The Teacher’s Lounge or One Child Left Behind

Remaining Performances: July 22 at 7:30 p.m.; July 26 at 1:45 p.m.

They say: The personal is political. First-year teacher Carli negotiates the pressures and personalities of an urban charter school. But when a student’s questions put her personal and professional lives in conflict, will she sacrifice her ideals to save her career?

Suzyn’s take: First off, I have to note that the question asked above isn’t ever actually answered.   At one point, it seems clear what the first-year teacher intends to do—but events intercede.   And despite the play’s consistent tone and level of energy throughout, it nevertheless left one asking, “Wait, what?” when it was over.

That sounds like an unsatisfying ending, and maybe it was a bit.  Also, the show begins with someone rattling the doorknob on the theater’s fire exit to find it locked, which is frankly not something anyone wants to see in these theaters.  But between that beginning and the ending, this is a very strong and well-acted show that’s very much worth a look.

I was particularly taken with Lolita-Marie’s performance as a veteran teacher who says “I never smile before spring break,” then delivers a smile that looks like an attempt at such by someone who is indeed out of practice.   Her performance was subtle and sympathetic:  At one point, she argues that to place a black student in special ed was essentially to put him on a path to jail.  (I wasn’t sure about that and checked with every teacher I knew who had worked in the inner city.  Every one of my friends agreed that the teacher’s was the prevailing view.  Showed me.)

The script details the difficulties of an inner-city teacher’s life, from a broken copier to complaints about “No Child Left Behind” Legislation to a truly stunning array of behavior problems.   (Yelling “Cheetoes” at random intervals?) Carli, the first-year teacher, is still learning to cope with it all.  I found myself wondering if her tight t-shirt and push-up bra were causing some of the disciplinary infractions; Carli’s clothing contrasted against the more sedate clothes of the experienced teachers—a subtle underscoring of her lack of experience.

Carli’s inexperience is central to the plot, which is hard to discuss without giving away more surprises than I should.   At times, the plot twists become a little tiresome as the show raises curiosity about crucial plot points then pulls them out of reach for awhile.  But the strength of the performances and the complexities of the characters make for an absorbing show that you’ll want to talk about all the way home.

See it if: Your teacher mother-in-law is in town.  (I sincerely wish my teacher mother-in-law were in town so I could take her.)   Or if you’re looking for a well-acted drama so real that it could be taking place tomorrow morning a few blocks from the theater.

Skip it if:  It’s not Fringe without the hotpants, the topless swordfighters or the pooping monkey.

Remaining Performances:
Jul 19th 12 pm
Jul 25th 3:15 pm

They say: You didn’t even know we existed. But now? Now. You do. A new play that tells the spirited stories of four ‘juvie’ girls living on the inside

Suzyn’s take: “The Girls Inside,” Leayne C. Freeman’s new play about teenage girls in juvie, is memorable and exciting from the first moments as the four girls run around in darkness with flashlights, soon getting caught by the police.  The much-maligned Bodega, with its stifling heat and peeling paint, is the perfect venue.

This is not so much a play as a 45-minute slam poem, and the directing—the best I’ve seen at the Fringe Festival this year—is more like choreography.   There are snippets about the girls’ lives; one girl deals with the drug-addicted mother she adores, another was essentially made to sign adoption papers that she couldn’t read.  But mostly there is a sort of anonymity to the characters that the girls play, which allows lines like “The world didn’t want us the first time, so why would it change its mind if we got out?” to speak for everyone.

Jo Higbee brings a bit of dark humor in imitating the adults the girls must deal with.  Her performance is particularly adroit in that she doesn’t seem to be playing the adults so much as playing what the adults look like to the girls.

Perhaps the most haunting moments are the bits of girlish glee and teenage innocence woven throughout the piece.  As much as these girls seem like hardened criminals, when they laugh, they are teenage girls again, particularly Adena Goode, who at times seems hardened and innocent simultaneously.  At one point they form a chorus of wishes and desires: they want a new trial, they want a do-over, they want their mothers, they want a new iPod, they want to go to prom.   When Ayena Hardy’s character talks about losing her virginity in the eighth grade and how it made her feel beautiful, there is a sad sweetness to her performance that is almost unbearable. Several members of the audience cried. Zurin Villanova has a beautiful voice and a real gift for movement.  When she pantomimes getting a cavity search from an invisible person, it’s impossible not to squirm.  Yet she imbues her character with a deep sense of hope.

