Number 33: Spring Break 2003

by Carl F. Gauze

I dragged my sorry butt out of bed at 5 a.m. today and walked out to my car, past blooming azalea and Tababuia and citrus, scraped the pollen off the windows, and flew to Montana for the greater good of Corporate America. I’m now at 7000 feet, drinking the most expensive cup of tea this side of Venice, and short of breath. Everyone is trim and fit and ruddy and wearing those abominable sweaters with a deer knit into it. It’s snowing. I scrounged up a winter coat that is like traveling with a disabled Great Dane. What I find most amazing is there is an entire industry built on people believing this is fun.

On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia. <p>

Jerusalem Jones and The Mystery of The Dead Sea Scrolls

By Ken Hanson and Jonathan Chisdes

Directed by Mark Mannette

Starring Ken Hanson

JCC – Maitland, Fla</b><p>

It’s hard to write fiction as unlikely as the story of the Dead Sea scrolls. They were assembled by an obscure Jewish sect known as the Essenes, and contained various religious writing, manuals, and songs. Some were stored in clay pots, others covered by sand, all in remote caves near the Dead Sea. A Bedouin shepherd found them accidentally in 1947, sold them to a junk dealer in Bethlehem, and eventually they made their way to scholars who understood what they were. Amazingly, they provided written texts nearly twice as old as anything else known at the time.<p>

Presenting the story in dramatized form is Hebrew scholar and lecturer Ken Hanson, whose childhood fascination with antiquities lead to his involvement with the scrolls. He didn’t actully find any of them, but he does know his material, and you couldn’t help but learn something from the show. It’s less a drama and more a colorful college lecture by an eccentric and enthusiastic professor, and you always know the end point of the story before any tension builds. Besides his basic leather jacket and fedora adventurer, Hanson plays a number of other characters who handle the scrolls, including Archbishop Samuel, Professor Sukenic, and wrinkly-pated Yigael Yadin. The characterizations help the story, which is more than can be said of the silly jokes and Walter Cronkite impersonations.<p>

A few loose ends seem to remain as Hanson ends with the story of the Copper Scroll, which seems to point to a major buried treasure somewhere in the area. What happened to the remaining scrolls held by Kando, the dealer? Why did the scrolls stay locked up for so long, and what made the recent release of the unsorted scraps possible? Clearly, there’s more to the story than time allows, but a tighter resolution and a bit more tension would have made this a great show, not merely a good one.<p>

For more information on the Jewish Community Center of Orlando, please visit www.orlandojcc.org/ <p>

Chesapeake
By Lee Blessing

Directed by Michael Edwards

Starring T. Robert Pigott

Orlando Theater Project, Seminole Community College</b><p>

Just because art can be bad, should it be guaranteed a government sinecure, like Bad Foreign Policy or Wasteful Defense Spending? On one side of the battle we find perfomance artist Cur (Pigott) who reads the Song of Solomon while the audience undresses him. His nemesis is powerful senator Thurm Poole, a man who realized that he could beat liberals over the head with the National Endowment for the Arts and get votes. Cur has an NEA grant; Poole needs him to hold up as an object of everything wrong with the Liberals. Cur is just as important to the senator’s campaign as his trusty dog Lucky. Both are perfect photo ops, and both can be manipulated with impunity, always good for a few votes in a pinch. When Cur realizes he’s been unwittingly used, he sets out to bring divine vengeance on the senator by co-opting his own dog. Ah, only an artist could come up with something as sublime and unworkable, and almost certainly get jail time or worse! Filippo Tommaso Marinetti would be proud.<p>

With his puppy like enthusiasm and tear-the-place-apart energy, Pigott makes this one man show sparkle. It’s a first person narrative, so we have no issues with multiple character differentiation. He’s funny and likeable, and although he may have been involved in a few perfomance pieces along the way, the story tonight is NOT just one guy pounding on a frying pan creating aesthetic sadism. Cur has motivation – experiencing art with his dedicated but unconnected father, fleeing the narrow mindedness of a southern small town to date waiters in NYC, and eventually following his dream, no mater how unprofitable it might be economically. He sets out to affect people, and does. <p>

While the play appears to be at least superficially a light hearted approach to justify arts funding, we see as well the deeper place art holds in society. While there are many actors Doing Art in the sense of making people uncomfortable in a black box theater, the notionally evil senator Poole produces the exact same effect. He has voice lessons, a shtick, and a director, and fills the seats to boot. While Cur wants to make one set of viewers uncomfortable (and does), Poole works on a complementary subset of the populace. Both are on stage, both manipulate the viewer, both aim for and achieve a result. Poole is, in fact, as much perfomance artist as Cur. It’s just that Poole DID get a government sinecure – we call him an Elected Official. <p>

