SPOLETO BUZZ BLOG

Well, thank god that’s over.

Last night’s two back-to-back productions of our collaborative short play showcase at PURE Theatre, A Perfect Ten, was fun and all, but I must have been insane to schedule it for the middle of Spoleto’s second week. What was I thinking? If you noticed that my daily blogging updates have dipped in recent days, it’s because I was acting in a short play written and directed by PURE ensemble member David Mandel called “Type Against Type,” as well as directing my own short play, “Eight Grand,” which involves a menacing Mexican immigrant, a loquatious loan shark, a hapless poker player, an Xbox, a partly paid-off Chevy Tahoe, a semi truck with a false bottom, date rape drugs, and a pizza. (If I can figure out how to post a PDF of the script here, I will.)

Spoletoblog’s Dan Conover came by the 9pm show, which was very cool of him, and he writes about it on today’s blog. Like Dan, I’d love to see us put together some more of these types of things at PURE’s excellent little black box theatre (in the Cigar Factory at East Bay and Columbus) in the future. But not necessarily during the middle of Spoleto again.

If you haven’t yet been to see a play at PURE Theatre, you don’t know what you’re missing Every local theatre company has its strengths; PURE’s lies in great acting, a versatile, intimate space, and cutting-edge, contemporary scripts that are both entertaining and provocative. They’ll be producing David Mamet’s classic play about small-time crookery, American Buffalo, this July. Mark your calendars, because you want to catch it. Trust me.

Here’s a photo of PURE ensemble members R.W. “Smitty” Smith and David Mandel rehearsing “Eight Grand” before last night’s performance. These guys rock.

I had no idea going into Tuesday night’s Scheer and McBrayer show that Paul Scheer is the kinda-strange-looking, gap-toothed guy who makes pithy comments on any of VH1’s endless “I Love The …” and “Best Week Ever” shows. So it would be safe to say that when I realized this, I did a bit of inner groaning (never thought he was one of the funniest commentators). However, I was swiftly proven wrong once he and Jack McBrayer launched into their almost nonstop-hilarious 45-minute improv set at the American Theatre. Scheer’s portrayals of numerous characters in one skit (including a wonderfully-accented Kelly Clarkson imitation) were totally unexpected and quite a treat. Like many of today’s young comedians, they’ve figured out that a little office humor goes a long way; McBrayer’s portrayal of your typical 20-something “dude” at the office and Scheer’s 40-something guy realizing he’s wasting his life away (trust me, it was funny) earned enthusiastic (and empathetic?) claps from the audience. These two make a great comedy team, with McBrayer’s Everyguy adorableness providing a perfect foil for Scheer’s more eccentric vibe. Two thumbs up, see them before you make an ass out of yourself trying to figure out how you know Scheer (”Hey, did you work at the Dairy Queen in Fayetteville or somethin’? I SWEAR I’ve seen you before…”)

Bill Davis and I had words about his review of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, in which he panned their Thurs., June 2 show. I went to see the Trachtenburgs on Saturday afternoon, and despite a few technical glitches that seemed to plague them throughout their run at the festival, I was highly amused and entertained the whole time. Jason, the dad, was effortlessly funny and cute in his nebbishness, and Rachel, the 11-year-old drummer/daughter, ably handled the drums AND singing harmony in her tiny child’s voice. The slides were funny and the stories Jason told added that extra zing to the proceedings. I’ll definitely be seeing the Trachtenburgs again the next time they come through town, technical problems be damned!

–Sara Miller

Brandy Sullivan, one of The Have Nots! at the American Theater running that group’s Piccolo Fringe, tells me they’ve just added a show to Tiny Ninja Theatre’s Hamlet. The additional show is this Thursday, June 9 at 5pm. Tickets are $15 and there’s no late seating. Tix can be bought at the American Theater 45 minutes prior to the show.

