BACK STAGE WEST
April 25, 2002
by Rob Kendt
Conflict of
interest dept.: The
following is both long overdue and, I'll readily fess up, dangerously close to
self-serving. It just seems unfair to the theatre folks who've been nice enough
to engage me as a performer/musician that I can't acknowledge their work here.
First this year was Sam Shepard's Suicide in B-Flat, in a member's production at Company of
Angels, in which actor/director/ producer John Prince pulled off a small
miracle with Shepard's opaque, often lyrical one-act. Just opened is Uncle Vanya, which started as a Classical Theatre Lab
workshop and now is having a full run at the Met, with Orson Bean perfectly
cast as the professor--and everyone else (present company excluded) perfectly
cast as well, and sensitively directed by Bruce Katzman. And ongoing is The
Strip, the late-night
serial at the Evidence Room, with fresh weekly writing and performing by Patty
Scanlon and Hugh Palmer and Justin Tanner. Guests have included Laurie Metcalf
(as a slack-jawed hillbilly, then as a dorky landlady), Chris Wells (as
Scanlon's terrifying doppelganger-in-drag), and Mink Stole (as a short-fuse
psychiatrist), not to mention some beloved Tanner Cast Theatre regulars (Laurel
Green, Lisa Beezley, Sandra Kinder, Dana Schwartz, Andy Daley). The
wheelchair-bound but still-kicking Susan Tyrell is planned for a future
storyline. Writer/performer Michael Connor started with the show, then bowed
out (he's now working on a devilish spoof of NPR magazine shows for a local NPR
station); slated to join the fray as a new writer this weekend is Annie Weisman
(Be Aggressive at La
Jolla Playhouse, Hold Please at South Coast Rep) and her frequent collaborator, actress
Jennifer Elise Cox. Apart from Tanner's dual lead performance as the drunken
whore Breezy and her nerdy gay brother Dank, Scanlon's
hyperventilating-beatnik-Gidget-from-hell, Hildy, and Palmer's deadpan couch
potato, Bob, the performer who has delivered the biggest laughs from Week One
is Brian Newkirk as the outrageous, unflappable flamer Stevie. My favorite line
of the series so far was Stevie's put-down for a seedy, leather-clad rival,
"Excuse me, Evil Queer-nievel."
Each of these
fine productions has featured yours truly onstage, toiling on one instrument or
another. Assignments for which I can contribute recorded music and leave the
premises have eluded me (my previous work with Cornerstone was also all
on-site, in-the-moment), but what I've received in return--the chance to watch
shows take shape in the hands of inspired, sometimes difficult, ultimately
amazing artists--has been priceless for me, both professionally and personally.
Every critic should be so lucky.
¥ Caught Sandra
Tsing Loh's new solo piece I Worry, part of the Taper's "Next Step" development series at
the Evidence Room. She had a baby three weeks ago and confessed afterwards that
she'd had about two hours of sleep the night before. Still, the hour-plus-long,
David Schweizer-directed piece had a furiously funny urgency to its musings
about America at the dawn of the 21st century. It's also Loh's most
"meta" or "deconstructionist" show yet; it's the first time
I've actually seen those frustrating, existential questions Anne Bogart is
always asking--What is the role of the audience? Who is theatre for? and so on--brought
to hilarious, slightly frightening life in the theatre.