THEATER: Better Left Unsaid

Photo/JP Yim

Perhaps younger demographics and changes in our future will turn this unsavory combination of social media and live theater into the next pairing of chocolate and peanut butter, but right now, Better Left Unsaid, the "first of its kind, interactive, live-streamed play" belongs firmly entrenched in the "But why would you want to" column. Yes, you can buy a ticket to watch high-quality video, mixed from the theater's four cameras, in real time . . . but why would you want to? This is no spectacle, no must-see play, no real experience. And yes, you can comment on the proceedings -- a sort of passive interactivity -- and theoretically "chat" with the audience during intermission . . . but why would you want to? It's not as if this straightforward, jam-packed soap opera demands any real thinking from its viewers; if it did, you'd be too engrossed to type. (And, if the two hyped-up, empty comments from the night I attended are any evidence, that wouldn't be much of a loss. Some things, and I say this with exactly as much irony as is intended, are better left unsaid.)

Writer/director Joey Brenneman's "innovation" (or, more appropriately, "appropriation") is a clear case of putting the cart before the horse when it ought to be focused on getting back to basics like "plot" and "development." Instead, she throws everything at the wall, crafting bland, short, five-to-ten minute long scenes that advance the plot, leaving her cameras to do all the framing and contextualizing. In Central Park, William (Dathan B. Williams) catches up with Maggie (Jennifer Dorr White), with whom he once had a one-night stand; simultaneously, Carla (Jessica Arinella) helps her sister Luisa (Kathryn Velvel Jones) care for her baby, and then runs into Scott (Miguel Govea), an old boyfriend she once semi-stalked. This isn't coincidental enough: Scott's friend, Lennie (Monique Lola Berkley), turns out to be Maggie's daughter (you can guess who the father must be); because Lennie's a nurse, she's there when Luisa's husband, Nick (Craig Waletzko), gets into a car crash with his mistress, Sandra, and tries to get his friend, DJ (Marcus Ho) to help him cover.

Characters don't behave in any consistent sort of way; rather, they exist to help tie these strands together. Lennie announces that she wants to adopt, which causes her mother (who raised her on her own) to freak out and trot in William. She then tells Scott that she's going to adopt Sandra's unwanted baby, which leaks out to Carla, who -- for no discernible reason -- decides that she has to tell Luisa, considering that the kid is her brother-in-law's bastard. In neither of these cases do we explore why Lennie, who works constant triple-shifts, wants to be a mother, nor why Carla, who has kept the secret about Nick's affair and Luisa's own crush on DJ (yes, there's that, too), feels it necessary to spread this particular secret around. Of all the things better left unsaid, "why" is not one of them; of all the things actually said, Scott's confession that "This is a Lifetime movie" comes closest to the truth. (It's more like four Lifetime movies hugging it out.)

There is firm ground in the play: scenes between the squabbling Luisa and Nick actually have rising and falling action, and, unsurprisingly, showcase the strongest actors. That's because they've got something to fight for -- a marriage -- as opposed to characters like DJ and Maggie, who just sort of pop up to present temptations, obstacles, and plot points. The same goes for Brenneman's technical innovation, which just sort of pops up (literally) to present Better Left Unsaid a means of marketing itself. Yes, you can market this show . . . but why would you want to?

Short-a-Day: Alice Munro's "Axis"

Originally published in The New Yorker, Jan. 31, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 91.

One of the many nice things about Alice Munro as a writer, beside her effortless ability to sculpt recognizable characters, is that she welcomes surprise. "Axis" is only a seven page story, and yet in that span, she covers fifty years in the life of Avie, detours to explore the relationship between Avie's friend, Grace, and her brief relationship with Royce, and also throws in a bunch of details about what it was like for farm women to attend college (where most simply looked for a good husband) and adds a cryptic dream sequence involving the entombment of a troublesome baby: "'Nothing to be done,' this lovely, kind girl [the second daughter] said. The abandoned daughter knew no way of life but the one she had and, anyway, she did not cry anymore; she was used to it." There's the sense that, while Munro is grounded enough to always stick with the small dramas, such as a parent catching you in flagrante delicto, the story itself might veer off in any direction, at any time, while at the same time maintaining that these departures will not merely be scenic; indeed, the end of the story, a chance encounter between Avie and Royce, braids all those supposedly loose ends together. 

