2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #15
Please Excuse My Dear
Aunt Sally
Kevin Armento
The Pleasance
From the unique advantage of a cell phone, a riveting,
screen-by-screen, word-for-word accounting is laid bare of an initially
innocent-enough, later totally illicit relationship between a high school math
teacher and a fifteen-year-old student.
Five actors spill the story’s details as seen, heard, read, and intuited
by the boy’s phone in a continuous flow of words. Sentences, phrases, and single words spring
forth from the cast in spoken unison, duets and trios, and solos. Sometimes words are echoed; sometimes,
repeated in staccato repetition; sometimes, tossed about as a ball on a tennis
court; and often, shared in a dozen other manners. Actors step forward to play assigned, primary
protagonist roles, only to quickly fade to become props; to project a picture
on the phone’s screen; to lift another actor high above or catch in a fall; or
to hone in a cluster to get a close look as the phone’s camera to what is
happening that must be seen.
Highly original and deeply affecting in every imaginable
dimension, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt
Sally dares the audience member to look away even for a few seconds,
knowing that some continuous stream of words, movements, and character shifts
will be missed if the dare is taken. The
story and subject matter portrayed in Kevin Armento’s play that was in 2015 a
hit at New Yorks 59E59 Theatre and now in its European premiere at the Fringe
alternately attracts and repels but always commands total attention.
If there were ever an Everyman Teenager, Red is surely
he. Red (Devin McDuffee) is on that
delicate cusp of still boy but almost man, of only a few hairs on the face but
with a body already developed beyond his years, and of looks of resentment when
asked a question by a parent followed by looks that melt his mom’s heart when
he unexpectedly puts his head on her shoulder.
Red’s divorced parents are in a bitter battle, and he is in
usually in the middle. His mom (Sarah-Jane
Casey) fawns over him with her too-big smile and affected speech as if of high
society – that is when she is not nursing her latest cocktail concoction. Dad (Nick Flint) uses yesterday’s dirty
dishes to serve his frozen pizza and spends most of his time with his son
kvetching about his ex, Red’s mom.
Into Red’s world comes a math teacher (Leah Donovan) who has
confiscated his phone over-night because he had refused to put it away, yet
again, during class. From the phone’s
point of view, its teenage contents are just too tempting for the teacher not
to explore in the privacy of her apartment (only when her unemployed boyfriend –
Richard Saudek -- was not looking of course).
A series of pictures of carefully stacked rocks on the beach catch her
attention and somehow causes her to leave him a similar picture, but of
mahi-mahi pieces stacked on a plate.
Once returned, the discovered picture leads to a faster and
faster exchange of texts between 15-year-old student and thirty-something-old
female teacher. With actors swirling
about faster and faster in the telling of the exchanges, intrigue leads to
connection leads to gnawing leads to obsession; and from obsession somehow
springs -- almost too naturally not to believe all is “natural” -- to action.
What is powerful about the play is that the teacher’s
pursuit of the student is never particularly creepy. There is a sense of beauty and
innocence. And that is the truly scary
part of the phone’s story. Seen from
that inanimate, all-knowing/seeing perspective, there is little wrong and much
right about the afternoon trysts at the beach, the holding hands in the car,
the frozen looks and whispers in the café.
But seen from the audience perspective, events become more and more
difficult to watch while impossible, as was noted before, to turn our eyes
away.
Ianthe Demos directs the choreography of the play’s telling
with imagination that goes places only a set as designed by James Hunting and
Olivia Mcgiff can allow him to do.
Movable boxes stack and separate into chairs, walls, steps, or even
tossed balls. Metallic cylinders
connected by bars become tables or axis of a moving car. A rectangular hole in the stage is a place to
hide and to sin or to hide in refuge and reflection. Bars across the stage allow for climbing and
swinging – and again for more escape.
All are enhanced by a lighting design (Mike Riggs) not seen often on a
Fringe stage. Shadows, flickering border
lights, changing atmospheric colors, and many other creative effects spotlight
details and establish entire moods. And
the action of this beautiful but sordid tale is accompanied all along by a
woman with a mandolin relaxing lazily on a swing.
In the end, this is a coming of age story that raises many
more questions than it answers but one that will be remembered and discussed
and troubled over again and again by anyone who sees it. The real question for Red, will this be a
story be someday a source of sweet cherish or of tormented anguish?
Rating: 5 E
Note: “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” stands for a
well-known acronym PEMDAS for the order of mathematical operation:
“Parenthesis, Exponential, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.”
