Frank's presents
There’s a frightening moment tonight towards the end of Tell. I’m like holy shit this guy’s about to pull out a gun, and I have to square with possibly witnessing the most violent thing I’ve ever encountered because who knows how unhinged these theatre people are. What kind of theatre, for example, might emulate a Chris Burden piece, or better, the performance of seppuku. I definitely don’t know ahead of time how alternative ‘alternative theatre’ might be. The character is unnamed, listed simply “Adult Man” in the bill, played by Frank Reed whose untouchable performance asks the most terrible questions about the peeping-tom/vaguely-pedophile phenomenon, though that is too abstract because he’s as real as real can be, and he’s begging us to understand. “I mean I didn’t rape anyone! It’s not bad!” His makeup is the variety of shoddy that doesn’t qualify as unintentional, but affects an aversive cringe. The ‘predator’ is after two stupid young girls struggling to get to and from a house party, one of whom is played by the selfsame author/director Akela Munsey hitting far above her class with a keen quality of insight from behind enemy lines. Though I cannot remember the last word, spoken by Adult Man after he drops the mic. I know I heard it, right before the lights.
Two singing German shepherds, played by Olivia Fogel and Sarah Isen, appear in the wing towards the beginning of A Revised Viewing of Imposed Companions. They have an uncanny command of what sounds like an early modern duet, perhaps Latin, which must have demanded an inordinate amount of rehearsal. Their elysian voices are backed later by their ridiculously sexy bodies, the big reveal in bikinis, when the plot takes a turn and we are let in on the gameshow/reality-TV scheme of everything proceeding. The man in charge is another toxic cis-het, again unnamed, an ‘admiral’ of dubious credentials, played masterfully by Tony Soltis who must be related somehow to the author/director, Siena Foster-Soltis. How funny it would be if the daughter wrote her father this seedy role—hookers in the West Pacific, machismo violence towards small dogs who “deserve to suffocate under my sweaty ass if they’re too stupid to allow themselves to be sat on,” etc. The meta-narrative is hilarious, if distracted only temporarily by the second movement of the plot in which two young women reliant on the admiral’s financial patronage argue about irrelevant particulars. The high high-pitched dialogue between these two lasts a beat too long, which I could do without, though perhaps necessary to set up the admiral’s entrance. To prove his stature.
Foxhunt is the first of the four short plays we wait on after the MC tells us, among other things, to keep the aisle clear, or else, which is apt for the chase that follows. The three hunters on hobby horses, rocking the Pro-Tec helmets all the groms of SoCal learn to hate early on—these idiotic hunters can only speak the names of their horse breeds. There’s a whole conversation we’re left to fill in. The fox is, of course, conversely, all-too-human. The bulk of the piece is his monologue about a jilted fox-ess lover. He lights a cigarette. At just the right moment he removes and readjusts his fox-ear headband the way one does with a ballcap under certain perplexing social situations. All he wants is for this girlfriend of his to say those magic words that correspond to the joy of copulation, which is the right word only because we remember they are animals. He finally gets her to say it, but without relishing the climactic results. I love you, and I do.
The degree of complexity of the final play, 1 Jonah, 3 Jonah, 2 Jonah precludes any pat attempt at review. It is infallibly good humored and self-effacing. Based on my judgy evaluation of Noah’s appearance during the bows, I can imagine the playwright saying, “You had to be there, man.” From behind a veil of smoke, his wire rim glasses, and a clicking retro typewriter he’s fondling. The word is prolepsis.