For more information on Orlando Theater Project, please vist www.otp.cc

Two Gentlemen of Verona

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Jim Helsinger

Starring Timothy Williams, Christopher Mullen, Mindy Anders, Sara Hankins

Orlando UCF Shakespeare Company

Orlando, Fla</b><p>

Gimme A “V”! Gimme an “E”! Gimme an “R”! Gimme the rest of those letters! It’s 1980 something, and the rah-rahs have taken over good old Verona HS. A flock of Ritalin inspired cheerleaders claims the stage, blasting us into the frenzied state of pep that can only mean one thing – raging teenage hormones. Where hormones lead, horny youth must follow, and that’s where we find rubbery Proteus (Mullen), deeply in lust with leg warmer clad Julia (Anders). She takes her advice from uber-Val Lucetta (Amanda Schlachter), while he hangs with suave, college bound Valentine (Williams). Valentine’s heading to the University of Milan for some education and serious beer pounding. There he falls for the sparkling Sylvia (Hankins.), daughter of the dean of Milan U (Robert Schneider.) Proteus’s dad Antonio (Paul Wegman) gets some good advice on something other than his duds at the 19th hole and sends his boy off to Milan U as well. Its sappy farewell time at the prom, but when Proteus alights in MU and spots Sylvia, two chords from “Jessie’s Girl “ lets us know where Julia ranks – out of town and out of mind. Now we hit the standard Bard story line – Valentine is banished to a second rate punk band, Sylvia despises both Proteus AND handsome suitor Thurio (Richard Width), Julia shows up dressed as a boy hoping to swap rings if not spit, and eventually Proteus calms down and does the right thing. Is it the One Ring from Julia? Precious says so, so it must be a very powerful ring. Time to cue the big Thriller dance number and drop the curtain. <p>

Shakespeare’s comedies are full of jokes that lack modern cultural resonance, but that has not stopped O/UCF from fixing the problem. With everything slid into the Me Decade, there’s no problem making the audience laugh continually. Of course, it helps if you have a strong supporting cast, with the likes of Speed (Brad DePlanche) as the silly Mailman, delivering messages and yucks for Valentine and anyone else who will slip him a few Ducats. Eric Hissom appears as Launce, Proteus’s red neck golf caddy and general Carl Spakler. Amazingly, Hissom is upstaged by his own dog, the lackadaisical and gassy J. Tiberius Boxerdog. Yeah, never follow and animal act, but it IS in the script and hard to avoid. Finally, let us not for Eglamor (Mike Chappell), rescuing Sylvia without tripping over his A-team gold chains. Moral of the story – you can’t tell today’s teens anything. Not like there folks listen for a darn, either. <p>

Superb acting, comedic timing, and brilliant use of pop music to move the plot forward make this one of the funniest comedies at lake Eola in years. Sight gags abound, from a rain of stuffed animals to Back Street Boys to the classic “Wax on, wax off”. OK, the boy band thing is an anachronism, but it’s the reunion of humorous situations to relevant clues that make this show smoke. While some of the song start and stop a bit abruptly, the tale of a philandering lover and his return to the Right Girl is timeless comedy, and if you’re hesitant to tackle laughing at Iambic pentameter, have no fear. Now, where are my vinyl pants?<p>

For more information on UCF-Shakespeare, visit > http://www.shakespearefest.org/ <p>

The Guys

By Anne Nelson

Directed by Chris Jorie

Starring Anne Hering, Rus Blackwell

Vines Theatre, Orlando, Fla</b><p>

Death and destruction and no way to cope. That’s the first impression we all have of the September 11 tragedy, and those who actully lost friends are in the worst possible state. It’s not just the loss of those we love, but the context of greater loss, greater vulnerability, and the feeling there was nothing we could do to stop it from happening. Of course people die every day, expected and unexpected, but the sum total of the loss seemed so much worse. Fire captain Nick (Blackwell) feels it, plus he has the unenviable duty of delivering seven eulogies for his men. No writer, he turns to the equally saddened Joan (Hering) who has offered to turn his impression of his fellow fire fighters into eloquent words. Four are due this week, and as he retells there stories, the mundane details of their lives turns each from a regular schmo to a hero. <p>

What does it tale to become a hero? I think it’s merely the opportunity, plus the discipline to do what you know is expected at a critical moment. That comes through strongly on Blackwell’s portrayal of an emotion-choked man struggling to understand what happened. It comes though as well in Hering’s quick, perhaps too quick conversion of his random thoughts into short, direct descriptions of the charter of each man. Even to unexpected tango dancing fantasy of Joan show the humanity of each. From this we observe that these were not just fire fighters, or martyrs to a cause we may still not understand, but family men, jokers, proud Irish, and individuals that you might find in any work place. “The Guys” is a fitting tribute to the dead, and will bring a tear to even the jaded in the audience. <p>

The Vines theater is located in the Plaza Threatre compex on Bumby. For more information, please visit www.theplazatheatre.com <p>

