Hip Shot: ‘Yearning to Itch…’
Yearning to Itch What Waitresses Will Do For Tips
Warehouse Arts – Beyond
Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 12 @ 1:00 PM (Warehouse Beyond)
Sunday, July 13 @ 6:00 PM (Warehouse Beyond)
Thursday, July 17 @ 9:30 PM (Warehouse Beyond)
Saturday, July 19 @ 5:00 PM (Warehouse Beyond)
Sunday, July 26 @ 7:00 PM (Warehouse Beyond)
They say: “It’s about unrequited lust and inappropriate behavior. Death, love and lucid dreaming. About trying to seduce the wrong people in the wrong way for the right and wrong reasons. It’s about customer service, nightmares and the present moment. 4 women, 1 man.”
Brian’s take: There I was, sitting innocently in my second row seat, jotting down a note or two in my steno pad, when all of a sudden one of the waitresses in Yearning to Itch… hurled a Twinkie at me for no apparent reason at all.
Well, maybe there was a reason. Maybe she could tell that the notes I was jotting were unflattering. Maybe she could intuit that I was copying down the lines she was speaking with very large and confused question marks scribbled next to them. Maybe she was pissed at me about the fact that I just didn’t get it.
Which would make sense–if a reviewer writes negative things about you, why not throw a spongy, cream-filled delicacy at him? That would be a motivated action, which would make that Twinkie moment the most coherent in this entire play–a (luckily) 35-minute dream sequence in the style of post-inferno Strindberg if Strindberg lacked any kind of style. The characters insert the word “lucid” before dream, but there is very little lucidity to be found amidst the platitudes, awkward gestures, and downright nonsense that riddle this piece. Sure, there are a few funny moments and lines here or there–maybe 5 or so. Otherwise, I just left confused, befuddled, perplexed, and covered in bits of Twinkie dust.
See it if: You find yourself captivated by one-line musings about the very play you are watching.
Skip it if: You’re near a couch and have the chance to take a 35 minute catnap–your own dream will probably be more rewarding and less expensive.
6:52 am
Most poets get
some poems come alive aloud
and some only on paper.
The medium of the written play is no different, but this page-v-performance dichotomy seems lost on the producers who extract little from this short masturbatiry piece on (if you can say on) the broken creative process and all the douchebaguery that comes through when frustrated–the sexual, the self critical, the random. Think of the first? season of Project Runway when dude drew on a T-shirt with marker & was like “fuck you, i’m an artist!” For who?
The performance: four hot actresses and a poor man’s Paul Giamatti. One actor had some presence, but most were still struggling to find center or pace. The casting was likely deliberate as the dreamer/writer has hotties and creative blunders on the mind.
If you like watching hot people (even Paul) rehearse, maybe you’ll be amused… or you could just pay for one to take a first violin lesson–equally as grating, but somehow awesome. Yearning = not awesome.
10:07 am
I like that–”a poor man’s Paul Giamatti”–even if it is a little bit redundant.
David, you seemed to really think these ladies were hot, huh?
12:50 pm
“Paul,” too–”i found myself strangely attracted to him” (or whatever it was)
1:11 pm
Ah, I see…I thought you were referring to the real Paul Giamatti in that instance.
1:35 pm
HELLZ YEAH! “Paul” was hot, too! Call me, hon… if you’re into that sort o’ thing…
10:10 am
The audience would have been better served by the actors distributing Twinkies as a meager compensation for starving the audience of a performance and plot worth the investment of 45 minutes out of their lives (which those of us who suffered through the rambling, unintelligent, musings are still irritated and annoyed when reflecting on what the hell that was all about).
10:13 am
it was a perfert guy’s dream – Stupid