There was a moment during the festival’s second weekend when one might have plausibly suggested the most buzzworthy aspect of Spoleto Festival USA 2005 so far seemed to be the weather. After all, you can count the cloudless, non-drenched days since the festival’s May 27 kickoff on one finger, although it’s likely to be a wet finger. But somewhere along the way – Monday afternoon’s fourth and final Conversations With program featuring Mabou Mines DollHouse director Lee Breuer might be a good place to put it – the 29th Spoleto Festival’s legacy became a product of Breuer’s self-perpetuating controversy machine. The director of Spoleto’s centerpiece theatre event and all-round touchstone of contention has injected at least as much drama into this year’s festival as he’s placed on the Dock Street Theatre stage. The buzz surrounding the play itself and its unconventional casting and staging choices, the myriad alterations it’s undergone since it opened on May 26 (with fellatio scene and without, plus or minus 45 minutes and a second intermission, naked lead actress vs. non-naked lead actress, all depending on the night you were there) and the polarized critical and audience reactions to it are enough to make one long for the genteel civility of the last presidential election.

When DollHouse opened, City Paper theatre critic Jennifer Corley gave Breuer’s avant-garde adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play A Dolls House the very highest of marks, and Post and Courier arts reporter Dottie Ashley raved about it. P&C Spoletoblogger Daniel Conover (who, by his own admission, is not a professional theatre critic – he just plays one on the web) called it “brilliant,” and even I had great things to say about the play. True, audience reactions to Breuer’s play have been all over the map (concentrating mostly at either end), but critical reception to the production, in Charleston anyway, has been overwhelmingly positive – with the single exception of last Thursday’s column from Post and Courier overview critic Blair Tindall, in which she savaged it, writing “…to me, Breuer’s treatment seemed one of those fabulous 3 a.m. concepts that look absurd in the morning. It’s a great idea. And I didn’t think it worked at all, an opinion seconded by the several audience members leaving at intermission.” There was much more, but essentially Tindall walked a critical line that managed to eviscerate, insult, and dismiss at once.

At Monday’s Conversations With program in Recital Hall, Breuer, who was joined by cast members Maude Mitchell, Mark Povinelli, and Ricardo Gil, greeted host Martha Teichner politely but clearly prepared to unload a bellyful of vitriol. And unload he did, in a mostly intelligent manner but with the wrath of a director spurned urging him on. The lion’s share of his fury was aimed directly at Ms. Tindall, whom he variously called ignorant, unqualified, “matronizing,” a “fake critic,” and clearly unversed in the history of avant-garde theatre. Breuer’s beef seemed to be mainly in the fact that, as a non-profit theatre, Mabou Mines is dependent on philanthropic funding from the kind of people to whom a review from me or Dan or Dottie or Jennifer is utterly meaningless – but Tindall’s column could well sink his ship. “We’re in a precarious situation,” he said. “Bad press like hers is national. Bad reviews of productions at major arts festivals can cut off your funding … My anger is directed at the fakery of [Tindall’s] politics and her feminism. She has a lot of power. And her points of view have become reactionary. And so she’s basically … the enemy.”

Breuer’s cast was wholeheartedly behind him. Ricardo Gil (Dr. Rank) took offence at Tindall’s suggestion that his director’s decision to cast the show based on size was a “circus-show steroetype.”

“For Blair to make judgments about us being oppressed without being informed is poor journalism,” he said to applause.

Povinelli (Torvald Helmer) agreed: “I’m being offered a role that’s one of the finest in the theatrical lexicon.”

Meanwhile, Maude Mitchell (Nora Helmer) wasn’t above suggesting, as tactfully as she could, that much of the negative audience reaction stems from a distinctly Southern (read “regressive”) sociocultural mindset: “This is a highly stylized piece of theatre. And – how can I say this? – we’re in a part of the country where the culture itself is highly stylized. I’ve been to a couple of luncheons where, at 11:30 am, I’m looking around and seeing women wearing my character’s makeup.”

Breuer’s either genuinely angry, slightly paranoid (which host Teichner suggested at least once), or a superb, unparalleled master of promotional agitprop – and having met the man and spoken with him alone and at length, I’m personally inclined to believe the latter. Does anyone reading this really think ticket sales to DollHouse are going to go down in light of the controversy and his comments earlier this week? Say what you want about Breuer, but don’t call him dumb.