Candida
By George Bernard Shaw

Directed by Katrina Ploof

Starring Rick Stanley, Mike Marinaccio, Sarah Mathews

Mad Cow Theater, Orlando Fla</b><p>

So, can the Anglican clergy really make England into the best of all possible worlds? Reverend James Mavor Morell (Stanley) thinks so, and his support staff agrees wholeheartedly. Miss Proserpine Garnett (Kathy bakers) books him on a non-stop series of speaking engagements to the Fabians and Socialists and Wobblies, while the doughy Rev Alexander Mill (Lance Noe) emulates him down to the way he rolls his brolly. Mill hopes to be a minor opposition member of the lower house from Brixton someday. Oh, to be so young, so besotted with hope! Presiding over the household is his elegant and infinitely patient wife Candida (Mathews). She keeps the linen folded and the flowers fresh and deals with Morell’s other hangers on, such as the Shelly-like young poet Marchbanks (Marinaccio). They found him under a bridge waiting for a check to clear, and now he’s madly, passionately and platonically in love with Candida. I think they get as far as holding hands for 5 seconds while making polite small talk about decent wages for mill workers, but somehow in the repressed Victorian homeland this becomes a stand in for full metal lust. Aha, we must now have a showdown! Who shall she chose – sniveling whelp Marchbanks, or sanctimonious windbag Morell? It’s s cliff hanger, but at least Mill gets a glass of champagne into Garnett, and that’s all it takes to consummate their socialist revolution.<p>

Sly writing and brilliant casting makes this parody of idealism a joy to watch. We open with Morell berating his father in law (Sam Hazell) for his capitalism, insisting both speak freely about what they think of each other. By the end of the play, free thinking has lost it’s appeal as Marchbanks plays the same honesty card on Morell, but when it comes to the chastity of his wife it’s a moral crusade of a different color. There’s brilliant work all around, from the uptight Stanley to the gracious yet erotic Matthews to the petulant Marinaccio. Stanley perfectly captures a priesthood that has given up God as Salvation, replacing Him with Ideals as Salvation and blowing off confirmation class to preach to the Confirmed. Excellent support comes from Baker’s Garnett, a woman who would not be out of place today promulgating high fibre diets and high colonics. She looks just about ready to invent the Birkenstock. <p>

While the socialist message is a few decades out of fashion, folks bent on changing the world will never leave us unattended. While we ignore their messages, they work tirelessly and humorlessly to keep us from reverting to the savagery of conservatism. And it’s that lack of humor on their part that makes them so delightful to lampoon. Would Candida seriously consider running away from stable if stuffy husband for a young man destined only to write unpublishable poetry? It’s certainly absurd as I sit here writing about it, but at the time, on stage, it seemed perfectly plausible. And that is the heart of Romanticism – you get stupidity without sex and feel good about it in the morning. Don’t shouldn’t miss the experience.<p>

For more information on Mad Cow, please visit www.madcowtheatre.com

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

By Ken Kesey

Adapted by Dale Wasserman

Directed By Frank Hilgenberg

Starring Don Fowler, Laura Rohner, J LaRose

Theater Downtown, Orlando Fla.</b><P>

I’m crazy. You’re crazy. We’re ALL crazy. But not that many of us are locked up in an institution on Thorazine and Stellazine and all those other ‘zines that change you mind from sharply dangerous to medicated mush. One day, minor criminal and scamster R.P. Mac Murphy (Fowler) decided to get off the county work farm by claiming insanity, not realizing his 60-day gig commutes to a lifetime of institutionalization. As first glance, it looks pretty good – new friends, no heavy lifting, and free medication. But soon reality sets in. The place is run as a private fiefdom of head nurse Ratched (Rohner), and the notional chief physician Dr. Spivey is too overworked and overwhelmed to challenge her. While Spivey takes to Mac Murphy as one of the few non-insane people in his professional life, the pair is no match for Ratched. She is a power unto herself, and on her watch, the sick stay the same or get sicker, insurance be damned. Take Chief Bromden (LaRose) – apparently catatonic, he eventually takes up conversation with Mac Murphy, only to be beaten back down by The System. The rest of the nutcases fare no better – Ruckley (Drew Storie) spends his days shaking on mythical cross, Martini (Paul Castaneda) deals cards to invisible players, and poor Billy Bibbit (Daniel Cooksley) commits suicide rather than have his mother hear about a single indiscretion. Inside this ward, it’s the process, not the result that matters. Where I work, we call that “six sigma.”

Over an annoying background of “therapeutic” elevator music, the cast works well to capture the feeling of claustrophobia and hopelessness. Everyone on the ward realizes recovery, like reality, is only a dream. Mac Murphy is the breath of fresh air that shows there IS hope, the IS a way to fight the system, and even if you don’t win, it’s fighting the battle that really matters. Fowler fills the bill perfectly as the over excitable and irrepressible lout, and his bombast bounces perfectly of Rohner’s calmly evil Big Nurse. An enigmatic narration appears occasionally as the Chief prays to his father to make him less small. Wound up in the sorrow of the lost life of the Columbia Falls Indians, he summarizes the nub of hopelessness – something is gone, it won’t come back, and he is unable to change to the new circumstance. Woe is he! These ARE the lost souls of life.