******
2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #16
Crazed
Catherine Cranfield
Ecce Theatre
C
It’s moving in day at the uni, and five friends are
returning to their familiar rented abode, ready to greet the new guy, Milo
(Bertie Gibbs), best friend of Liv (Catherine Cranfield). Liv grabs Milo aside as he arrives warning
him, “These are my best friends (Georgia Phillips as Rosie, Jack Harrison as
Nick, Fergus Macphee as Joe) and I want them to be your best friends and not
sleep with any of them.” Somehow, he,
she, and we all know already this is not advice likely to be followed for
long. After all, these are
hormones-racing-like-crazy, alcohol-downing, normal college kids. So when Milo and Callie (Eliona Ostro) immediately
have eyes for each other, why would anyone be surprised?
In fact, nothing is all that unusual or unexpected in the
first 80% of Catherine Cranfield’s Crazed. The friends drink. They screw.
Then they sniff a little coke, study here and there; and play drinking
games as they drink and screw some more.
But what makes Crazed
an important play that deserves to be staged in university theatres everywhere
is what happens in the final fifteen minutes of the one-hour play. After we have been lured into having a few
good laughs as we remember how we had that same awful hangover back when, after
we recall telling some of the same crude jokes at the expense of our best pals,
and after we played the same strip poker with both guys and gals – after we
have seen ourselves and identified ourselves on this couch and in this house –
drunk Callie says to drunk Milo, “No ... Not tonight.”
What follows in the next few minutes and the next morning
are scenes never to be forgotten and rich fodder for intense, needed
conversations on every college campus today where the topic of “consent’ and
when does no really mean no” is more and more becoming a required and not an
elective topic of discussion.
Rating: 3 E
******
2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #17
Adam and Eve and Steve
Chandler Warren (Book); Wayne Moore (Music)
Max Emerson Productions and Elva Corrie
C
Emerging from a green bush with a sign pointing “To Hell,”
Beelzebub opens with a devilish, delicious number, “It’s All about Me.” And even though Chandler Warren’s (book) and
Wayne Moore’s (music) West-Hollywood-hit musical has a title of Adam and Eve and Steve, as usual whenever
he appears, Satan (but don’t call him that) is quite the star throughout this
immensely fun and clever re-telling of the creation story.
In fact, Beelzebub has figured out how to thwart God’s plan
for creating a marrying mate Eve for Adam and instead sends a playmate named
Steve into the Garden called Eden. Adam
(Joseph Robinson), who has been beautifully crooning with his boyish face and
oh-so-mannish body, “I am Waiting for Someone,” immediately is ready to duet
with his newfound, equally handsome and hunky friend Steve (Dale Adams) in “I
Look Like You, You Look Like Me.”
Eve (Hayley Hampson) arrives a bit confused as she sings
with a voice of Broadway stage quality, “Am I He? Am I She? Am I Me?” and
remains flustered until Beelzebub lures her into biting into a red, round,
juicy apple. The two then joyously sing
with all the new knowledge garnered from the forbidden tree, “Look at
Everything’s This Apple’s Done for Me.”
The love triangle twists and turns in every dimension as
Steve and Eve tempt and then demand in enticing, sweaty voices “Choose Me.” Adam only becomes more and more confused,
since he is probably by this point the first “bi” person on earth, but that
concept has not been created yet. (God
is still trying to deal with the gay that somehow arrived on the scene.) Steve has already done a little side selling
of himself, telling Adam, “I have a splendid idea ... they have a store called
Ikea,” while also singing “All I Want to Do Is Buy Furniture with You.”
Full of both one-liners drawing on Bible times and current
times (as in the likes of Trump, the Kardashians, and Pokemon), Adam and Eve and Steve is heavenly for
all its sexy, titillating, and devilishly funny qualities. Even God (Michael Christopher) gets to make
an appearance, after having made his deep-voiced, echoing presence known
throughout). God joins his ol’ pal from
below in a vaudevillian routine of dance, jokes, and song (“I Wish I Were a
Song and Dance Man”) that brings floods of laughter and thunderous claps from the
audience.
Francesca Goodridge’s direction and choreography may not be
the most inventive or cutting-edge seen at the Fringe Festival in 2016, but she
ensures that the seventy-five minute show flies by and almost ends too
soon. With five actors all having voices
that are strong enough to belt when needed, brightly clear as whistles when
required, and ready to sing a soft ballad to move emotions, this director
cannot lose. Campy at times, close to
glorious at other times, Adam and Eve and
Steve bears coming to get the bare facts about the other side of the
creation story.