This is a brilliant show.

See it if:   You want a vivid, emotional, memorable experience and are willing to go through hell with these girls to get it.

Skip it if:  You need a storyline to really get into a play.   There are only characters in the loosest sense and in many ways this show is far more about evoking a sense of place than about the development of characters or the movement of a plot.

Remaining Performances:
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
Saturday, July 25, 2009 @ 11:30 am

They say: Emily figured it out: run away to France, meet the perfect guy, leave everyone behind. But, upon her homecoming, to be the maid-of-honor at her mother’s fifth wedding, it becomes glaringly obvious — this is NOT her life.

Suzyn’s take: This is NOT a fun evening at the theater.

What gets me is that the playwright knows the problem.  He writes in the program that his script is full of “stupid, selfish asses.”   However, it is really hard to make a play about “stupid selfish asses” work—to say nothing of a musical.

Comedy wherein all the characters are jerks, no one is sympathetic and the real point is to sneer at everybody can be done well.  Indeed, plenty of sneering occurred in the audience as the obviously self-centered characters sung about how “Just for one day, I’d like to see…the whole world revolve around me.”  But the fun of most musicals is getting caught up in the joy or the drama and letting your emotions take you away, and that just doesn’t combine well with sneering.

The songs are well-written, though not all of them advance the plot and the cast is going to get a cease-and-desist from Bryan Adams one day. McKenzie Walsh as “Rebecca Romaine” can really sing, though I look forward to going the rest of my life without hearing “Not like the actress, like the lettuce” again.   It was one of several jokes that didn’t improve on endless repetition.

It’s easy to blame the playwright, and I do, but really someone in the cast should have said: “Hey, my character is a total cliché, and so is everyone else’s, and we all whine a lot, even interrupting a wedding to do so. And the daughter’s friends are the mother’s wedding attendants with no explanation.  And Emily slaps Sean’s ass while the audience probably still thinks he’s her brother.  And the ‘perfect boyfriend’ kisses his way up Mom’s arm for no reason.  And if we’re going to write a song full of Yo Momma jokes, shouldn’t we at least use funny ones?”

This could have been prevented, y’all.

See it if:  “I love wedding cake like a fat kid loves…regular cake” does it for you in the humor department.

Skip it if:  It doesn’t.

Remaining Performances:
July 17th 8pm
July 17th 10pm
July 18th 8pm
July 18th 10pm

They say: How do we communicate and what the hell do we have to say? Join a group of disabled and non-disabled performers as we wrestle with this simple question with song and sign. Is there anybody out there?

Suzyn’s Take:

“I didn’t know this was a cabaret performance,” the guy in the row behind me said.

I agreed.  I hadn’t known either.  Given the description in the guide, I’d been expecting something a bit more philosophical than a chain of popular songs, most of them sort of relating to the touted theme, some not at all.   That said, a cabaret performance is what I got and this was a pretty good one.

The two sign-language interpreters, Greg Anderson and Tami Lee Santimyer, were rose to the task as the show’s centerpieces. Both interpreters were very expressive; Santimyer especially seemed to make almost a dance out of performing sign language. I was fascinated to watch Will Mincey’s hands on his Braille sheet-music as he sang, and his “Pure Imagination” didn’t even sound creepy—which is something of an achievement, as I’m used to the Gene Wilder version.

The singing was the highlight, which is, of course a good thing in cabaret.  The standout performances were the singers who added a bit of acting to their performance and managed to evince the emotions they were singing about.   Joe Peck’s “Signs” was a standout.  (Peck also got in some nice snark about the Fringe button.)

The solo performances, though, were the weak spot of the show.   Too many songs featured someone simply standing there and singing to the audience with little in the way of expressive movement.   (Rob McQuay, commanding in his wheelchair, was a notable exception.) However, it was in the ensemble work that Is There Anybody out There really shone.   An ensemble performance of Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” was, I assume, a last-minute addition to the show, but it had a vivacity that many of the solo performances lacked and was the most memorable number.

I suppose communication works best as a conversation not a monologue.

See it if: You’d like to attend a pleasant evening of popular music, or you’d like to bring a friend with a disability to a Fringe show.  I’ve been to about half a dozen this year and this was the first to offer sign language interpretation.   There are many fringe venues that don’t seem wheelchair accessible; this one certainly is.