“Cuckoo” is a story that claims the heart of the 60’s and 70’s hippy revolution – the system is evil, the system keeps you down, fight the system. Our battles have changed focus today, and rather than change the system by revolution we now attempt to jawbone everything to death on talk radio. MacMurphy made a difference, even if it only lasted a few weeks. Today’s fight doesn’t seem to matter at all in comparison, with results measured in ratings points rather than a new society. While “Cuckoo” is a nostalgia trip, it’s a well done one, and the people on stage make life in an institution seem very similar to that outside. We all volunteer for something or other, sometimes rehab, sometimes middle management hell. Go in to work tomorrow and sabotage the fax machine. Sure, there will be a new one by lunch, but think how good it will feel. For a few minutes, anyway.<p>

For more information, please visit www.theatredowntown.net <p>

A Shayna Maidel

By Barbara LeBow

Directed by Shelly Ackman

Starring Jill Bevan, Elizabeth Bradshaw

JCC, Maitland Fla</b><p>

Shanya Maidle – beautiful girl. All girls are born beautiful, but sometimes life strips that veneer off of them. Two sisters are born in Poland in the 20’s. One moves to New York with Father Mordachi (Richard Meagher), the other never makes it out and lives through the War with her mother (Faye Novick). Rose (Bradshaw) grows up completely americanized, while Lusia (Bevan) is lucky to escape alive, her husband Duvid (Chad Robertson) missing and her child dead. Mordechia commands the two live together, with Rose taking care of Lusia like a nurse, and despite a rough start, the two become the sisters they never were as children. While Lusia learns her English and her audience tests their Yiddish, Rose discovers there was a whole segment of her family she never knew, and would now never meet, all casualties of the Nazi – Russian – Typhus troika. Hope never dies in Lusia, and she searches on for word of her husband who was arrested 5 years before. While shattered, is it possible this family can ever live under a single roof? Or has the orbit of world cruelty spun them to far apart?<p>

While a bit hesitant in places, the story is believable and touching. In a series of dream like flashbacks, the story of Lucia’s childhood and marriage are told, highlighting just how far she has fallen. The Americanized Rose is certainly beautiful on the outside, while Lucia’s beauty is more internal. While Mordechai insists, “no Yiddish, here, we speak English!” enough of the dialog IS in Yiddish to present a challenge despite the capsule translations. Tension resides not in the sister’s relation or Duvid’s absence, but in the implicit questioning of God’s plan for all of them, or even if He might have abandoned his Chosen people. And, while Mordechi continually insists on the family obligations to “Fleisch und Blud,” he never deigns to hug his long lost daughter until well into the last act. Obligation, yes. Love, perhaps. But in any event, you MUST keep on living, if only to keep others alive. <p>

Incorruptible
By Michael Hollinger

Directed by Paul Luby

Starring Stephen Pugh, Rick Paulin, Brain Feldman

Seminole Community Theater</B><p>

Times are tight in the dark ages – no cable, no pizza delivery, not even any pilgrims for the monks of Priseaux to exploit and feed the poor. While God provides in general, in the relic business it’s the pilgrims in search of miracles that bring in the coin, and that’s what these monks are lacking. Sure, the bones of St. Foy are on display, but they lost their mojo when Abbot Charles (Paulin) began having doubts. Worse, minstrel and encyclopedia salesman Jack (Pugh) claims to have stolen those exact bones, selling them to a rival church down the road. Well, what he really did was dig up an ex pig farmer and passed him off as a saint. No matter, it’s faith that works the miracles, and if people believe those bones will cure oozing sores, who are we to argue? Eventually, an opportunistic idea dawns on the monks – they have lots of unused bones, so why not sell them to even more remote locations? It’s not like these things are bar coded or anything. Chief scribe Brother Martin (Feldman) takes the lead sales position, Jack gets to dig up remains, and Brothers Olf (Ryan Haskins) and Felix (Michael Perry) run the customer fulfillment department. It’s a nice start up, but a visit by the pope would really add the Pilgrimage Seal of Approval to the place. If only they had a genuine Incorruptible – a saint so holy, the body refused to decay. Sort of like Lenin, but with papers. With bodies running low, it falls on Jack’s common law wife Marie (Wondra Higgins) to lie still and act holy. She looks pretty good for being dead, and it takes a visit from the competing Abbess Agatha (Amy Tyree) to blow the story. But, some how, faith is restored, the old St Foy kicks in again, and it’s off to a new round of miracles. <p>

It’s a fun time, carried by the spit and vinegar of Jack and his mother in law, dear old Peasant Woman (Nadia Garzon). Considering how much she supports the action, I think the writer should have given here a Christian name. One also suspects there are more jokes lurking in the wings than appear on stage. Occasionally we see the odd view of timing without a punch line – it seems like a laugh ought to pop out, but no joke was available. Still, the monks are suitable grave as they agonize over the morality of what they are doing. Conclusion? Ends justify means. Next question. As the play nears its end, we never see the pope, but and excellent performance by Nunzilla Agatha makes you wish you had seen more of her earlier on. Lurking in the background of the story is some Shakespearean non-sense about star crossed young lovers simultaneously failing to commit suicide but not succeeding, but that may be safely overlooked. The set is convincing, the lighting dramatic and the story a fun bit of fluff that one COULD drag a moral discussion out of, if one were desperate. As someone once said, “Dominus Vobiscum Spritus 2-2-0.”<p>

