BACK STAGE WEST

April 25, 2002 

        

The Wicked Stage

 

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.