Skip it if: Part of the appeal of the Fringe Festival is something new or edgy.   This is a pleasant evening, but there’s nothing “Fringe-y” about it in that sense.

Let’s Sing Gospel 101!

Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 11, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
Sunday, July 12, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
Saturday, July 18, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
Thursday, July 23, 2009 @ 5:30 pm

They say: YES YOU CAN! Sing gospel! In this interactive show, you are the cast and choir as you learn to sing gospel music. All ages, races, and voices are invited to sing, clap and move to Rosita’s piano beats. Only enthusiasm is required!

Suzyn says: One of the lovely things about the Fringe Festival is that you can be sitting in Georgetown University Law Center’s Williams Library at 5:30 and be a gospel singer by 6:05.  That pretty much sums up my Friday evening.

I abandoned the paper I was writing and attended this show on a whim, and was actually a couple of minutes late.  Three minutes into the show Rosita Mathews was already leading the audience in song.   As I guiltily made my way to the so-far-empty Soprano section, she finished out the verse and addressed me.

“You’re a soprano?” she asked

“A second soprano” I mumbled. “Sort of.”

“Well, we only have one other Soprano, so you can stand next to her in front of the altos.”

And so my gospel singing career began.

This show is not so much a performance as an interactive workshop.  Mathews plays killer piano, and she did a (dare I say it?) miraculous job of turning a dozen or so hardy souls into a gospel choir.  At one point, she instructed the three men in the group to “Give it an Usher-Michael Bublé sound,” and to my stark amazement, they did. Drummer Ricky Fishley, too, was always on hand for a wonderful solo or a rim shot when Mathews made a particularly silly joke.

Though my fellow soprano and I were in mortal terror when we had to sing by ourselves, Mathews got us through it.  She is a compelling leader, able to be self-deprecating one moment and deliver lines like “We laid down the pipe, now we’re going to turn on the faucet and let the music out” without a trace of the irony one would expect at a Fringe Festival show.   She has a boisterous and engaging presence and I found myself dutifully singing as well as I could and clapping in time to the music if only because she made it look like so much fun.

And it was.

See it if: You need a break from your homework, you want to feel uplifted for an evening or you just have yen to sing about shutting the door and keeping out the devil.

Skip it if: You’re just too self-conscious to get caught up in the joy of it or if you’ve sung “this little light of mine” enough for one lifetime.

Closet Land

Remaining Performances:
Jul 12th 8:45 pm
Jul 18th 7:30 pm
Jul 19th 9:15 pm
Jul 26th 4:45 pm

They say: “A government interrogator escalates psychological and physical torture against a children’s author on grounds that her book Closet Land is politically subversive. Produced by the winners of the 2008 “Best Overall” and 2007 “Best Comedy” Pick of the Fringe Awards.” This show contains foul language.

Suzyn’s take: Six people walked out.  I counted.   But I’m confident that none of them left because of the quality of the show.

This is a very intense experience, y’all.

On a basic level, Closet Land is the story of the interrogation and torture of an innocent woman.  Jessica Hansen, playing the woman, sets just the right tone from the beginning, when her character insists the arrest is a mistake.  Hansen sounds more like someone who has been in line at the post office than someone expecting to be jailed and tortured.  She has a whiny, tiresome quality that beautifully sets up what is to come.

The interrogator is played by Alex Zavistovich, whose regular-guy good looks, complete with Superman-esque cleft chin, serve as an interesting counterpoint to the sadism of his character.  Zavistovich is wonderful, at once smarmy and chilling  and with a real knack for the sleight-of-hand that the show’s few special effects require.

Soon, we too come to dread the buzzing that signals Zavistovich’s arrival.   When he uses different voices and silly dialogue to mock her and the blindfolded woman doesn’t realize it, it’s tempting to laugh in spite of the horrors taking place.  At one point, I could feel my friend beside me stiffen every time the woman was about to get an electric shock.

That was, I think, when the second couple left.

The opening night bumps were few. The stage combat could use some work, particularly the ear boxing, and when the characters talk to the audience, only the woman’s vivid and legitimately creepy description of Closet Land really works.

