TOO ABSURD!

Subversive Theatre asked me to play elevator man for patrons of their TOO ABSURD! production, consisting of two 'Theatre of The Absurd" plays on Friday night. I transport audience who can't surmount the three flights of cold hard stairs, on a freight elevator to Subversive's home space on the third floor of The Great Arrow Building, a mostly empty, sprawling industrial complex that once housed The Pierce Arrow Corporation, a manufacturer of luxury cars circa 1910. The building now provides cocooned space to theatre, (Alt Theatre is also in residence there), and sparsely set offices.

Upon boarding the ancient steel and wood freight elevator, that looks like a certain death trap, but glides with the gentleness of a paper airplane, I always yell to the mostly elderly riders, "GOING UP!", to absolutely on one's amusement. Indeed, when the steel gated frame locks us in with a crash, and the heavy wooden doors are slammed shut, and suddenly I can't get the damn thing to go up or down, the look on the concerned faces seem to say, next stop hell.

I stayed for the show. The theatre space was trashed with old newspapers discarded on the floor under and around the seats of the audience. I don't know why, except to say it was absurd. The subsequent plays seemed to have nothing in common with old newspapers.

The first play, absurdist dramatist Eugene Ionesco's "The Lesson", directed by Drew McCabe, finds a maniacal academic professor, (James Wild), badgering a pupil, (Jessica Wegzryn), into submission under the guise of tutoring. The lesson taught involves simple arithmetic, a breeze for the excited and hopeful student, and subtraction, to which she is inept. It evolves into a lesson on sub-languages of Spanish. The play is fun and thought provokingly tragic, and not illogical in it's portrait of an intellectual dominance over the illiterate. Wild paces and stalks the stage like a schizophrenic caged leopard on meds, and Wegzryn's harried student suffers an empathetic breakdown under the weight of a math equation. Both actors take this absurdist play and dance merrily around the logic of Darwin's theory of survival.

"On The Sea", by Polish writer, Slawomir Mrozek, directed here by Mark Tattenbaum, certainly inspired Monty Python's Flying Circus' classic sketch of cannibalistic sailors at sea, ("I wish you'd all quit bickering and eat ME!"). The fun reference to Python is in cold contrast to a notoriety in writer Mrozek's life. In 1953, during the reign of Stalinism in Poland, Mrozek participated in the signing of a letter to Polish authorities, groundlessly accusing three Catholic priests of treason. The priests were condemned to death but never executed.

The director of the first production of "On The Sea", in Poland in 1961, was in attendance at this performance. Three men, a fat one, (Kurt Erb, not nearly fat), a thin one, (Matt Nerber), and a medium one, (David Utter), as listed in the program, are adrift at sea without food and determine their only means of survival is for one of them to be eaten by the others. They draw lots, stage a democratic election, and finally two conspire to eat the third. The play is a lighter absurdity than it's predecessor, with the medium man daintily setting a makeshift dinner table, ("Does the little fork go on the right or left?"), and the unfortunate object of dinner scrambling to find a way out of his predicament, ("I am poisoned,...I have an infected liver,...one leg is shorter than the other"). They are briefly joined by two women, a post woman, (Jennabeth Stockman), and a maid, (Kelsey Arlen), who swim aboard to report news from land, ("You have a message on your cell phone"), certainly an update of the original script. The play was odd and funny, beginning with a ridiculous ukelele strummed Hawaiian novelty song, sung quite well by the three men, and ending with the proclamation of individual rights by the soon to be eaten dinner guest.

Both plays offer not a frustrating wonderment, but insightful, albeit absurd comments on the privileged gentry eating alive the common man.

SUBVERSIVE SHORTS

I went to a play but I didn't stay for Act 2.

Why not?

The program said, Act 2, same as Act 1.




Subversive Theatre got a bad rap from The Buffalo News in a review for their production of SUBVERSIVE SHORTS 2009. I saw the final installation of this collection of short plays from around the country at the closing performance Sunday night, a four and a half hour marathon, where all 10 plays were presented. The plays were previously presented as two seperate performances on alternating evenings. I could only stay for seven of the plays, and what I saw certainly contradicts the dismal one and a half star rating offered from The News. Some broad humor, some subtle nuance, a sprinkle of dark politics, a dash of intrigue and some truly dramatic and edgy moments were all thrown into this pot of political stew, resulting in a most satisfying evening of new theatre. Heather Fangsrud gives a fine and moving solo performance as the daughter of a Vietnam War veteran, professing her father's psychological injuries in SOUTHPAW STANCE, and Donald Capers and Jacqueline Jordan bring a hopeful glow to the war minded absurdity of NORMAL IS A COUNTRY, about the recovery of a recently disabled vet.





So I went to a play but I couldn't stay for Act 2.

Why not?

The program said, Act 2, two weeks later, and I didn't have that much time.


The Arties nominations have been announced and I'm glad that the two plays I served as stage manager for at The New Phoenix received Best Actor and Actress nods for Lorraine O'Donnell in DUSTY SPRINGFIELD, WITH YOU, and Richard Lambert in BLACKBIRD. DUSTY SPRINGFIELD, WITH YOU, penned by Richard Lambert, also received a nomination for Best New Play.

Daggers in your teeth, everybody.

TENTATIVE ARTIE NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED

Artvoice newsweekly's Artie Award nominations, honoring outstanding achievement in local theatre productions, were announced Sunday night at 'Q' on Allen Street, although nominations in the categories of Actress and Supporting Actress in a play, have yet to be announced.

