Fringe Festival Reviews: Part IV
'Ex-Gays' plays at Intermedia Arts.
Image credit: Savage Umbrella
Ex-Gays intends every pun
By Morgan Halaska
Considering the subject and setting of the play—a camp in which youth are sent to rectify their homosexual disposition—it shouldn’t be a comedy, or a successful one at that. But camps like Str8-N-Arrow exist and when it comes down to it, the absurdity of their mission is comical. Music Director Patsy (Amber Davis) and Pastor Brian (Carl Atiya Swanson), an ex-gay, go through the motions of their marriage in accordance with social standards and gender roles, and teach campers to do the same. Associate Pastor Kim (Sheila Regan) and Art Instructor Virginia (Rachel Nelson) are unabashedly homoerotic in their interactions, but cannot be together because the Bible tells them so. Underneath the hyperbolized humor, the characters and their predicaments are real.
But Ex-Gays reminds itself of the seriousness of the matter in the closing scenes, consequently putting the kibosh on its exaggerated, sarcastic edge—the play’s real strong suit. The drastic change in mood on and off stage is abrupt but not entirely ineffective; in every good comedy, there’s always a trace of tragedy.
Intermedia Arts
Friday, 8/12 7 p.m.
Sunday, 8/14 5:30 p.m.
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a complicated puzzle for adventurous theatergoers
By Will Wlizlo
Art, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, is supposed to be a rewarding pain in the ass. As one of the preeminent modernists, even Eliot’s most popular works are known for their impenetrability. Any work of art that namedrops Eliot should be just as difficult to wrap one’s head around. Such is the case with Peterjohn’s ambitious adaptation of Eliot’s early poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
The gauntlet is thrown down almost immediately. When introducing the show, Theater in the Round’s house manager asks the audience to “please leave your cellphones on.” Tyler Stuckey—who plays a modern day, information-glutted, twentysomething approximation of Prufrock—begins the performance by seething, “I’ve already accepted that what I’m going to do won’t change a thing for any of you . . . which is why I’m going to do it.” In other words, this performance is all about one-way communication.
Six TVs are arranged in a circle, screens pointed toward each other, at the center of the stage, and Stuckey performs most of his rambling, derivative soliloquy from a busted office-chair in the center. He also uses a laptop, manipulating audio-visual effects in real time. YouTube, iTunes, and other digital media are effectively supporting characters in the production. “Today I almost wondered where pepper comes from,” Prufrock says, “but I looked it up instead.” You can imagine him casting an accusatory cursor at Wikipedia.
Eliot and his contemporaries would probably be enamored with Wikipedia. Many modern novels—Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce comes to mind—revel in intertextuality, sprinkled with cross-references and allusions like a breadcrumb trail through a literary thicket (or like a string of hyperlinks through a digital archive). Appropriately, Stuckey’s Prufrock appropriates the language and ideas from a dizzying, esoteric batch of sources. Prufrock jumps out of his own poem to quote the opening paragraph of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: “I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” He recites Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, staring not at a skull, but at the glowing screen of his laptop.
One of the most poignant references came toward the end of the show, after Prufrock recognizes the crippling loneliness and apathy he feels. He “sneaks” up to the theater’s control board, turns down the lights, and blasts a hip-hop song at full volume. For the next five minutes, Stuckey dances to Tyler, the Creator’s ultra-violent “Yonkers” with mindless abandon. Prufrock has become so desensitized that only the most obscene, hateful stimuli make him feel anything. The isolation of modern life and superficiality of modern relationships has left Prufrock unable to summon even the slightest emotion, except for despair.
Good and bad are the wrong dichotomy for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—often it’s both at the same time. Stuckey’s acting occasionally rings amateurish, and the whole production has the over-ambitious pomposity of an art school project. Then again, the performance successfully dabbled in some postmodern hijinks a la Wallace Shawn. From minute to minute, Prufrock was contemptible or lovable, hyperactive or languorous, confessional or stone silent. It was a challenging performance—to understand, to sit through—but fun puzzle for the adventurous theatergoer.
Theatre in the Round
Wednesday, 8/10 7:00pm
Saturday, 8/13 5:30pm
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Brain Fighters makes kid-friendly magic into all-ages fun
By Quinton Skinner
Here Joking Envelope throws out a tenuous proposition: Three rather giddy folks from another world come to ours in order to impart the story of a planetary battle that arose when its inhabitants discovered they could change form by the simple act of willing it so. The master of this practice is Tool (Joseph Scrimshaw), his acolyte is the tremulously heroic Cupcake (Randy Reyes) and his nemesis is the sanctimonious Baggage (METRO columnist Mo Perry).
It doesn’t hurt that this cast corrals three of the most gifted comic performers in town, and the real challenge comes via Brain Fighter’s age-two-and-up target audience. As the action unfolds amid clean one-liners and wholesome absurdity, one keeps waiting for maturity and darkness to intrude. They don’t. Instead we have an entirely enjoyable story about imagination, magical thinking and the comedic possibilities of the world as a battleground of limited perspectives. And we get to see Scrimshaw physically change himself into the color orange—one among many literally transformative moments.
U of M Rarig Center Thrust
Wednesday, 8/10 7 p.m.
Saturday 8/13 4 p.m.
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FLESH feels cobbled together; still a must-see dance performance.
By Thomas Kwong
At the end of FLESH, producer/performer Tamara Ober stayed on stage and extolled the wonder of the Fringe and how it allowed collaboration between people who might not normally work together. In a way, it explained why the show felt like five talented friends doing individual works instead of a unified show.
The work is composed of five solo pieces from Ober, Leslie O'Neill, Laura Selle-Virtucio, Nic Lincoln and Amy Behm-Thomson. All are well-established names, and each piece is exceptional. However, taken together things start to feel disorganized and lacking any real cohesiveness. There are similar movements and stylistic touches throughout each segment, but these aren’t consistent enough to truly unify the show. One successful point of continuity was between Ober’s “One” and Lincoln’s “Dressage” where the parallel use of shoes on hands with arm movements to mimic legs was incredible on its own—as well as internally referential without feeling out of place.
FLESH is still a must-see. Each piece is strong, and when taken on their own are unquestionably well constructed and masterfully performed. Your best bet is to use the darkness between each segment to divorce yourself a little from what you’ve just seen: Appreciate the next piece from a fresh viewpoint.
U of M Rarig Center Proscenium
Friday, 8/12 4:00 p.m.
Saturday, 8/13 8:30 p.m.
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