I say “Amen.”<p>

Queen of Bingo

By Jeanne Michels and Phyllis Murphy

Directed by Kenny Howard

Starring Michael Wanzie and Matthew Arter

Fall River Productions at Footlights Theater, Orlando, Fla</b><p>

Bingo – it’s not just for the obsessed anymore. Or maybe it is, as Bingo is one of America’s most social acceptable vices for over 50 years running. Once or twice a week, the St Joseph’s Athletic association sponsors a round, which serves dual social purposes. It gives the under entertained a change to get out and see other live humans, and it raises a few bucks for the football team. Let’s focus in on two sisters – Babe (Wanzie) and Sis (Arter). Sis is so enthralled by the process of B-5, O-72 she plays bingo every day, which you might not think possible unless you grew up in this culture. Let’s face it; she has a gambling addiction, which in her case isn’t as bad a sitting around all day listening to Howard Stern and drinking Crème de Menthe. She also keeps an eye on her younger sister, who has a slightly lesser gambling problem, but does tend to eat, sleep and not much else when she’s not daubing her card. She has one ray of hope, which she studiously runs away from, the affections of Coach Anderson, a man who like a healthy woman and isn’t put off by a Muumuu and stretch pants. Bingo – it’s a lot like watching Sea Monkeys yearning for a bigger aquarium, like that would help.<p>

All very deep, and fortunately irrelevant to the fun. Preshow, we warm up to the upper Midwest with a medley of polka hits, many of which I know the lyrics to in more than one language. The setting is Wisconsin, and listening to Arter and Wanzie attempt the dialect is hysterical, unless you don’t know what it actually sounds like. Periodically, Father Mac (John Burkhart) appears on stage to add a parochial air to the proceedings, and at intermission the audience even plays a round, with a real frozen turkey awarded to an amused patron. Both Wanzie and Arter pull humor from pathos – at one point Wanzie sounds exactly like Divine as he bemoans “All I want to do eat and sleep and never go out!” Yeah, Catholicism and cows will do that to you, but a diet of Butterscotch morsels and cocoa powder got more than one of my aunts thorough rough times. Is gambling a sin? Well, that depends on whether you’re Catholic or Lutheran – Catholics believe it’s only a sin for the other team, and the Lutherans think it’s OK, so long as it doesn’t lead to dancing. Everyone wins on that count. <p>

We all have aspirations, and some are just more modest than others. Sis just want to be a big shot once in a while, and a $50 win would just about make it for her. Babe just want to get into a size 16, and anything south of that would be heaven. Sex isn’t a question for here, it’s a scary threat, and like almost every woman I’ve met, she’s convinced she’s to fat to appeal to anyone. Hey, Babe, were talking about guys here – our standards can be unimaginably low. But, barring anything better, the Moose Lodge is playing the Big Diamond Thursdays. Lets check it out, it beats dealing with reality.<p>

For more information on Fall River Productions, please visit http://www.fallrivertix.com or http://www.fortywhacks.com <p>

Buses
Directed by Reese Hart

Starring Michelle Nicole Falana, Jacki Marshall

Orlando Black Essential Theatre, Orlando, Fla.</b><p>

Sometimes it’s a very long wait for a bus in the after life. Mild mannered Rosa Parks (Falana) is waiting for the bus to take her home when she is set upon by the boisterous Mary Ellen Pleasant (Marshal). While each lived a century apart, they both affected their world in their own way. While Parks is well know for refusing to obey the Jim Crow rules on a Montgomery bus, Pleasant is much less known, despite her similar circumstance in San Francisco in the gold Rush days. She was thrown of a trolley, and went on to get a settlement and become an early force in the growth of the city. What makes their spirits converge? It seems to be about fame – while Parks has a street named after her, Pleasant languishes in an obscurity that prevents here soul from achieving rest. Somehow these two come together with Pleasant begging for the fame Parks eschews. Both stories are personal and interesting but Pleasant leaves many unanswered questions. When she arrived in SF, she was immediately auctioned off as a cook, yet somehow she came to run boarding houses and bordellos and sleep with one of the pillars of society. How did she make that transition? What was it about her that seeks fame? And what drew Rosa Parks into this nightmare? She did nothing to deserve it, and was simply minding her on business in eternity when called upon to deal with this obsessive west coast spirit. <p>

While a lot of material is thrashed through, there’s not a lot of tension beyond the “Why am I here? / Why aren’t I famous?” question. Pleasant is bawdy and brazen, Parks is quite and religious, and even that never seems to lead beyond the random bus stop encounter level. We see some of the shift in the role of a black woman over the time span, from a grudging acceptance as an entrepreneur to a fixed position as a menial, but that shift is more tied to the difference between a frontier town and a fixed stratified society rather than to the action of either woman. We even spend a few minutes debating the “Negro / Colored” nomenclature, which I’ve always regarded as the least interesting aspect of race relation in society. “Buses” is light on drama, but does point up an interesting and nearly forgotten woman who boldly dealt with her position and exploited it as best she could. While she never finds rest on this stage, one hopes she does in the great beyond.<p>

