Tag Archives: clown

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

On the Attraction of “Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys” at Washington Ensemble

Hannah Victoria Franklin as Brandy (Photo: LaRae Lobdell)

There’s a lot to like in Caroline V. McGraw’s Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys (at Washington Ensemble Theatre through June 24; tickets): For one, there’s Hannah Victoria Franklin’s monstre-sacré performance as Brandy, a self-destructive clown-artist working the birthday-party beat. (She explains to a young admirer that clowning is more of a post-grad career path.)

For another, there’s the circus-tent set by Pete Rush and a huge red claw under the bed (courtesy Jake Nelson and Marcanthony Lee). And for a third, there’s McGraw’s gonzo-playwriting: unapologetic, lacerating, and wrongly funny.

Brandy is right up Franklin’s force-of-nature hurricane-alley; as a friendly gesture, she spikes a high school student’s drink with her flask and then fucks him. (A high point in self-awareness deficits is when Brandy snarls, “UNBELIEVABLE!” and doesn’t mean herself.)

But in fairness to her, she does have this giant red claw who lives under her bed and has given her a fiery rash, a would-be clown collaborator named Reverb (Scott Ward Abernethy) to deal with, and frisky father of bratty Albert (Billy Gleeson) following her and her gambling problem around Atlantic City. (Sound designer Andrew Samora may be responsible for the audio joke that begins with the first part of the “Viva, Las Vegas” rousing chorus, but substitutes a deflated “Atlantic City” for Las Vegas.)

Improbably, Franklin and Abernethy both clown well — director Jane Nichols, notes Brendan Kiley, has taught clowning at Yale’s School of Drama, and you feel very grateful for that once it’s clear that it’s going to be part an integral part of the play.

Brandy’s opening bit with a blue violin is passable as children’s entertainment, but there’s actually something poignant and wonderful to what the duo come up with later on (a reworking of Sesame Street‘s “Menomina”).  And Abernethy’s Reverb grows on you, as playwright McGraw lets you know that he is struggling with confidence issues, too.

Kate Kraay has some highlight reel moments as Nina, the mother of a birthday girl, Frances, who thinks Brandy is the funniest thing ever. Nina is an independent, well-off single mom — when Brandy assumes she’s married, she roars back: “Married? What do I look like?” — who begins to inject a little reality-checking into Brandy’s hall-of-mirrors world-view. She begins a brittle narcissist (the kids in the play are stuffed dolls, the playthings of their parents), but Kraay gives her such self-possession, and even bravery, that you can see why Brandy would turn to her.

McGraw is less successful sustaining dramatic interest in the two high school characters, Jack (Jay Myers), and his girlfriend Tash (Sami Spring Detzer), who eventually corners Brandy and Jack canoodling. Detzer has fun with her indomitable goodie-two-shoes part, but the sequence where Tash fights the dragon claw feels a bit like sermonizing on the virtues of good self-esteem (while the previously scary claw turns blowhard). Coming just after a scene requiring an ugly, freak-show level of commitment from Franklin, it’s hard to swallow.

Nichols’ inventively moves the characters on and off the single set without the conventional scene-change blackouts, one moment blurring into the next, but that’s one time you wish for a more substantial beat between scenes.

Arts & Entertainment, Theatre

Le Frenchword Does It For Comedy

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(Photo: Le Frenchword)

The audience that attended the performance of Le Frenchword’s Fancy Mudthat I saw was diverse—in age and gender, if not race—and included a number of families with pre-teens

The large percentage of kids in the audience combined with the clarity, simplicity and weak comedy of the opening monologue on astronomy had me cowering in anticipation of an evening of Bill Nye the Science Guy meets The Flying Karamazov Brothers minus the juggling. I felt a nightmare creeping up on me, rife in awkward puns and low-energy silliness wrapped around PBS weekday-afternoon didacticism. Glimmers of hope flashed through the sketch as the silliness slipped into absurdism. Then suddenly, out of a transition so seamless that it was over before I realized it had started, a monologue of strange and unnerving beauty drew together everything that had transpired into an précis of Creation and I was hooked.

Le Frenchword is a talented trio of performers who excel in all they do (outside their opening scene) and they do a lot. This production, directed by George Lewis and created by Sachie Mikawa, Carter Rodriguez, Lewis and John Leith features clown, dance, singing, quirky instruments, puppetry, and physical theatre, and some of the most finely executed stage combat I’ve seen. Mikawa does Hello-Kitty kawaii and plays melodica and toy piano. Rodriguez is the big man of fragile dignity playing guitar and teaching a master class in the power of pre-emptive sympathy. Ben Burris is an excellent physical comedian and a excellent singer who plays glockenspiel and finger-cymbals. They are so much fun I just want to run away from my life to go play with them.

