The Saints

Remaining Performances:
Thursday, July 16 at 9:45 p.m.
Friday, July 17 at 6:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 19 at 1:15 p.m.
Wednesday, July 22 at 9:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 26 at 12:30 p.m.

They say: “Saints, sinners, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Imagine Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, St. Augustine and a bevy of virgin martyrs singin’ songs around a celestial campfire. DMLRR Presents The Saints. Virtue and vaudeville. Burlesque and the blessed: Where the revival tent meets the carnie tent.”

Trey’s take: I’m inclined to agree with the buddy who sat next to me at this noisy, cheeky vaudeville — a handful of electroacoustic hagiographies from the crew what brought you last year’s smash-hit 70-minute Oresteia: “I think it’s constitutionally empirically impossible to dislike this bunch these guys,” said my friend.

Roger that: Led by singer-songwriter Steve McWilliams and actor-director Debra Buonaccorsi, the outfit calls itself Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue, but they’d have done just as well namewise if they’d gone with The Platonic Ideal of Artists Who Fringe for the Sheer Joy of Performing.
There’s a little belly-dance (courtesy of Buonaccorsi, as the spurned mistress of reformed hellion St. Augustine), a little honky-tonk (props to the raw little band, in which most everybody eventually takes part), a touch of panicky fortune-telling (from Felicia Curry, generating solid laughs as a highly strung St. Bernadette) and a whole lot of full-throated singing — all in service to the stories behind names you may know, especially if you’ve been properly catechised.

The irreligious may find things a mite confusing, I’ll admit, if only because the sound mix is sinfully iffy; song lyrics occasionally get muddied, along with whatever biographical details and theological fine points they might be trying to convey. And the curmudgeon huddling deep in my soul insists I whisper to the Rev. Buonnacorsi and her flock that when the pews in your canonically suspect revival tent are chock full of extroverted actorish types, your audience-participation bits are by definition going to annoy the civilians just a tetch.

But pooh to that: The voices are strong, the humor agreeably naughty, and the songs a tasty mix that ranges from rousing little foursquare rockers (for Jordan Klein’s St. Francis, complete with surfer shorts and a small aviary of birds clinging to his hoodie) to soaring, scorching anthems (for Currie’s St. Bernadette and Maria Egler’s Teresa of Avila, ecstatically remembering the “agony and rapture” of their visions) to bluesy brags so swampily accomplished you’ll be thinking, “Hey, that would be perfect with a little harmonica” — just about the time Klein’s strapping St. Ursula pulls a Hohner out of her brassiere.

See it if: You think organized religion could stand a little irreverence. Or if you’ve ever thought Gertrude Stein was unforgivably inefficient about squeezing just four saints into those three acts.

Skip it if: You’re allergic to dusty old relics — or to fun.

Remaining Performances:
Thursday, July 24 @ 6:30 PM
Friday, July 25 @ 7:00 PM
Saturday, July 26 @ 2:00 PM

They say: “If the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus had gone on tour with Led Zeppelin, Woody Guthrie and a carnie troup, this is what he would have written. A tale of blood, guts and vengeance, Aeschylus’s Oresteia, re-charged. Rowdy, raucous, loud and literate: Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue presents The Oresteia.”

Trey’s take: Pretty much as advertised: Mostly raucous, intermittently musical, almost always fun. (And I’m on record as believing that brand-new Oresteia adaptations aren’t strictly necessary, so from me, “fun” is saying something.)

I had my doubts, too: Could the Revue crew really get through all three of the House of Atreus plays in the advertised 70 minutes? Turns out I’d underestimated the summarizing power of, for instance, the tart shorthand with which a vengeful Elektra, plotting the death of her marricide mother Clytaemnestra, sums up her thoughts about the long-banished brother she hopes will return to deliver the vengeful blow: “I hope he’s not a pussy.”

Also efficient: The stained-glass bluegrass choral number in which Elektra and her fundamentalist libation bearers pray piously for “the death of that vile whore.”

For what’s essentially a fast-moving, one-wiseass-after-another lark, the adaptation spends perhaps too much time trying to get inside its characters’ heads — to explain Orestes’ biddable nature, for instance. But there’s juggling, a certain amount of hand-walking, and just when you think it couldn’t get much more vaudeville, on strolls an accordionista — in a tutu, unless I misremember.

Audience participation is encouraged, which last week inspired the peanut gallery to contribute the observation that Helen of Troy was an “unfaithful bitch,” and the inevitable postmodern irony raises its head when Clytaemnestra, strapped lusciously into a velvet-patchwork bustier, heaves a put-upon sigh: “All the men in my life turn out to be such disappointments.

See it if: Mention of the vengeful Furies and the cultural norms they enforce always made you want to write a driving punk anthem revolving chiefly around the lyrics “Don’t be an asshole.”

Skip it if: You think the classics shouldn’t be performed unless they’ve been properly embalmed; the rousing Up With People homage in which the goddess Diana Athena restores harmony and invents the civil justice system might just send you over the edge.

7 (x1) Samurai
David Gaines
Mr. Gaines may hawk his show as “An Epic Tale…told by an idiot,” but during the 7 minutes I witnessed last night, it became uproariously clear that this man is no idiot. Dressed as part street-pantomime part Japanese warrior, Gaines was riveting as he moved seamlessly among his manifold nonspeaking characters. This is serious, sidesplitting, mesmerizing stuff, and to see one man sustain it for 45 minutes is a feat I refuse to miss.

Slave Narratives Revisited
Mosaic Theatre Productions
Talk about a powerhouse: Lary Moten, in two tantalizingly short monologues, had everyone in RFD’s back room transfixed last night. He transformed that space twice in 5 minutes: first into an antebellum southern crossroads, and then into a Montgomery bus in 1956. There were some truly sublime (and deeply funny) moments, and if this is what 5 minutes in a bar feels like, well then I can’t wait to see the real thing.

Check out a few more suggestions after the jump.

Ball & Chain
Journeymen Theater Ensemble
Ball & Chain is a collection of seven short riffs on love and marriage. The Journeymen teased a piece called “Love in the Time of GPS,” a witty flirtation between a man and his green-eyed Global Positioning System. Although each of the seven shorts is written by a different local playwright, if “GPS” is any indication of the quality of humor, Ball & Chain should induce quite a few chuckles.

Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Roadside Revue Presents: The Oresteia
Spooky Action Theater
I have to admit, I’m usually skeptical of modern takes on the classics. Not so with Dizzy Miss Lizzie’s Oresteia after what I saw last night. This show is sure to be a veritable volkstragedy, weaving Aeschylus’ tale of revenge with a bluegrass sensibility. Plus the tune they played was catchy, precisely rehearsed, and contained the words “vile whore” in the chorus.

I Like Nuts! (The Musical)
I Like Nuts! (The Company)
You know, after seeing only one number, I can’t really tell you what I Like Nuts! (The Musical) is going to be “about,” per se. But I can tell you that it was brazenly irreverent, overtly silly, and that I laughed my ass off. When the woman sitting next to you can’t stop herself from spontaneously singing along to “I like nuts! I like nuts in my mouth!”–well, that’s when you know you’re watching something special.