He remembered whispering to Grace the day before when they were doing the strawberries, kissing under the rush of cold water when her mother's back was turned. Her fair hair turning dark in the stream of water. Acting as if he worshipped her. How at certain moments that had been true.

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THEATER: What the Public Wants

Time and again, Sir Charles Worgan (Rob Breckenridge), the manager/publisher of dozens of newspapers in England tells us that, as a businessman, he isn't concerned with the ethics behind his shock headlines and exclamatory articles. The people want war-mongering rumors and scandalous criminal tales, and who is he to deny them their fix, especially when it lets him run a million copies of his flagship, The Mercury, each day. But the more Charles bellows, the harder it is not to see him as a mouthpiece for playwright Arnold Bennett, especially since he keeps repeating the play's title: What the Public Wants. Cameos from a dramatic critic and theatrical manager (both played with great gusto by a huffy, supercilious Jeremy Lawrence) drive home the point that Bennett isn't interested in generating a good play, just as Charles doesn't care about making a good paper: he just wants to cater to his 1908 peers, and to that end, writes a casual, repetitive, and obvious bit of polemic about the divide between the highbrow "elite" and those who really matter -- everyone else (i.e., the public).

Director Matthew Arbour does his best to find a variety of notes in the production, and when that fails, cautions his cast to at least speak rather quickly (a choice which left a few of the actors tripping, rather charmingly, over their own tongues). After all, beyond the leaden exposition between Charles and his brothers, the artistic and worldly Francis (Marc Vietor) and the scientific and homegrown John (Douglas Rees), there is a dramatic plot: Charles's sweet (yet peculiar) attempts to marry a bad actress, Emily Vernon (Ellen Adair), with whom he sees an opportunity to enter the intellectual circles that have shunned him: "Oh, you've got to feel awkward, and so have I," he says, forcing himself to propose to her, though "love" is one of the many things he finds himself unable to discourse on.

It is hard to believe, however, that there is any sort of public that, after two intermissions, would sanction the choice to jump to a new setting, to introduce new characters that are almost comically flat in their irrelevance, and to repeat the arguments it has spent the previous two acts making. It's especially disheartening, as it robs Adair of the power and argument she needs for her climactic fourth act showdown with Charles. Couple this with Breckenridge's talent as an actor -- he plays wounded, prideful, and dashing all at once -- and we're left with an unbalanced finale. Even the Mint's set, designed by Roger Hanna, fizzles out: Charles's office is so large and sparse that the characters are rarely forced to actually interact with one another, and the swiveling interior of John's library is notably artificial.

On the upside, the Mint's revival is a timely affair, one that will likely resonate with its knowing audience. After all, in the past hundred years, the media has only grown more similar in its businesslike emulation of Charles, veering away from reportage and the sometimes forceful enrichment of its readers and into the pandering punditry that can stir up a steady circulation of readers, facts be damned. It is in that eerie prescience, and Breckenridge's unabashed portrayal of a man longing to prove himself to the elite that he regularly trounces, that What the Public Wants grows closer to (while still falling short of) being what the public -- and the theater -- needs.

THEATER: The Momentum

Photo/Max Ruby

There's something inherently appalling about self-help seminars: the idea of a super-serious guru getting up on a stage and telling you that they can radically Change Your Life because they have The Secret doesn't seem much more practical than the wisdom of fortune cookies and horoscopes. In fact, the whole thing begs to be mocked, particularly if there's an element of truth to the lecture, for it's far easier to laugh at others than to focus on one's self. That's what's so interesting about CollaborationTown's The Momentum; it begins as a full-on parody, but over the course of the next hour, turns into something serious, at which point the only sign of the show's Fringe origin is its low-budget "set" (three chairs) and a few momentarily troubling transitions (an out-of-place song jumps to mind).