For those of us who persevered—and it was most of us—the experience was well worth it.   Two excellent performances made for a compelling, disturbing evening at the theater.  At one point, the woman wakes up in whorish makeup and rubs her cheek against a wall, leaving behind a smear that lasted for the rest of the show.  Moments like that linger long after the lights go down.

See it if:  You read about torture and the oppression of political dissidents, but you’ve struggled to feel a personal connection to the people involved.

Skip it if: You can’t take it, and there’s no shame in not being able to take it as far as I’m concerned.   The torture scenes are quite real and there is some seriously triggering stuff here for anyone who has ever been a victim of violence, sexual or otherwise.

Remaining performances:
Friday, July 25 @ 6 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 11 PM

They say: “Hades has captured the Goddess Persephone and tied her up to keep her from leaving the Underworld. When her mother Demeter discovers why Zeus won’t rescue Persephone, Demeter wreaks a terrible vengeance . . . Greek myth updated to modern times: A work-in-progress, presenting the last two scenes of Act I.”

Suzyn’s take: As the blurb notes, Passion of Persephone is still a work in progress, so perhaps it’s appropriate that it has the feel of something that’s still deciding what it wants to be. The advertising materials play up the S+M focus, suggesting those mediocre Anne Rice S+M novels about Sleeping Beauty. There’s some of that in this show, which is also a rock opera, and at times there is a bit of winking farce.

Primarily, however, the show seems to exist as a vehicle for the leading lady/librettist/composer/instrumentalist/producer Rosanna E. Tufts. Tufts plays Persephone, and is at the center of the show. Tufts’ performance showcases her voice, which is indeed very good. That said, her acting leaves something to be desired. She has little chemistry with Hades and they frequently sing about how attracted they are to each other, yet have bored-looking expressions while doing so. At one point Persephone sings about Hades when he’s offstage and she achieves a quiet fire in that scene that was absent when Hades was actually there. It is as if she finds the idea of Hades more striking than the reality, which in a sense is the most accurate part of Tufts’ portrayal of a naive young woman in love. Also, Tufts is a bit past the maiden stage. A male friend of mine described her as the “MILFiest Persephone I’ve ever seen.”

The music is fine, though the songs sound very much alike. I found myself wishing a little bit more had been done with the direction. The lights could have gone down a bit as Demeter sings about the sun fading, for example. Also, there’s a lot of standing in this opera. Some of that is because they have a large cast in a small venue, but even when individuals are on stage alone, the actors don’t move around much. A notable exception is Sara Stewart, whose Demeter moves very naturally. Stewart chewed the scenery in a satisfying way that suited her character, particularly after she took off a large goofy hat that obscured her face for much of her first scene on stage. Her voice was impressive as well, and I will look for her in future shows.

Michelle Mullany, Lily Fay Tufts Prothuro and Ayana Fenton do an excellent job as the dead children in the underworld, singing with charmingly sweet voices and appearing convincingly dour.

Again, the show is a work in progress. I suspect a lot of the problems will be ironed out by the time it is a full length show. I saw it with three friends and two of us were interested in coming back when the show is performed in full. Still, like Persephone’s Hades, right now this show is a lot better in theory than it is in reality.

See it if: You’re into Greek Drama, Rock Opera or the combination of the two, which works surprisingly well.

Skip it if: “Dick Cheney” is your safe word. The show takes itself a little too seriously for that.

They say: “A one man show that focuses on pioneering African American actors and athletes, B.A.D takes the audience on the journey as the artist tries to honor the struggles and challenges many African Americans faced. As he tries to do this, the spirits of Bill Pickett, Bert Williams, Paul Robeson, and Jack Johnson enter his body and speak through him to speak about their life, hardships, and accomplishments.”

Suzyn’s take: The concept of “edu-tainment” is like the concept of “dinner theater.” When the two elements are combined, one expects that neither of them will be particularly good. B.A.D (Black And Defiant) is a show all about overcoming stereotypes, and it defies this one as well. Stephan Collins-Stepney takes on the roles of rodeo cowboy Bill Pickett, comedian and actor Bert Williams, boxer Jack Johnson and singer, lawyer and all-around impressive guy Paul Robeson. He portrays each figure in turn and does a very good job giving them distinctive voices and ways of moving. He engages his whole body in the performance, which is particularly effective when he portrays Johnson. His transitions between the characters are obvious, yet smooth, giving the show a professional feel.