For more information on Orlando Black essential Theater, please visit www.obet.org <p>

Unit 44 and All Jane No Dick

Foolfest at SAK Theater, Orlando, Fla.</b><p>

One thing you can say about the SAK team, they are infinitely adaptable. You never know what combination or permutation of your favorite comedians will appear. When the spinner lands on “Unit 44”. you get Jay Hopkins, Brendan Jennings, Matt Soule, Charles Frierman, and that Vierday guy. Then, it’s a quick zip through some freeze tag and a dog show, but the best segment of the set was a long sitcom based on a redneck running the Ocoee Library (remember when everyone picked on Bithlo? What ever happened to Bithlo, anyway?) Libraries are for study, and that why they block the Victoria’s Secret web page and force to study higher sounding stuff, like “Mitochondria Does Dallas”. Sure, it’s all about sex and free love, but there ‘s a biochemistry angle that makes it all OK with the library police. <p>

But that’s just the warm up for one of the most interesting Fool Fest group, “All Jane No Dick.” Stacey Hallal and Deanne Moffett present a set of interwoven tales about the phases of two people’s relationship in a non-linear, non-causal setting. How non linear? Well, consider the cuddling phase of partnership, here transmogrified to trading a cat for an armadillo. He’s a one-person armadillo, and what is a physically satisfying position to one person can actually draw blood from another. Later, we see the difference behind the male fiscal response to Ice Cream (buy what’s on sale, no matter what awful flavor it is), to the female, which is invest in the high chocolate, high butter fat flavors like Chunky Monkey. Why would some one steal the last bit of Chunky Monkey when gallons of Vanilla Orange Sorbet are available? Well, because it’s YOURS, silly. Sic transit relationships. All Jane is one of the most complex and interesting groups at Fool fest, with a more complex and fulfilling story to tell than most. It’s not riotous, but extremely enjoyable for comedy in a non-specific location.<p>

For more information on SAK and Foolfest, please visit www.sak.com <p>

For more information on All Jane No Dick, please visit http://www.alljane.com/</a</I><p>>

The Doug and Darby Show

Directed By Chris Jorie

Starring Doug Trueslen and Darby Ballard

Courtesy of Orlando Theater Project

Margeson Theater, Orlando UCF Shakespeare festival, Orlando, Fla </b><p>

To wed or not to wed: that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mid to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous in-laws, or to take up arms against a sea of tax laws, and by opposing, compound the details of our Christmas card list? ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, and that pretty much sums up the subtext of one of the most interesting weddings this year. With nearly a dozen Equity actors on stage, the entertainment value of this social event exceeded some regular theatrical productions I’ve seen lately. Perhaps it was the Broadway style duet of Kristian Trueslen an Anne Hering singing “Who Could Be Blue / Little White House.” Maybe it was the outrageous styling of the Oops Guys, with little Fiely Matias forcible removed from the 3 Billy Goats Gruff bridge by the enraged groom Doug Trueslen. Personally, I take the highlight to be the Statements of Intent and of the Bride and Groom, a definite homage to the politic posturing going forth on the world stage today. If it’s good enough for Saddam Hussein, it’s good enough for our lovely couple. <p>

Well, like all good weddings, there were the standard characters, like the 2-year-old flower girl Katie Rios who stole the show by just barely climbing the step to deliver the petals. Later at the reception, the best man Jeff treason, the Gummo of the Truelsen clan, gave an incoherent speech well received by all in attendance, and the groom even got in the mandatory Spit Take. A few disappointments came with the fun, as the Little Bubble Bottles appear to have come from the Dollar Store discount rack, and weren’t nearly as effective as just stealing soap from the men’s room. The mandatory flock of photographs document the Paste Food Station and just about everything else not actully required by code in the building as we waited for the bride and groom to arrive, no doubt delayed by a stop for a belt of bourbon and quick game of Gin Rummy.<p>

Is the Big Wedding still a viable social statement in today’s live fast, divorce young, starter wife society? Well, the chance to stage a potlatch to impress all sorts of people who you may well never have to see again is certainly an attraction, and the opportunity to collect a few X-box games you don’t have get is appealing, but the original purpose of sending two naïve and unprepared kids into the world under the tutelage of drunk uncles and weeping aunts seems a bit dated. Fortunately for the D&D show, we all sort of know where they came from, where they are going, and most of us have been down that roads a few times and know it all about Hiding Behind the Character, and everyone did a great job on that front. I just hope they didn’t get more than one Salad Shooter; I’d hate to have them take my gift back to K mart.<p>

Darby and Doug so far have had the decency to not create a web site for their wedding, their pets, or any other incredibly boring topic. Bare in mind they DO have a videotape of the events, which they might drag out at any moment to show you if you drop by to visit. You have been warned. <p>