Well, I missed Baby Wants Candy’s second performance today because of the rain, and I’m not happy about it. Sure, I could have tried to go in late, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in a decade or so of friendship with Greg, Timmy, and Brandy of The Have Nots!, it’s to never, ever, ever walk into an improv comedy show late and by yourself. Baby Wants Candy is already being hailed as the must-see Piccolo event of the festival’s second week — and having seen them the last time they were here, two years ago, and I know damn well that I must see them again. That may not be able to happen until the end of the week, though. They’re performing again tomorrow (Monday) at 5 pm, but being there would mean missing the fourth and final installment of Spoleto’s Conversations With series — and with Mabou Mines DollHouse director Lee Breuer on the hotseat for host Martha Teichner’s grilling tomorrow, I have no intention of missing tha chance to see him discuss the many incarnations his play has taken since it opened a little over a week ago.

Also I’ll be spending most of the early evenings this week at PURE Theatre rehearsing a short play I wrote and am directing there, called “Eight Grand,” for Thursday evening’s original short play showcase A Perfect Ten (an evening of ten 10-minute plays). More on that later. Right now I’m off to see the Festival Concert. And I really don’t want to be late.

GRADE: A+
The best improv show in the festival.- BD

Better Than Advertised
Baby Wants Candy steal the whole damn festival
By Bill Davis

Wow, was that really as good as I think it was?

On top of big laughs, Baby Wants Candy got big applause throughout their set last Saturday night at the American Theater, the kind of applause other shows only see at the end.

Yep, the best improv of the Piccolo festival was delivered on Baby Wants Candy’s opening night, when BWC presented a never-before-seen musical, “Eating Popcorn in Charleston,” the title coming from the audience.

Every song and every break got applause at first, and then applause started breaking up the show mid-scene.

“Eating Popcorn” eventually revolved around the women of Charleston lamenting over the absence of men, an evil witch driving the men off with breadcrumbs (the only loose end left untied), and a haunted microwave. Like all good comedies, it ended with a marriage of sorts, and everyone paired up with their rightful partner.

Throughout, it was hard to tell who was having more fun, the seven actors on stage or the audience.

Where there is a desperate seriousness to the improv sets of Second City’s shows (“Oh, god, please let the director like me and tell the producer so I can get on mainstage where a Saturday Night Live scout can see me”), silliness ruled the day with BWC.

Al Samuels and Stuart Ranson performed as women, as they are wont to do, and fanned themselves to get over the oppressive heat. While they couldn’t have played more hackneyed characters, the strength of the overall cast saved the weak choice.

In one funny exchange, Samuels explained why he kept fanning himself with four fingers by saying, as he lifted his other hand, “Because I like to keep my real fan new.” He got a big round of mid-scene applause for the line, “One crazy Charleston woman is worth three Savannah women.”

Jack McBrayer (Scheer and McBrayer, Late Night with Conan O’Brien) played a sweetly stupid Midwesterner with new-car smell who is obsessed with telling everyone how rich he is (“This shirt is Perry Ellis.”) trying to woo the two men-less women.

As it was two years ago, so it shall be again in 2005, with Nicole Parker being the best singer in the cast. So much funnier than she is on MadTV, Parker teamed with Kevin Fleming — “So what we’ve got here is a stinky Dutch oven?” — as the struggling newlyweds whose microwave is haunted by the ghost of a witch that comes to inhabit Niki Lindgren.

Lindgren was hysterical contorting her body as the haint pushed through her skin. The guys backstage (and you know it wasn’t Parker) helped out by making fart noises every time she was wracked with a supernatural fit.

Tim Chidester was good with the “make’em ups” all night long, picking up on the mistakes of others and incorporating them into the storyline almost as adroitly as Parker, who brought the group back more than once from the brink.

At the end of the night, Samuels invited the audience to come back for future shows, pointing out there are other good improv shows in the festival but that Baby Wants Candy’s is the best. He was right on both counts.