But Collins-Stepney is most striking in the role of Bert Williams, a vaudeville comedian whom W.C. Fields described as “the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.” As Williams, Collins-Stepney sits at a table and talks about his life while putting on blackface, then performs some of the physical comedy Williams was known for as he talks about the obstacles Williams overcame. The humor was certainly funny, though the audience was too caught up in the pathos of Williams’ having to perform in blackface to laugh. It would have been easy to watch an entire play about Williams alone. The other three figures aren’t quite as fascinating, but still it is a solid show all around. A few technical issues were somewhat distracting, the audience participation elements were a bit clumsy, and Collins-Stepney’s voice wasn’t quite up to Paul Robeson’s deep bass. But on the whole it is a compelling look at four pioneers about whom I knew very little, and I left the theater considering the personal costs these men paid for their greatness.

See it if: You’d like to spend an hour with four interesting people who changed the world in subtle ways.

Skip it if: You prefer your tainment edu-free, or at least a little lighter.

]]> http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/fringe/2008/07/17/bad-black-and-defiant/feed/ 0 http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/fringe/2008/07/13/abe-lincoln-a-one-man-show/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/fringe/2008/07/13/abe-lincoln-a-one-man-show/#comments Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:34:59 +0000 Suzyn Smith Webb http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/fringe/?p=140 Abe Lincoln: A One-Man Show
at Cole Studio

Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 19 @ 3pm
Friday, July 25 @ 7pm
Saturday, July 26 @ 8pm

They say: “You probably know that Abe Lincoln was the 16th US president, but did you know he was a joke teller? See Abe tell his amusing anecdotes and relate some of his historical decision-making moments before your very eyes, moments before he leaves for Ford’s Theatre to meet his fate.”

Suzyn’s take: I’m fairly new to theatrical reviewing, but I’m certain it’s never a good thing when a reviewer of a comedy act has “Fozzie Bear” underlined multiple times in her notebook. Regrettably, this is the case for my notes on Scott Renz’s “Abraham Lincoln: A One-Man Show.” From the first minutes of the show, when Renz told a joke about how a lady with a feathered hat who fell down reminded him of a duck because she had “feathers on her head and was down on her behind,” I was exchanging what-the-fuck looks with everyone else in the room under the age of forty.

The old people, however, laughed consistently throughout the entire show.

I was sitting in front of a cranky-sounding couple in perhaps their late fifties. Moments before the show, the husband had looked around the performance space, which is essentially a room with chairs and benches, and observed:

“We could turn our sub-basement into a theatre.”

His wife blandly responded “They’d have a heck of a walk from the metro.”

To me, that was funnier than anything that happened during the actual show, but sure enough as the lights came up the lady was saying how she wished she could remember all of those jokes to tell her grandkids.

Some grandkids out there just seriously dodged a bullet.

For the entire show Renz stands center-stage in his Lincoln hat, telling joke after joke, pausing after each to wait for the audience to laugh. The jokes have no connection to each other. The experience is exactly like being around my husband’s joke-telling great uncle from Clemson, South Carolina. To Renz’s credit, almost all of his jokes reference something Lincoln might actually have joked about, from P.T. Barnum to Temperance Committees to General Ulysses S. Grant. According to the autobiographical sketch Renz handed out, he gives talks to elementary school classes as Abe Lincoln and I totally believe he’s good at that. Lack of research isn’t the issue here—it’s lack of funny.

Renz ends with a passionate recitation of the Gettysburg address, which is tactically extremely clever as it is impossible not to applaud wildly at the Gettysburg address. But it also undermined the pass I wanted to give him on the lameness of his comedy. I get that not everybody has what I consider a sophisticated sense of humor, and yes, a solid third of the audience had a wonderful time, and I so want to say that’s enough. After all, there aren’t a lot of Fringe shows to which you can safely bring Grandma or little Stephanie, and this is one of them. Still, as the Gettysburg Address reminded me, Abe Lincoln was a really, really awesome human being. He kept America from tearing itself apart, he wrote words about justice that still resonate with us today, he worked to free a people from slavery and in the end, his actions cost him his life.

Abraham Lincoln deserves better than this show, and so do you.

See it if: You’re somebody’s goofy uncle, you like anecdotal humor or you’ve got a friend or relative who matches one of those descriptions and you’d like to share the Fringe festival with that person.

Skip it if: None of the above applies, especially if you’re David Herbert Donald.