Improv Asylum and Sak Fool Jam

Foolfest at SAK Theater, Orlando, Fla.</b><p>

Don’t you hate sappy kid friendly television? Presenting 4 year olds with nothing but material designed for the median 4 year old is what makes the country dumber and dumber. Let ‘em watch Jeopardy, that what I say, eventually they’ll catch on. So I was impressed with the opening video form Improv Asylum, a 5-minute test of their parody “Peanut Hunt”, a show so intentionally bad your little ones will change channels on their own, and be the smarter for it. With scientifically selected thematic actors running around waving, Peanut Hunt encourages a child to “Count their holes”, and then do something creative with them. Normally, you’d pay $10 to rent a video like that, and not let your mom know.<p>

Hailing from Boston, a town with surprisingly little improv history, the Improv Asylum folks put together a snappy and entertaining set with nary a dropped segment. Begin with a sliced and diced set of vignettes of a marital relationship raising and falling faster than the Roman Empire on PBS. After this little session with Haiku twister, we get a glimpse into he fascinating world of children’s game marketing. It’s a cover art concept run-through, and while the naked guy doesn’t make the cut, the retarded kids do, showing us that… well… Improv Asylum LOVES the young ones. What I liked best about this troupe what their boffo closing number, the consumers product version of Lee Greenwood’s Proud To Be an American. We know that living in this great country isn’t all about majestic mountains and 85 cable TV channels, but the chance to get a really clean Mach 3 shave, a car that will make you recall you high school sexual escapades, and a the knowledge that you dog really IS getting enough cheese. God, it made me cry.<p>

And another great thing about the country is the fact you get TWO improve groups with your ticket at Sak Foolfest. Headlining the show is our own SAK comedy lab, Hosted by Jay Hopkins and a cast of almost half a dozen. They’re off to a strong open with the wild Going To the Beach SPF Blues, a song better than anything on the last AXIS local hits disk I found in a yard sale. Then it’s on to tag team fun as the crew is split in two and competes for fabulous prizes. Well, I assume there is a fabulous prize, but we never saw them, so I assume one team got half the gate. They start with a forward / reverse game as two computer programmers work had to get the RAM plugged in fed, and happy to do it’s job. Not bad, but there is a bit of warm up time until we hit one of SAK’s best bits, the Alphabet Shakespeare Should Of Said. Complicated to explain, the team tells a story in Iambic Pentameter with each line beginning with an adjacent letter of the alphabet, and periodically the host rings a bell and makes them go back and change the line. Once you’re over that intellectual hurdle, the bit flies along as the Megan team tackle the topic of mice. Next, laminates raise their ugly surfaces again as smarmy TV pundit interviews the world expert on these countertop polymers explains them a sign language interpreter struggles to keep up. And for the punch out number, we take a rough little segment on two guys arguing over basketball cards and a turn it into a 3 way musical – first in a cool jazz style, then opera, and finally as a edgy urban rap number. I don’t know what it is about rap and comedy, but while I can’t stand listening to it at intersections, rap is hysterically funny on a comedy stage. Fine work all around, and rest assured that these people will be hanging around town, making the occasional mall commercial and entertaining us all weekend long.<p>

For more information on SAK and Foolfest, please visit www.sak.com <p>

For more information on Improv Asylum, please visit http://www.improvasylum.com/</a</I><p>>

Superpunk and House Full Of Honkeys

Foolfest at SAK Theater, Orlando, Fla.</b><p>

Into every life, a little sketch comedy must fall, and you’d have a hard time finding two funnier guys to drop in than Mike Betette and Phillip Mottaz of Super Punk. As opening act, they had to move fast, and the result is a zippy set opening with a cheap commercial parody for a time travel machine made of some packaging detritus and a coffee mug. The great part is it works almost as well as my own, but is much funnier. As a follow up, there is a call to tech support, dropping them into the phone mail hell we all dread, whether talking to Microsoft, the bank, or even grandma. Highlight of the set is a cute parody of the James Bond escape sequence, as super agent Nick Jeopardy breaks out of the ropes and almost escapes, but is stuck with enough pangs of conscience to come back and retie himself every time Dr. Evil’s snippy footsteps appear on the set. Never trapped by a 3:05 radio time limit, some scene fly by in seconds like “At the Dog Track” while others take their full time as in the “Sword Fight” sequence, where two arch rivals fight to the death, even though death takes the form of arteriolosclerosis. Brilliant!<p>

Good thing the opening act was a hoot, as the main liners House Full of Honkeys fell a bit short, despite the huge fan support base that filled SAK thereafter. The premise was HFOH had broken up, and was recounting a retrospective in the style of Inside the Actors studio, lead by the smarmy Dan O’Sullivan. The early sequences, such as an improvised musical in salute of Formica went well enough, with a great set of tunes extolling laminate, but some of the subsequent numbers such as a medley of national anthems and a drawn out but inconclusive “My Movie! My Movie! My Movie!” never really clicked. Although defocused, there was still a ton of energy on stage, and the wrap up musical about a woman taking a dead tourist to the taxidermist made up for the previous sins. It’s improv, they do make it up as they go, and sometimes it works better than others. And yes, they ARE all white.<p>

For more information on SAK and Foolfest, please visit www.sak.com <p>

For more information on Superpunk, please visit > http://www.rulingtheater.com/</a</I><p>>

