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Archikulture Digest
Number 8: July, 2000
Orlando salivates at the possibility of a BRAND, NEW Arena! Hip Hip Hooray! Meanwhile, our oldest and youngest theaters sit on the slippery slope of financial implosion. Nothing's too good for those bad boys of the NBA, but the Civic is lucky to get tough love from Orlando. For half the price of the Glass Asparagus, the Civic might survive if it can dig up matching funds. Doughty little Performance Space Orlando needs even less, maybe about as much as the deli tray at the Mayor's inaugural cost. Well, you know what they say: If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. Except Orlando.
Tempest
Written by Wm Shakespeare
Directed by John DiDonna
Starring Paul Wegman, Catherine Mangan, Erin Muroski, Mark March
You stick a guy on an island with nothing but a monster, his daughter, and a few books from the Wiccan Lending Library, and he's likely to make a bit of trouble. Prospero (Wegman), Deposed Duke of Milan, runs the island with sprite Ariel (Muroski) and monster Caliban (March). Prospero conjures up a plane wreck, bringing daughter Miranda (Mangan) a suitor, along with a few old enemies and a pretty good 3 Stooges act. The crash party arrives in groups - Ferdinand (William Warriner) immediately falls for Miranda, who's never seen any other men save dear old daddy and smelly old Caliban. Group 2 consists of Ferdinand's daddy Alonso (Bobby Bell), his advisor (John Kelly), the jaded Antonia (Peg O'Keefe) and Sebastia. Antonia runs Milan these days, and plans to off Alonso. Ensemble, they hang out and kvetch while Ferdinand goes a-courting. The real entertainment revolves around nerdy Trinculo, drunken Stephano, and hapless Caliban plotting to overthrow Prospero. They're drunk enough to believe this will work AND think it's a great idea. How do we know it's a comedy? In a tragedy, most of these secondary players would exit, dead into the wings.
Everyone clicks in this production. Prospero comes across as a guy who spent a little too much time in the Crystal department at Wal Mart. Ariel flits over the stage, appearing and disappearing as needed with a perfectly camouflaged leotard, controlling the other actors via mime. She represents the perfect Shakespearian plot device, being only visible to Prospero and the audience. Precisely timed prat falls and practiced stage drunkenness enlivened the Trinculo/Stephano/Caliban triad, and the Ducal party mixes vacuous importance with backstabbing ambition. Like any really good comedy, plot is faint and motivation cloudy, but comedy comes from embellishment. Tonight, Orlando's stalwart embellishers have their wit wound fully.
The Chairs
By Eugene Ionesco
Directed by Rick Stanley
Starring Becky Fischer and Joe Swanberg
Mad Cow Theater
What we have here is a failure to comunicate. Our Old Couple, married nigh on 100 years or so, struggles to sum up life together. Tell me that friendly old story, the one I ask for every night. You could have been so much more - head Coach, head General, head King maybe. Lonely and isolated on the desert island of the mind, confined in a house with more doors than any two actors could ever need, as many doors as choices in life, our Old Couple love and ignore each other the only way possible - at the top of their lungs and in each other's face. Summing up is hard to do - hire a professional orator, and invite everyone that counts, landlords and intellectuals. That's anyone who's anything anywhere - you're either a landlord, or you're an intellectual. Couch potatoes need not apply. At the appointed time, the art and money crowd shows up - and bring on the chairs! We'll need lots of them! Pack the house, the Orator will arrive any moment!
Set on a corrugated cardboard set, painted a green I always associate with failing aerospace companies, the only flashes of contrast appear from red lights behind the set, a bit of cloth and Old Woman's costume, a sort of fuchsia rooster getup that you need to show you're over 65 to purchase at Beall's. And there are doors. Doors, doors, doors everywhere, all the better to pull the thrift shop chairs onto the set for the invisible members of the cast, members who perhaps exist only in your mind. Are there more than 2 people on stage? Or did the actors fool us otherwise? And do we listen to our closest friends and companions? I know I don't. I don't even listen to the voices in my own head. There are other things to think about, and no time for other's thoughts. Life piles up opinions and facts and experience, none worth a hoot in our final act. This mountain of information grows fuzz on the intellect just like New Years morn grows fuzz on your tongue. The farther you go, the harder it gets.
Here and Now
Written by Tim Sullivan and Derek Mize
Performance Space Orlando
June 23, 2000
Six actors - six sketches. Coincidence, or just another conspiracy? More local writing and performing talent lurks in the shadows, trying to make the big time. Are they up to it yet? Bits of brilliance shine, and the bad spots aren't that awful. Tonight's top skit is "Mime School". You don't just go out on a street corner and annoy people, you have to study long and hard to pull that invisible rope and push that non-existent wall. All goes quietly and smoothly until Tony the Troublemaker (Tim Sullivan) shows up demanding instruction in audible English. We all remember this guy from High School, and he raises a ruckus until the prof throws the book at him. Even though it's invisible, it packs quite a wallop. It's only pretend blood, but once those quiet pancake faced waifs get a taste, there's no stopping till Tony learns the lesson.