The unfortunate astronomy lecture diffuses into something of a wallpaper theme that runs throughout the performance but never aspires to profundity or education even while it suggests universal truths. This is rough theatre that sometimes approaches the holy. It shows its work, but seeing the structure does nothing to diminish its efficacy. The lame three-legged cow is funnier because we can see that it has three legs so the actor’s other hand can make the udder. The work is so fresh and in the moment that it’s often unclear whether it’s being improvised on the spot or has just maintained the vibrancy of creative gestation.

There are puns, but not too many and some are downright clever. There is silliness but it is either completely absurd or totally integrated into the rest of the performance. There is a cappella, but it’s often quite good and ranges from Night on Bald Mountain to outlandish and hilarious word music.

This show has its version of a gun hanging over the fireplace and that gun gets talked about a lot but it never goes off. Yet, contrary to Chekhov’s dictum, this is part of the show’s charm—along with the house lights that never dim more than halfway. After all, plot is not the point here. Not much is explained in Fancy Mud but everything gains context. A large part of the fun comes in following the actors on wild tangents only to discover that each tangent returns to the same basic themes, rearranged to change our perception of them. The closest Le Frenchword comes to explaining Fancy Mud is when one of the actors asks, “Why are we doing this?” Their answer: “We do it for comedy,” and in the name of comedy no opportunity for ribaldry or vulgarity escapes Le Frenchword.

So what happened with that opening scene? Was it poor timing that made the lecturer seem over-indulgent with his colleagues and his outbursts unjustified or was it poor writing? Or could it be that some of us are too serious and too narrow-minded to enter easily into the world of Le Frenchword? Whatever the reason the first five minutes pass quickly and the rest of the show is as pleasing a trip into the mythology of the cosmos as you’re likely to find—or at least one with great music.

The Seattle run of Fancy Mud has come and gone so to catch the next performance you’ll have to make for the border. Le Frenchword plans to perform at the fringe festivals in Winnipeg (July 18-29), Calgary (August 3-11), and Edmonton (August 16-26). Help them show los Canucks what Seattle theatre can be through LF’s soon to be launched Kickstarter campaign or by checks made out to Sachie Abrego C/O Le Frenchword, 1122 East Pike St. #929 Seattle, WA 98122.

Arts & Entertainment, Dance, Theatre

Living Bridges Brings the Circus to Georgetown

There’s great pre-show entertainment at Circus Syzygy’s Living Bridges, a work in progress hosted by Georgetown’s School of Acrobatics & New Circus Arts (SANCA) through March 11 (tickets can be purchased through Brown Paper Tickets, here). The box office is set up in the middle of a gym full of students learning handstands, aerial work and other skills like those that Syzygy performs with a mix of virtuosity and comedy. The contrast is inspiring.

As with most theatrical events, this performance begins with a preshow reminder about cell phone etiquette, only this announcement quickly turns into the theatrical highlight of the evening. Mick Holsbeke’s clown act, which accompanies the increasingly detailed pre-show instructions, establishes his character as the audience’s on-stage surrogate through whom we’ll experience the show. Just as that character gets comfortable the stage is invaded by acrobats that turn this quiet evening into a turbid scene that suggests The Cat In The Hat. They are a chaotic yet pleasant force, Thing 1 and Thing 2 on Prozac, taking easy pleasure in their acrobatic antics.

While Holsbeke is the production’s most fully defined character, later scenes suggest some degree of character for particular acrobats. Terry Crane pushes this the farthest in a series of bits in which he tenaciously pursues another acrobat. Crane also tends to let the audience see how hard he is working in his aerial work whereas the rest of the troupe maintain the traditional poise of the trade in their acts. The focus feels equally engaging and incongruous: I hope Syzygy will find ways to incorporate it dramatically as the piece develops.

Giulio Lanzaframe also develops some character as he tries on a bit of clowning with a lamp and book, but he impresses more with his juggling and slack line. Holsbeke’s invisible rope act is the best of the clown bits and hints at a journey for his character, who may be fighting back against the interlopers with an earthbound mimicry of Crane’s aerial expertise.

Marie-Eve Dicaire’s hand-balancing act makes upside-down splits look as languid and pleasurable as a yawn and a stretch in the afternoon sun. That she nonchalantly knocks over piles of stones in the process revives the casual anarchy of the initial sequence. Oddly, the rest of the ensemble, who had carefully and somberly piled those stones into a cairn colonnade, seems unmoved by her blithe destruction.

In their trapeze act Ben Wendel and Rachel Nehmer manage to combine professional cool with sensual heat. The driving blues accompaniment and lighting changes didn’t hurt but it takes little more than a look or a touch from these performers to put a sexual charge into the waning minutes of the show.

The run of this show is just getting started, but when it does close the troupe will complete development of the project in Toulouse. You might hold out for the finished production, hoping to find your way to France, but in catching Living Bridges during its SANCA run you only risk a sudden urge to sign up for tightrope walking classes.