Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

Tears and trifles
The Keening, Cinderella Rocks, The Boy Friend
BY CAROLYN CLAY

"Attention must be paid," says Linda Loman of husband Willy in Death of a Salesman. Colombian playwright Humberto Dorado’s The Keening takes us out of a failed American dream and into a South American nightmare but, once again, attention must be paid. The stark one-woman work showcases the life and job prep of a plañidera, or professional mourner, a woman we watch scrubbing down her workplace and preparing for the rituals of her trade as she tells a tale of struggle and thriving, turned unspeakably grisly, to no one in particular. It’s a story of brave if ordinary persons caught in the crossfire of leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and a collusive government, all dependent on drug-smuggling money, in a country where Dorado, who is 54, says he has never known a day of peace. The play, which American Repertory Theatre artistic director Robert Woodruff discovered at a 2004 theater festival in Bogotá, is presented by the ART in its English-language premiere (at Zero Arrow Theatre through November 13), in a clean translation, with outcroppings of lean poetry, by Joe Broderick and Ryan McKittrick. Nicolás Montero, midwife to the piece since its inception, directs.

The Keening is less a play than a powerful act of bearing witness. The keener tells a fictive story that includes the death of a husband, the raising of children, the discovery of a calling, an abortive attempt to rekindle love, and a personal funereal triumph, all shaded by violence to which she is inadvertently but undeniably connected. But the tale builds to a climax based in fact. In January of 2001, paramilitaries massacred 26 of the male citizens of a northern Colombian hamlet called Chengue while government forces stayed conveniently out of the way. Although Dorado changes the name of the town to Aguacatal, the real names of the victims of Chengue, on certificates lit by electric candles, point the way to the performance space.

Once the audience is seated, the aura of a church gives way to one more clinical, in which the keener must first make her workplace "aseptic." Set and lighting designer Alejandro Luna intends a view through a microscope at a society spotted by corruption that, like Lady Macbeth’s hands, cannot be scrubbed clean. But the piece is also about the culture of death, which in Colombia has devolved from a ritualistic revel, with the keener as both griever and celebrant, to something brute and unceremonious. Here an anonymous practitioner of a dying art remembers a life both difficult and joyous as she gears up for a funeral that will be political, personal, and deadly.

According to the playwright, The Keening "recognizes the legitimate right that we have to speak aloud, by ourselves; to express the heights of our emotions and the crests of the waves that slam against the tranquil shores of our beaches." In the intimate space at Zero Arrow Theatre, the keener seems, instead, to speak to us, albeit at some remove, so that those crests — anger, lust, grief, panic — are more reported than immediate. The piece was written in collaboration with Colombian actress Vicky Hernández, whom Dorado calls "a force of nature." But at the ART, Marissa Chibas (who seems young for the role) offers a performance that is as straightforward, even objective, as the play. Singing naturally, dancing sensually, punctuating the reminiscences with bright-eyed defiance or a hoarse laugh, she lays the writing respectfully on the slab but doesn’t gush all over it.

God has no monopoly on the details; Ryan Landry’s in them too, as is evinced by this most elaborate of the drag parodist’s efforts, Cinderella Rocks (at the Ramrod Center for the Performing Arts through November 19). When Cinderella (a real girl, surprise!) sings with the humanoid pets that are her confidants, the moose head on the back wall sings too, moving its head back and forth to the rhythm. When she departs the kitchen in a puffy pumpkin coach pushed off by a couple of skimpily clad nags, a miniaturized version of the vehicle is seen soaring its way high above the bar of Machine (in whose bowels the Ramrod Center is kept), on its way to the ball.

But lest this start to sound too Julie Andrews, it should be noted that Cinderella Rocks is a low-rent hard-rock musical, with songs by Landry and Bill Hough of the band garageDogs. A macabre Hough starts the show off as the Storyteller, delivering the background details that have brought our heroine under the power of her poisonous Stepmother (Landry, gotten up like Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes). There are some country- and Springsteen-tinged ballads and one number that steals its beat from "The Monster Mash," but others of the songs are raw and fiercely barked into hand mikes, to pre-recorded accompaniment by Landry’s band, Space Pussy.

And not all the ladies are as lithe as Meaghan Ludlow (Love)’s punk-peasant Cinderella — though the musically formidable Afrodite, garbed in a lavender prom gown as the Fairy Godmother, exudes regal command. The ostensible fruit of Landry’s loins, ugly stepsisters Ptomaine (Penny Champayne) and Salmonella (Olive Another), live up to their billing, the one a leering, feral string bean with hanging hag’s breasts, the other a blithe blimp whose hat features a whole pig tucked into a sandwich. (The Cinderella costumes come close to the late, great Howard Crabtree’s parfaits of fabric, found objects, and whimsy.)

Of course, there are variations on the fairy tale. The kingdom of Prince Charming (a blond-wigged Mark Meehan) seems to be a sliver of Massachusetts, and the Prince himself is an alcoholic Hollywood failure ("He’s an actor and a model/And he likes to hit the bottle") who yearns for a chick "with a soul inside." Bruno (Gene Dante), his vinyl-tank-topped valet, clearly yearns for him. After some rough treatment involving a sword, a trunk, and a hacked-off foot, things get put right, though not in the usual way. The performances are far from subtle but funny. And Landry should be bottled — though if he were, the Prince might drink him.

The Boy Friend is a pseudo Cinderella story, but I admit to thinking Sandy Wilson’s silly-sweet 1953 musical about finishing-school flappers on the Riviera (which even director Julie Andrews calls "endearingly inane") might benefit from the Landry treatment. In any case, it benefits from the Andrews treatment, which is stylish and a little giddy but delicate. And the first-time director, who made her 1954 Broadway debut in the confection, gets a little help from former family. The elegant-cartoon tone of the Goodspeed Musicals production (at the Shubert Theatre through October 23) is set by the arch, watercolor-inspired sets of the first Mr. Andrews, Tony-winning designer Tony Walton. Also apt are John DeLuca’s precise, Charleston-inspired dances. Longueurs do set in when the girls are giggling or sniffling rather than kicking up their heels in praise of the accouterment of the title. But Wilson’s lighthearted songs brim with infectious innocence, and with three acts compressed into two, all flying by in two hours of fringe, sequins, and beach balls, there’s not time to get too bored.

The gossamer plot centers on "poor little rich girl" Polly Browne, whose millionaire father is suspicious of gold diggers. Lonely Polly develops an instant connection to a strapping lad delivering a package who, as luck would have it, turns out to be an usually pedigreed proletarian. By the end of the act-three costume ball, the starry-eyed coupling has extended to all and sundry, including the heroine’s flirtatious school chums, her loosened-up dad, and the headmistress with a past. Even the oh-so-French maid gets paired with a handy waiter. The show is well sung, with Jessica Grové (Polly) and Nancy Hess (Madame Dubonnet) boasting especially lush voices. And it’s snazzily danced, with Andrea Chamberlain and Rick Faugno leading the period assault. I say let Andrews have a go at Mary Poppins.


Issue Date: October 21 - 27, 2005
Back to the Theater table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group