Not surprisingly, Musicalfare in Amherst, which produces musicals exclusively, received the most nominations with 27 mentions, tripling the nine nominations the next most nominated theatre, The Kavinoky, received. *( 5/21/09 -A late posting of the actress categories tallies The Irish Classical Theatre with 9 nominations as well.).

Alleyway Theatre's HELL HOLE HONEYS, and Musicalfare's JAMESTOWN GALS and SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, received the most nominations for a musical with eight each. The Kavinoky Theatre's THE FARNSWORTH INVENTION, Aaron Sorkin's examination of the advent of television, received the most nominations of a play with five, including Best Production.

The Katherine Cornell Award for Outstanding Contribution by a Visiting Artist, have also yet to be announced.

The 19th Annual Artie Awards will be held on June 1 at The Town Ballroom in Buffalo. All benefits from the ceremony will go to The Benedict House, an AIDS related charity.

For a listing of the announced nominees, go to artieawards.webs.com/

EASY LISTENING

Man, I couldn't wait for this hiatus, this dawn and twilight, this home sweet hell, when I had no theatre commitments, and I could just come home from work, and do as I please for the foreseeable future. And now that I've had such freedom for a few weeks, I have to admit I'm a little bored. It sort of sucks to drive 60 miles to and from Buffalo after work, as I do when I'm with a show, but I'm reminded, in my freedom, the joy and sorrow in debating whether to watch THE AMAZING RACE, or THE APPRENTICE, on a given Sunday night. Truth be told, I've never seen either of those programs. My family was discussing the merits of both at Mother's Day dinner on Sunday. But you get the idea. I can work on my epic poem for just so long.

For readers of this blog, both of you, it may be newsworthy to know I've had to backtrack in my alphabetized listening of music. Right between SOUNDGARDEN, and The Soundtrack to SPIDERMAN, I came across some records I bought and stashed in a closet, and promptly forgot about. So I've spent the last few months going through them listening to letters M, through letter S. It's an alphabet fetish. The music is secondary.

It's a fine line between worthwhile listening and pure junk in the world of old records. This weekend was decidedly easy listening. First up was "101 Strings, The Soul of Spain". If you know old vinyl records, you know 101 Strings. They were, and still are, a European based orchestra, that produces luscious arrangements of current pop hits, movie scores, and other thematic music. These records were bountiful in the 1960s, owing much to the fact they were always considerably cheaper than any other record albums in the record store. If albums were $1.89 in 1969, the 101 Strings albums were 59 cents. They are now a staple in Salvation Army store record bins. I remember being about 10 years old and my friend up the street came home with a brand new Beatles album, which shouted from the cover, THE BEATLES! THE BEATLES! THE BEATLES! We put it on the record player, and to our horror, out the speakers came beautiful, beatle-less schlock. And if you looked carefully again at the record cover, at the top in fine print it said, '101 Strings Play', and then boldly, THE BEATLES! THE BEATLES! THE BEATLES!. What a chump.

101 STRINGS, THE SOUL OF SPAIN, is very conquistador-like, a lot of marimbas, castanets and strings. Picture European conquerors and dancing senoritas. Speaking of strings, I also listened to SINATRA & STRINGS, (1961 Reprise - 1004). This pre-Beatles era recording features Frank Sinatra crooning standards like Misty, Night and Day, and Stardust. It seemed to me Sinatra without strings would have been a better listen, as the swarming violins do little for the stark, soulful, and blues based arrangements of songs. But it's Frank Sinatra, so who cares? Bagpipes and a kazoo wouldn't dampen that voice. Another glass of sherry, my funky friend?


Speaking of knock-off record labels, I listened to ARTIE SHAW, MR. CLARINET, on Tops Records (9755). Tops Records were infamous for confusing the record buying public with versions of current top hits, by session vocalists. So if you were looking for "Splish-Splash", by Bobby

Darin, you may have purchased Splish-Splash by Joe the plumber. But any lover of vintage vinyl will tip a hat to Tops Records. Any recording company that started off selling used jukebox singles out of crates in grocery stores, and hiring a then unknown Lou Reed as a session vocalist, certainly has something to offer. They can also boast releasing early records by then unknowns, Lena Horne, The Ink Spots, and several others, under there soon to be famous names. ARTIE SHAW, MR. CLARINET, is a typical Tops record with ridiculous statements on the cover like, "DUO-RANGE STEREO", and "TOPS STAR SERIES". Generally 'Tops Star Series', meant music by once established popular musicians, whose work had fallen into public domain, or were an easy purchase, and Duo-Ranged Stereo, meant not mono. It is interesting to hear the Artie Shaw of the Big-Band era, with jazzy and improvisational arrangements, evolving into a Lawrence Welk-like platitude, edging along the shifting preferences of the record buying public. There is a smashing female vocal of MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDY here, but like one can expect from a slapdash Tops record, the singer is uncredited. Shaw was considered the finest clarinetist of his day, and while fronting his popular orchestra in the 1930s, he was the first Caucasian Big Band leader to hire a featured black female vocalist, none other than Billie Holiday, who eventually excused herself from the position after pressure from record company executives, and southern audiences.

And in the mail yesterday came the book, TOP POP SINGLES, 1955-2002, by Joel Whitburn, which contains a listing for every record single which broke into Billboard's Top 100, in the rock and roll era, between the years 1955 and 2002. I'm drooling.

And I'm poking my blog with a stick with another inane entry. It's time to watch the whole page light up with my spell check.