanks to the rapid pace of the show, there's always something new: this scene's preceded by the Conjoined Twin, in which Burch speaks more directly to her own relationship "issues" (not necessarily problems), and to the ideal "dreamsicle wedding" she longs for. Even scenes which some might deem crude--like Francis's meditations and demonstrations of douching--are crucial, often leading to surprising revelations. "Why do we listen to voices that just come from nowhere and make points or offer suggestions when the real smart thing is the body, 'cause the body does." Cliches like witches? Not so easily dismissed when they're up on the stage, or when you consider that as many as nine million women (and men) may have been killed for simply being wise in an unsanctioned way. (Like The Soup Show cast.)

Since The Soup Show claims to be a medicine show, let it be judged as one: these are no snake-oil salesmen; their performances really are miracle curatives. Don't miss it.

Somewhere in Between

Though the context of Ryan Sprague's title ends up being a last-minute poetic turn to the audience, it's an apt description of his bi-polar play, Somewhere in Between. At first, everything's passive-aggressive and held close as Greg (Erik Gullberg) visits his brother, Joshua (Jeffrey A. Wisniewski). Then, with the arrival of Joshua's wife, Lissa (Ariel J. Woodiwiss), things loosen up, for this Christian-rocking, volunteer-crazed wife isn't afraid to speak her mind. Finally, by the end of the play, things go full-on crazy, with a LaButean twist that squanders some of show's the well-earned drama. In other words, the best parts of Sprague's play are stuck in between parts that don't work so well.

Luckily, though there's nothing particularly new about Somewhere in Between, Sprague doesn't skimp on the little details. So though we don't know at first why Greg's come to visit his brother, it's telling that he hasn't brought a coat--or any bags--with him to wintry Chicago. Likewise, there's a lot to be learned from the way Joshua offers him his coat, and by the look Lissa gives him for doing so. The banter is cute, too: when Joshua explains that Lissa finds him "colorful," Greg's resentfully jokey response--as if he could be reduced so easily--"What am I, a box of Crayolas?" (It must be in their blood: they get a laugh out of Lissa's favorite color, chartreuse.) Moreover, Sprague seems aware of his weaknesses: Joshua, who is mainly a device to get Greg and Lissa in the same room (no offense to Wisinewski), spends most of the show on a conveniently timed business trip.

So, to that excellent middle: Lissa is distrustful, whiny, and quite holier-than-thou, especially when it comes to Greg's checkered past as a jailed drug dealer (never mind that he also cared for his dying mother after Josh fled). However, when he shows up drunk in the middle of a blizzard, she can't just turn him away--nor, as we soon see, does she really want to. There's a bit of a bad girl in her, which she shows by raising Josh's forty of beer with her own petite glass of wine, and she's interested in the fact that he always says what's on his mind. Even though bold brothers and repressed wives have become the modern version of Chekhov's gun (if you put them on stage, they'd better go off), Sprague takes his time, building on the foundations of real curiosity, and through that, real audience interest. It doesn't hurt that his dialogue is also funny: the first time she slips and says "ass," Greg's there to congratulate her on "graduating to PG-13," and the looks from both the confident Gullberg and the innocent Woodiwiss are priceless--especially as their roles start to reverse.

The cross between the cliche and the original, and between the dead portions of plot and the crackling bits of a relationship, is what leaves this between being a good play and being a bad play. It's not aided by Elyse Handelman's cryptic set--an abstract series of cardboard shapes?--but it's not hurt by Brian Letchworth's crisp-but-loose direction. Ultimately, it's exactly what it says it is: Somewhere in Between.