What's the most depressing career in the world? High School guidance counselor is certainly in my bottom 10. "Career Day" comes around once a year, and Counselor Strom (Bret Carson) gets to tell people with less potential than he has what they should do with their lives. Get married fast, learn how to mix concrete, and experiment with heroin are some of the better options in this High School Confidential.
Laura Robinson stars as the "Store Stalker". Just like cops, you can't find a salesclerk when you need one, and when you would just as soon be alone, they're all over. Sales are falling at "The Ridge" as over-enthusiastic Heather OD's as Employee of the Month. Whatever color she has, that's this years gotta have it fashion. I don't know about you, but it's enough to make me buy my underwear on the Internet. Interesting concepts and tight delivery make this a promising group to watch. A few flat spots here shouldn't discourage audience encouragement or appreciation.
Ready When You are, C.B.!
Theater UCF
Written by Susan Slade
Dir by Lani Harris
Starring Brian Demers, Cindy Pearlman, Charlotte Black
Pretty boy Jonas (Demers) can't stand making bad films that pay millions of dollars. He flees the set of "The Love God" and 40 process servers to hide out in the New York Apartment of insecure landlady Annie (Pearlman). To her it's business, to him it's just monkey business. Annie's such a tempting play that he ignores his old girlfriend Felicia, who prances about in a backless, slit skirt Take Me NOW outfit. Can he make more money playing the ponies than acting? Will Annie turn to a desperate life of acting in Tennessee Williams plays? And will Jonas' Mom (Michelle Foytek) ever see her darling baby playboy married to a nice Jewish girl? Uh, sure... why not?
With neither enough laughs to count as a romantic comedy nor enough tension to count as a dramatic romance, this play falls into a demimonde of a funny / nice sitcom. The sparks that Jonas and Annie should strike never appear, and Felicia doesn't even seem vaguely annoyed that her best friend might end up with her best lover. Still, Felicia steals every scene she's in. A sexy alcoholic lust and outfits you'd only wear in New York push her over the top. Jonas' mom Sadie comes a close second with her Uber Yiddish shtick, but she just doesn't have enough stage time to really salvage this production.
The story here is standard. If you fall in love, you take a chance and you ought to do that every so often. Annie resists as long as is reasonable for two acts and half a dozen scenes, and finally strips down to modest underwear in a nice game of strip blackjack. She's sympathetic, but be glad that sympathy needn't be exercised in your apartment. Jonas, you never really come to love or despise. He's looks good and hits his cues, and you should hate him for bring such a shallow self-centered cad. I didn't feel like working that hard tonight.
Myrtle Schmergle's Mystical Adventures
Written & Performed by Katarinah Mazar
Performance Space Orlando
We should all have an aunt like Myrtle - Big hair and teensy steps, sparkly glasses and matching everything, and that sort of never say die optimism that spinsterhood develops in a woman. Somehow, a crew of us space aliens wind up in her living room monitoring talks with Mom. Are any of us Talent Scouts ? Any of us attractive eligible men? Not tonight, alas, but share her story. Starting as a lowly exotic dancer at that famous chain "Girls Girls Girls", she moves with the grace and eroticism of the big mechanical bear at Chuck E Cheese's. She danced topless in her early days, but had her standards - she never took off her glasses, no matter what the guys yelled. Myrtle has a talent, at least in her own mind. L.A. calls, and after terrorizing every talent agent her vision returns and directs her to the Big O - Orlando. Harriet the Hippo, her she comes.
As a one woman show, Myrtle has a strong character but drifts a bit in the actual entertainment department. Is it a lip sync show with air guitar? Original rap music by Ice Burg, the Yiddish rapper? Or a bunch of covers sung by your aunty from Long Island? I think she'd be interesting at a party, but she's a bit light to fill a stage all on her own for 45 minutes. But, like all the starstuck, she's out there pitching. Duck her fastballs - they leave welts.
Carl F Gauze is a wealthy but reclusive student of the arts, semi-retired from a stellar career as an insurance calendar salesman. His real fortune derives from his great grandfather, Herman S. Gauze, who invented the sterile surgical dressing in Zurich shortly before the First World War. Because of Switzerland's neutrality and the obvious humanitarian uses of this bandage during the tragedy, he amassed a vast fortune selling the dressing to both sides. He's recently been looking at bikes, and can't decide between a Harley Fat Boy or a Vespa. Decisions, decisions...