Hilary Chaplain’s clown act is much better than the lackluster Piccolo audiences she has to work with. -JC

Send in the Clown
Hilary Chaplain’s show works, despite reluctant audience
By Jennifer Corley

Hilary Chaplain, creator and star of the clown theatre piece A Life in Her Day, pretty much said it in our preview article: her audience is like her partner. And afternoon audiences aren’t usually your most enthusiastic and interactive crowd. This group on Friday afternoon could have been worse, though. There were a couple people who were actively into it. But when your “partner” isn’t as committed as you are, no matter how hard you try, your show isn’t going to be a mighty force. Chaplain does, however, inventively present a lovely and humorous portrait of a person who wants the same thing as everyone else — to be loved.

Chaplain, who primarily trained with famous clown Avner Eisenberg, has a wonderfully charming face and inviting manner. She welcomes people into her topsy-turvy world, where it’s perfectly normal to babysit infants made of paper towels and congratulate a woman on her marriage to an inanimate object.

The show begins with Chaplain snoring away in her upright bed, sawing logs as her dog (a cute puppet which she manipulates very well, with excellent timing) looks on in frustration. Her morning stretches, which are endearing but go on a bit long, lead into her realizing something is amiss and she falls out of bed (her “birth,” if you will) and begins her journey of a day.

She wears a bright red unionsuit with matching slippers, and she has little red spirals weaved into her brunette ringlets. She wears rather enormous fake hips which lend a funny bit of character. She makes creative use of not only the paper towel roll, but a Snowball snack treat and a lamp shade as well.

While pouring a bowl of cereal, out pops a prize: a big diamond ring. Lucky Charms indeed. In a very funny engagement scene, we see her neediness, her desire for love, and Chaplain’s talent for comedy and audience interaction. And it truly is a scene which depends on the willingness of the audience members to participate in her game, which is nothing embarrassing like so many other torturous pieces of theatre.

The ensuing wedding scene is probably the best part of the show, as she does an ingenious and resourceful move to bring her husband to life and give an extra layer of humor to her piece. And it keeps the audience in stitches. She even takes the audience along with her on her imaginary honeymoon, where she gets a bit tipsy and becomes befuddled trying to figure out a bikini bottom.

Like many a respectable honeymoon, hers results in pregnancy. The delivery of her paper towel babies is extremely creative. As she pretends to be a rabbi (bringing two of her ringlets around in front of her ears), she handles a bris quite efficiently.

Her face is amazingly elastic. Aside from the various funny faces that elicit laughs, there are also the more touching expressions she makes that tug at our hearts. Like the one where she acknowledges the end of her marriage — with a simple knowing shrug of a look to the crowd, we empathize with her immediately.

The crowd has to have empathy to interact in a way that a performer wants. The crux of any piece of fringe mime theatre worth its salt is that it takes a while to warm up an audience, but clown shows can’t last too long by nature. So once the performer has the audience in her hands, it’s time to let them go. At least Chaplain doesn’t try to get the audience to hum for her until the latter part of the show.

ALIHD works on two levels, which is good for Chaplain, especially when considering tails in the seats: even though it’s not billed as a kids’ show, kids would surely get a kick out of it. (Chaplain thinks it’s appropriate for children 5 or 6 and up.) And the mature, experienced themes behind her antics will be what stays with the adults when they leave the theatre.

Her character ends her day the way she began it, returning to her upright bed to snooze away. We’re left to know, especially with the title, that she will replay this sort of action tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. It’s beautifully funny and sad, and very human. We all go through these same cycles, and we all mime them, in a way, like Chaplain’s character. Who hasn’t at some point simply gone through the motions and then realized something significant was finished, no matter what the situation may have been? Chaplain’s show, even when her “partner” is a little behind, even when some parts could pick up a bit, is still strong in theme and talent, and one would do well to see a good piece of clown theatre while one can.

Grade: A-
Hazelle does a body good

Real People
Hazelle Goodman personates a pack of characters in On Edge
By Jennifer Corley

What a lovely, lovely surprise. No one knew what to fully expect from Hazelle Goodman’s one woman show On Edge, other than good characterizations. But she’s really, very funny, and she makes nice comment on what to do with one’s existence. And boy, does she know how to work a crowd!

In On Edge, Goodman portrays several characters. She opens with a bit about Carnivale in Rio, and how it is a time for change and inhibition — “when people can transform and be who they want to be.” Then she moves into some stand-up comedy, which is one of her strongest suits. She’s very smart to do this, to warm up her audience first and relax them, to get them in the mood to see some funny characters, and to make them more ready to laugh. But you almost don’t want her to stop the stand-up. However, once she gets into her first character, you realize you’re in for a treat.

