Judy Piper: I am not an actress.
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I AM AN ARTIST
Consolidated Works; ends Sat., Nov. 22
Here's what I know: The first act of writer/director Greg Lundgren's musings on Truth and Art is the most infuriatingly amateurish hour onstage I've witnessed in quite some time. Here's what I hope: As a riff on "Fraud," the theme of ConWorks' current multimedia series, wily Lundgren has made an intentionally appalling piece of theater as some kind of ironic challenge to passive audiences. Here's why I can't be sure: I took that challenge and left at the first intermission.
Lundgren, a theater neophyte whose savvy irreverence made his now-defunct gallery Vital 5 a standout, is no idiot, and neither is executive producer and ConWorks head honcho Matthew Richter. Both of them may well be pulling an elaborate hoax with this total bunk. That's the only plausible explanation for Richter's program notes, which call theater a "dying form" and praise Lundgren for producing theater made by people who are free of "the trappings of theater training." But even if it is a sly setup to a tremendous joke, sorry, the punch line was just too far away for me to wait.
The evening begins with some terrorist guy in a ski mask lip-synching Lundgren's opening remarks. Next, the entrance of CalArts professor Dean VanDine (Jed Dunkerly) is the cue for bad nonactors seated in the audience to improvise being students harassing him about why he quit his famous painting career. This gives VanDine the chance to spout off about "the corruption of self-expression" and define Art as "the piss you hold back" (or something like that). Next, we're off to hang with the students, who are just kickin' it and sharing some edgy philosophy in a gallery filled with ironic slogan paintings ("This would look great above your couch"). This gives the nonactors a chance to act slouchy and be all, like, you know, whatever and fuck this and talk about selling out and shit like that (harsh!). Then fictitious MacArthur Grant recipient Judy Piper (Nicole Grant, the worst of the nonactors playing wanky art students) heads to Phoenix, where she ends up in another ironic gallerypaintings of dogs, fawned over by tacky dog loversbefore accidentally killing a photographer who tries to put the make on her. Then it's the first intermission, giving aghast audience members who no longer care whether this is a joke the chance to flee.
To all those involved in the production: Bravo if this was a risky 60-minute setup for cunningly pulling the rug right out from under an audience. To all those considering attending: Sixty minutes can be a long, long time. STEVE WIECKING
THE HOUSE OF YES
Theater Schmeater; ends Sun., Dec. 7
In most productions of Wendy MacLeod's sharp-tongued tragicomedypart American Beauty, part Oedipus Rexthe show belongs to Jackie-O. Besides dressing like JFK's wife, Jackie has other issues: self-diagnosed insanity; an ominous attachment to her brother Marty (Patrick Meehan); undisguised disdain for her other brother, Anthony (Lance Park); and an affinity for assassination kink. When Jackie "welcomes" Marty and his fiancée, Lesly (Corey Quigley), into the family home for Thanksgiving dinner, we know to be ill at ease.
Erin Knight's performance successfully explores the biggest question surrounding Jackieis she really crazy, or just rich, aloof, and spoiled?but the emotional core of the character never quite comes into focus enough to make her relationship with Marty as wrenching as it ought to be. Amidst the histrionics, Quigley's quiet performance as Lesly is the one to really watch. Lesly's affection for Marty courageously counters his family's nihilism with the faint hope of lasting love. She enters like a working-class Pollyanna, but as Quigley develops the character, we come to see her for what she really isconfused and touchingly capable of sin. Her last-ditch effort to wrest Marty from the strangling arms of his family really shines; the pair's idealized recollection of a Sunday morning says as much about the future they could have together as it does about their past.
The rest of the ensemble delivers in most of the show's key scenes. Lance Park is appropriately blank as Anthony, a seeming simpleton who holds some surprises beneath his puppy-dog demeanor. On the other end of the spectrum, Alyson Scadron-Wattles overenunciates riotously as Mrs. Pascal, the supercilious matriarch who pulls any strings she can to keep her fucked-up family together.
When the play's interlocking parts click tragically into place, the remaining characters unite in a moment of pain and loss when the feelings they've been disguising emerge too late. No matter how many unpleasant memories your trip home for Thanksgiving washes up, be grateful you're not as far gone as Marty Pascal, whose vain attempt to swim toward a brighter future falls victim to the undertow of a terrible past. NEAL SCHINDLER
ABSTRACT EXPRESSION
Richard Hugo House; ends Sun., Nov. 23
"Some people are rich, some people are poor, and the poor have less money," wealthy Sylvia (Helena De Crespo) casually chirps. "Now why is that news?" Playwright Theresa Rebeck doesn't do the most incisive job of answering that questionyou could boil the entire evening down to the not exactly earth-shattering notion that everything's relativebut her concern in even asking it has its rewards and is bolstered by a mostly sturdy production from Mirror Stage Company.
