it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!
Reviewed by Martín Hernández
Odyssey Theatre
Through March 20
During performance artist John Fleck’s satiric musical cabaret, he compares the show to a baby popping out of the womb, eventually scrambling back when it realizes it’s not time and, besides, it’s scary out there. Finally birthed, this piece is still a bit premature, but like many a preemie it has signs of a healthy future. With a bit more tender loving care from legends like Fleck and director David Schweizer, it may survive the NICU and flourish.
A paean to theatre’s resilience in the face of a pandemic and now the potential for WWIII, Fleck’s piece has him musing on all things Covid, Q-Anon, January 6 and many things in between. Whether as the infamous buffalo-horned Q-Anon Shaman, espousing inane conspiracy theories, or as a fundamentalist father brutally berating his sensitive son – Fleck as a child? – with the Gospel, he is a consummate performer, flipping from the ridiculous to the chilling in an instant.
But while another bit starts off as clever, with a red clad Covid cell (Fleck), sporting a hilarious globe-like helmet with accompanying red spikes – props to costume designer Ann Closs-Farley – challenging the motives of similarly equipped green-decked variant cells (talented singers/dancers Kyle G. Fuller and Tomoko Karina), it eventually meanders in miasma. It is confusing even for Fleck, who stops at one point to ask the audience if all this makes sense.
Recent subjects ripe for his trademark sardonic wit – George Floyd, the Big Lie, Zoom, etc. – he chooses lip service rather than examination – though he does lament, “I’ve been living in a zoom mirage.” Fleshing these items, out with some strategic reining in by Schweizer, could make for a richer proceeding, since Fleck alludes that theatre is the one place to fearlessly reflect on the mess we are in.
Aided by the laid-back work of brightly yellow-clothed musical director/bassist John Snow and pianist Scott Roberts, Fleck intersperses the show with snippets of appropriate tunes, none more so than a haunting rendition of Kurt Weill’s and Ogden Nash’s ballad “Speak Low” with which he closes. In a closing bit giving him five minutes to live, Fleck gets to the gist of things. Given a choice, he would click his heels three times and get to his true home, on stage in front of an audience. What a way to go.
The Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 pm; thru March 20. OdysseyTheatre.com.