Goodman’s characterizations are terrific. Her physicality, especially that of her male characters, is incredibly convincing. As Pops the old man and Derrick the young ladies’ man, she’s unbelievably good. As Pops, she has an unending mouth twitch and trembling hand, and her face oddly enough seems to gain sags and wrinkles (the lighting design by Christopher Brown helps especially in this part). As Derrick she sits wide-legged and sniffs, fist-pounding with imaginary cohorts as he talks about his exploits with white women and his reasons for making them. She uses her mass of braids to help transform her into the various characters, tying them up or letting them fall.

Director Vernice Miller has worked with Goodman on the show since its inception, and it’s obvious the two of them have done a lot of work in honing the characters. She’s shaped great transitions, too — some quick, some not, but all smooth and instantly obvious in the moment of switchover to new character.

Goodman has some hilarious lines in her show. As the girl from the projects who’s recently discovered “fang shay,” she declares: “they don’t like nothin’ broke in your house. That’s why I told that last brother he had to go.” As the fitness-obsessed woman talking about colonics, she declares “I always knew people were full of shit; I just didn’t know you could make a living getting rid of it.” As Janet Wannabe, leader of the Get Out of the Ghetto Symposium to lure black people to the New Black Suburbia, she speaks of Judge Clarence Thomas — “fondly known as Uncle Tom” — who shows “where hard work, persistence, and loss of identity can get you!”

Here are the two problems: some of the material feels dated, and some of it just feels too dramatic and out of place with the rest of the show. Some of the topics Goodman pokes fun at, like bottled water, the fitness craze, and feng shui seem old hat by today’s comedy standards. However, she’s still very witty and her attacks are humorous, so that helps. Her monologue of an African woman mourning the death of her son, however, simply doesn’t fit in. What it does do is showcase her range and her dramatic skills, but it alters the tone of the piece in a way that shakes its foundation. William Faulkner said, “in writing, one must kill all your darlings.” Even though it’s a lovely monologue, it doesn’t really do anything other than show that she’s a good dramatic actress. Other than that, it just hurts the mood. Especially when the scene that follows is so upbeat it’s almost absurd to ask the audience to withdraw from the seriousness that quickly and get back into the fun-mode.

Aside from those problems, On Edge is great. Goodman immediately makes the audience feel welcome through her likeability and warmness. She skewers everybody equally, all races, ages, and genders.

Some of the other characters she portrays include Lillian, a wealthy and prim pedicure-receiving woman; Neecy, a Latina Brooklynite with an abusive boyfriend; and a policeman who discusses racial profiling. And then there’s Avril, probably the crowd’s favorite, the Caribbean woman who’s embarrassed to be dating an ugly man. She complains that when she looks at him “he does burn my eye.” But she does tout his sexual prowess, citing that “an ugly man got to know how to handle you, ’cause he know he ain’t getting’ no second chance.”

Goodman has a great ending to the show, one of those that has several audience members letting out that loud, punchy “Mmm” (that lets everyone else know they get the profundity of it). It wraps up the observation and comment on all the shallowness presented in (most of) her characters. All in all, hers is a show very worthy of your 22 dollars.

Last night’s premiere of Hazelle Goodman’s one-woman show On Edge was the second in Spoleto’s Solo Turns series. A strong crowd had turned out for the follow-up to Mike Daisey’s popular, and mostly funny, The Ugly American, and expectations were high. When the waifish Goodman emerged from the wings onto the stage to the sounds of pop-style music and started into a Jamaican-patois-flavored standup comedy routine heavily geared toward black women, I thought, Oh, boy, is this gonna be lame.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. After playing with the audience for about 10 minutes, Goodman launched into the meat of her show: a host of carefully crafted characters that seemed to take over her tiny body completely — and it’s entirely possible that the Jamaican smartass she began with was just another of her characters. I have no idea. That’s how good she was. A rich Upper West Side matron; a ghetto-living young black mother raving out the window to a friend about the wonders of feng shui (”Feng shay, girl! Feng shay!”); a black man who dates only white women because it causes pisses off the white men he works for; a young black girl pretending to be white (with a pitch-perfect accent), the North-African Muslim mother of the real-life Amadou Diallo, who New York police shot to death while unarmed; an elderly black man who finds solace in these troubled times in Jesus Christ.