Joes NYC Bar – St. Paddy’s Day, 2003

Directed by Christian Kelty

Temenos Ensemble Theater, Orlando, Fla </b>

If you’ve dropped by the Chimera known as Joe’s NYC, you know this bar not only knows everyone’s name, but their political, moral and sexual proclivities as well. Tonight’s nominal celebration revolves around the patron saint of drunks (that is, those of us who don’t have to attend the meetings). But rather than just kill a few more nerves cells in pursuit of a Guinness Book of World Hangovers, the debate takes a serious tone – is it more dangerous to drink green beer, or to go to fight an unpopular war? Center field of the debate is aspiring Yankee Jackson (Bennet W Harrell), who sold his soul to ROTC to get through college, and now finds his million dollar rookie season might be spent a few hours north of Kuwait City, pounding the ground with the dog faces who always do the real dirty work in any conflict. Advice abounds – angst ridden local pol Alexandria (Janine Klein) pleads for the masses to get their information from any source other than the US mass media (like where? Unte Reader?) Space case Butterfly (Kimber Taylor) advises him to live in the best of all worlds and attend her Raelian papier-mâché fundraiser. And the real fight revolves not around guns vs. butter, but double anal vs. chastity as straight-laced Roxanne (Adonna Niosi) and porn queen Sunny D’Light (Cindy Pearlman) argue over the merits of watching porno films or keeping oneself pure for, oh, I don’t know, Howard Stern, I guess.

There’s a lot of posturing, and the whole “bomb’em up to the stone age” vs. “Bush sucks, so I’m against it” debate weighs on the normally intriguing patter of Joe’s. Things start deadly slow with a poll of everyone’s favorite game, and threaten to roll over and play dead until fiery Orleans (Ali Flores) arrives, bragging of his exploits as Super Spic, half PR, half Mexican, and all habenero in a fight. Backup arrives in the form of Sunny, and the saving grace of the show is a well-performed breakdown by congresswoman Alexandria. Her antiwar arguments are the least coherent I’ve heard to date, but the passion blasts through. Noteworthy in anchoring the north end of the bar is David (Charles Frierman), who spends his life doing things backward, except the part about building a domino fort and knocking it down. No one can do THAT backwards, not without powerful video editing tools.

Debate is in the eye of the beholder, and while this is far from Joe’s best show, it’s still worth a trip down to the wrong side of I-4, especially since they now have Guinness. After all, when you go to a bar, it’s really all about the beer. And easy pick-ups, too, but the beer is really most important, especially right before closing time.

For more information on Joe’s, please visit www.joesnycbar.com<p>

Island of Dr. Moreau

Adapted by H. G. Wells by Eric Hissom

Directed by April Dawn Gladu

Starring Richard Watson

Orlando UCF Shakespeare festival, Orlando Fla</b>

Consider the White Man’s Burden. The Victorians salivated to the idea of civilizing the savages, but today we’ve sort of given up, never vacationing in the Third World and leaving cultural indoctrination to Hollywood. But poor lost Edward Prendick (Watson) falls into the middle of the whole movement, circa 1890. He’s lucky to be alive after a shipwreck, and has only one real option – accept the hospitality of the mysterious Dr. Moreau (Watson) and his assistant Montgomery (Watson, again). They’re beyond working the savage circuit, and are actively involved in upgrading the morals and educational opportunities of the animal kingdom. Though surgery, blood transfusion, and Montessori, they modify dogs and panthers and oxen to be verbal, religious, educated people, bound not by the Law of the Jungle but by a credo of human abstractions – do not walk on all 4’s, don’t eat meat, don’t chase your fellow man up a tree. Ah, if it were only that simple, and we could get our fellow man back here in Orlando to act that nicely…<p>

So who are these people? Well, all of them are the infinitely mutable Richard Watson, who slips effortlessly between them in a one-man tour de force. Amazingly, there is never any ambiguity as to whom he is playing or what their state of mind is. Aiding the transition is an individual prop for each persona – Moreau’s hat, a black cape for M’Ling the dog man, a bullwhip for Montgomery. Each soul is cut crisply from the dialog, and finds its own space on the jungle-like set. Judicious sound effects and a thunderstorm in the small space make Prendick’s journey into a madly rational experiment a personal journey for the audience as well. And lurking behind every set piece is a pair or eyes – not human, not feral, but an eerie prediction of what lies ahead for the story.<p>

And what of the experiment? Just like colonialization, it appears to work at first. Animal sprits are suppressed, literature and law and spirituality are introduced, and a nearly stable society evolves. But as the paradigm is pushed farther and farther, cracks appear in the results. A new vaccine is introduced that buys a little time, but not enough. Eventually the colonizers must withdraw as the colonized revolt, and the veneer is completely peeled away. Only Prendick survives, and to do that he must first kill the only rational thing left on the island, the beautiful and intelligent panther woman. He lives to tell the tale, and we retreat to civilized life, have a few Fuzzy Navels, and laugh nervously. That sort of thing could NEVER happen here, could it?<p>

For more information on UCF-Shakespeare, visit http://www.shakespearefest.org