Things get off to a speedy start, as Boo Killebrew and Jordan Seavey introduce their fellow lecturer, Geoffrey Decas, with a round of rather forceful and overenthusiastic clapping. Decas follows that up with a series of more-and-more exaggerated actions and metaphors ("You'll feel like a dolphin that just killed a great white shark") and a variety of calmly expressed non-sequiturs ("I know the meaning of rope"). Before long, we're being encouraged to "tell those storm clouds of anger thoughts to rain elsewhere" as the three performers speak as one, their every move a carefully considered bit of blocking, each smile a trembling, artificial thing.

Before long, however, the deadpan starts to bleed away, as if the cast members are cultists who have snapped out of their brainwashing but are too terrified to break character, and their struggle between selling "The Momentum" and believing it becomes the highly comic hook of the show. (It also demonstrates a great deal of facial comedy, particularly with the show-stealing Killebrew, whose mimed handling of a "hot potato" could be a play in of itself.) The more specific the play becomes, as during the "Pain is a Myth" section, the less we laugh at these characters, and the more we laugh for them. The show ends with a triptych of (seemingly) personal monologues, each told in the second person, that wouldn't feel out of place in a Neo-Futurist show, as Seavey talks about overcoming his nerves to return to the dating scene, Decas finds a cause worth fighting for, and Killebrew, in a heart-breaking monologue, details the six-month aftermath of a brutal breakup.

This show probably won't change your life, but under the guise of some earnest comedy, it may ring some chords on your heartstrings. It's no mistake, after all, that The Momentum ends with an admonition to "Be still, and know that you are here."

THEATER: Room 17B

Photo/Jim Moore

In 2008, the troupe Parallel Exit was nominated for the Drama Desk's "Unique Theatrical Experience" award. Their latest show, Room 17B, suffers in comparison: not only is a great deal of their mostly silent shtick derivative, but the content aims for a comfortably light evening of what can only be described as "parlor theater." The four-man ensemble is in on it, with xylophonist extraordinaire Mike Dobson pulling off the best of the straight faces (a tightly up-drawn smile and a pair of wide, petrified eyes), but that only makes you wish the gang were doing more than inviting the audience onstage for a (rigged) game of musical chairs.

Room 17B is best when playing to the surreal expectations of Maruti Evans's file-cabinet filled set and to the introductory promise that "Anything at all could happen." Indeed, the actors attempt to cram inflated balloons and pour folders filled with sand into the drawers and in return pull out tubas, paper bags, and nooses, delighting in their surprising discoveries and unconventional uses for them. But they settle, far too often, for light antics: despite targeting a few audience members for a "Random experience," the four of them simply stare down the first person they come across, an act that looks to discomfort and/or amuse them more than anyone else. Laughing at their own intentionally clumsy attempts at magic (a trick with a curtain and a hat; a disconnected light bulb and chain switch) goes only so far; they end up exhausting all our good will within the first fifteen minutes (of what's only an hour-long show). At one point, they teach us that "Comedy = Pain + Time + Distance + Surprise"; in playing this formula merely for laughs, they miss the opportunity to actually apply it to what ends up being a lackluster cluster of skits.

In fairness, director Mark Lonergan and co-creators Dobson and Joel Jeske don't claim to be breaking new ground. Jeske's solo mime acts, right down to the meticulous application and triple-checking of the fit of his hat, will be instantly familiar to those who enjoy Bill Irwin's mild-mannered clowning. As for the two remaining cast members, Brent McBeth is an impish, rubbery little fellow, and he's well-matched by the tall and explosive Danny Gardner, whose slow-motion meltdown as an ice-cream-truck driver who can't stand the sound of his own jingle is a highlight of the evening. But just as their program is cluttered with irreverent facts, the show is a hodgepodge of talent that aims merely to amuse. How else to explain the inclusion of a knock-knock joke, told by Monkey and Tiger masked actors, speaking gibberish Chinese? Anything at all could happen, but the group plays it so safely, so tightly, that nothing very interesting ever does.

[Update: Okay, Dobson plays a marimba, not a xylophone. Who knew there was a difference?]