Goodman’s characterization were remarkably real, and she made last night’s audience think as much as they laughed, skewering and satirizing dozens of black and white stereotypes along the way. That’s the sign of a great performance, in my mind. Thanks Hazelle.

If you’re looking to find the funny in this year’s festival, you’ve got a cornucopia of options. Spoleto’s Solo Turns series has already showcased two of the most entertaining monologuists I’ve seen in years: Mike Daisey (The Ugly American) and Hazelle Goodman (On Edge). But Spoleto’s stuff tends to be too highbrow to really bust a gut over (those two were happy exceptions); all the real laughs come from the direction of Piccolo Spoleto’s several theatre series. And among those, the heavyweights are Second City, back this year for at least their seventh or eighth consecutive Piccolo appearance, and the new kids on the block: Theatre 99’s Piccolo Fringe at the American Theater, which features not just hometown faves The Have Nots! (who produce the whole shebang) but some of the biggest hitters from around the country, too, including Jack McBrayer, Chicago-based musical-theatre improv masters Baby Wants Candy, and New York improvisers Upright Citizens Brigade.

If Second City is Chicago’s claim to national comedy fame, then UCB is New York’s. I thought it would be interesting to catch the two group’s performances in a single afternoon and do a little compare/contrast. Second City was first up, over at Physicians Auditorium. The six-person tourco did a little improvising, but the bulk of the two-hour show featured prepared, rehearsed skits, some of which had the matinee audience in hysterics, others of which landed with a dull thud (of these, one particularly comes to mind: a skit in which God awakens from a binge drunk begun on his post-Creation “day of rest” to find Jesus was trapped on Earth for 33 years without any way to get back home to heaven, stalling for time by “making shit up,” finally killing and resurrecting himself out of desperation; I was laughing, but I sounded like a lunatic in a mausoleum). Other efforts met with more success; a bit where a male character blew into the foot of a limp female character until she slowly stiffened to become a blow-up sex doll, mouth open in an “O” and arms outstretched, was one of the afternoon’s biggest, and simplest, hits. But in the second half they tanked with an interminable improvised skit about a public radio program on spiders, which bored for nearly 15 minutes. The Second Citiers also seemed to have low energy on Friday; maybe it was the matinee audience, which was surely not in the same spirits as the group’s usual 9pm crowds, who are half drunk to begin with.

An hour later, at the American Theater, I caught a 6pm show from Upright Citizens Brigade. (I noticed this was the first Piccolo Fringe show I’d been to this year that wasn’t sold out; the place was about three-quarters full. Though I did hear that the Have Nots! show following it had been sold out all day.)

The first half of UCB’s show was a 30-minute sketch about a Christian Youth Camp meeting hosted by two typically cheeseball reformed and ‘born-again’ former sinners, who try to relate to the youthful Christians by talking ‘hip’ and using cornball catchphrases like ‘Christicanity.’ One of the speakers was, of course, the former lead singer of the Buggles, who wrote the very first MTV music video tune “Video Killed the Radio Star.” It was sidesplitting, eye-wiping stuff, top professional grade. (Although I can guarantee that if they performed that skit at every show, angry letters would be pouring in to the Piccolo office and local op/ed pages; they came down vastly harder on Christian types than even Second City had in their skit.)

The second half of UCB’s intermissionless 60-minute show was pure long-form improv — but what improvising this was. (A citywide weed drought had four friends attacking a fifth friend who arrived with a tiny bud; seeing there wasn’t enough to go around, they drilled a hole in his head and, since he was already high, smoked him. Naturally they inhaled some of his memories, too. “Man, I didn’t realize what a depressing life he’s had.” “That’s what I call a paper-thin optimism.”)

Upshot: the Second City gang, who are no slouches, couldn’t touch what the UCB guys were pulling off. Not yesterday, anyway.