Rating: 5 E
******
2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #18
Deal with the Dragon
Kevin Rolston
C
With its three stories told on a blackened stage under a
charred shrub hanging upside down in red light, Deal with Dragon as told by its creator Kevin Rolston sneaks upon
its audience with a seemingly mundane, everyday beginning. The stories then quickly divert time and
again into realms dark, troubled, fantastical, and altogether realistic as the
multi-personality, multi-voiced man dressed in black standing before us tells
them. What should we believe is
possible? What is imagined in a madman’s
head? What is maybe of a world that is
just beyond the daily norms of reality?
Kevin Rolston superbly brings opposing worlds, characters,
and time periods to life before our eyes with a twist of the head, with a
sudden change in voice and countenance, with a mighty breath full of fire, or
with arms that spread as if great wings.
He is Hunter, a contemporary artist hungry for a first commission at
long last and needing but at last resisting the patronage, protection, and dare
we say, permission of the ever-present man of his life, Brenn. A man (or is he?) from the Black Woods of
Europe, Brenn is ready to ensure Hunter wins a two-person bake-off for a MOMA
exhibit of a new artist; but that also means the contract that binds them
together must be followed to its ancient-written letter.
Ghandi Schwartz is the other half of the commission battle;
and Mr. Roston’s almost quarter-hour introduction of this former drug addict as
he gives a presentation to a self-help meeting of alcohol addiction-fighters
could well be fifteen minutes of the most compelling theatre anyone will see at
the 2016 Fringe Festival. Ghandi
desperately wants to escape his sure, almost-sure return to his drug-festered
existence, so much so he would be willing it seems to make a deal with the
devil himself. And that is where a
possible gay hook-up with Brenn in a bathroom may in fact lead him.
Images of dragons and devils, themes of gay men and their
battles with self and others to be who they are, and story lines as old as
literature itself are woven into an intriguing, sometimes convoluted and
confusing, but always fascinating set of tales about how two men learn to Deal with the Dragon.
Rating: 4 E
******
2016 Edinburgh Fringe Show #19
5 Guys Chillin'
Welcome to a “chilling” party, where men take “Tina” and
“slam” meth, where dancing wildly may lead later to every imaginable act of sex
if enough drugs have kicked in but not kicked in enough to leave you on the
floor either convulsing or in a dead-like heap.
Based on over fifty hours of interviews and using what was heard as the
script, Peter Darney has constructed an evening of Five Guys Chilling that is raw to the bare bone, funny in ways
slightly naughty and totally nasty, and both hard to watch and impossible not to
look. This is a sex-and-drug-packed
party heading to an ending like that of so many other such
all-night/all-weekend/all-week parties of some gay men – an ending that will
leave images in audience minds that may never be forgotten but will hopefully
evoke learning and lessons long remembered.
Sex.
Coupling/un-coupling/re-coupling.
Sex. Cell phone checking of
latest Gindr hits. Sex. A lot of campy joking and too many no-so-funny
exchanges. Old friends, long-time
partners, new drop-ins. Honesty ... Hard
and heart-felt honesty. Crying,
comforting, withdrawal. All here supposedly
for sex, but actually all here mostly for the drugs, drugs, and more drugs. And most here to escape those other worlds of
work, pressures of family, or just boredom with life. It’s all so close to the audience that the it
feels as if the sweat of the next kissing, humping, grinding, or
mouth/cock/fist probing is actually your sweat and not just theirs.
This is a play neither for the timid nor just for
voyeurs. It is a serious look by five
accomplished actors at a deadly party phenomenon that has spread among some
factions of both gay and straight (and everything in between) communities. While never preachy, Peter Darney’s dialogue explores
in teaching manners HIV, PrEP, readily revealing one’s status, decisions on
condoms or not, and other topics thrown in that gay men often avoid thinking,
much less talking about. Elliot Hadley,
Chris Cuming, Tom Holloway, Damien Hughes, Michael Matrovski, and Siri Patel
boldly simulate acts, encounters, and persona that leave lasting impressions
and that are often so real that it is difficult to believe that the dust is not
really coke, that the liquid consumed really is not a drug-infused cocktail,
and that the syringe actually does not penetrate the skin.
Rating: 5 E
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