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Letter From the Fringe
By Paul Birchall
Bella Merlin in Nell Gwynne: An Essaye on Acting and Prostitution, Photo by Miles Anderson
Welcome to Fringe Season, when there are so many shows, and all of them taking place within the same 30 block area, you almost need 50 heads to see them all. With so many shows (300 or so) going on, you almost wish you could bend time and space to be in two (or more) places at the same time. Alas, although Fringe producers are not yet able to provide a Tardis for us to see several shows simultaneously, they’ve done the next best thing and added a 4th week – a preview week – to the schedule.
In this year’s preview week, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: Given that so many shows were playing at the same time, and no one knew much about any of them, a fascinating democracy of possibility emerged that reminded one of the “starting line” of a marathon. In this early part of the festival, any show was possibly a gem – just as any show could have been clunker: You really don’t know what is going to happen when you sit down in your seat.
It is only as word of mouth starts to circulate over the ensuing weeks that the cream is likely to rise and certain shows will draw away from the pack to become “Fringe hits.” This is what makes going to shows early on in the festival so interesting: You have the privilege of making up your own mind without being influenced by outside opinion.
At the Complex’s Ruby Theater, an early gem was already taking form. I attended the first performance of playwright/performer Bella Merlin’s delightful solo show Nell Gwynne: A Dramatic Essaye on Acting and Prostitution (The Complex, through June 27), which purported to be on the life of the legendary 17th century actress who was even more notorious as the concubine to Charles II.
As the sharp-tongued, ferociously ambitious Gwynne, Merlin’s turn is a tremendous tour de force of humor, emotion, and wit. During an age when a woman’s place in society was uncertain at best, Gwynne rose through sheer talent and charm, from an orange saleswoman at the theater, to being a the First Lady of the London stage, and then to being the King’s mistress during the rollicking Restoration Era. Impeccably researched and lithely staged in director Miles Anderson’s crisp, energetic production, Merlin’s Gwynne emerges as part 1660s Demi-Mondaine and part driven artist, with an engagingly written text that makes full use of snippets of plays and songs of the era, as well as quotations from the diary of Samuel Pepys. It’s a spicy, droll, and ultimately rather sad solo show, written especially for lovers of history, and anchored by Merlin’s wonderfully accessible turn as Nell, who seems almost magically full of life.
Deborah Jensen and Donal Thoms-Capello in A Very Modern Marriage
Across Fringe-land, at the Lounge Theater, it was Preview Night for playwright Arthur M. Jolly’s A Very Modern Marriage (The Lounge, through June 27), an emotionally awkward comedy about a marriage turned on its head. A squabbling young couple’s marriage appears to be heading towards the rocks: Yuppie husband Matt (Donal Thoms-Capello) resents his long hours and the fact that his wife Tina (Deborah Jensen) clearly prefers running her struggling art gallery to being with him. Into this fraught situation comes their sassy gay best pal Chris (Estaban Andres Cruz), who, evicted from his own apartment, moves into the couple’s and quickly sets things to rights with his irrepressible wit, good cooking, sensible advice, and possible predatory sexual advances.
Jolly’s play sometimes feels a little simplistic in terms of the perturbations of human sexual behavior – and director Scott Marden often appears to favor farcical staging over bolstering the work’s illogical underpinnings. Some plot developments come across as being contrived or thought out at the writer’s typewriter in haste. That said, the performers are energetic and likable. Thoms-Capello’s dorky husband limns his sexual confusion with a cheerful, slightly mischievous twinkle in his eye, Jensen’s sharp-tongued wife is amusingly brittle, and Cruz does yeoman work providing dimensionality to what on the page appears to be a clichéd, tired character.
Across the hall to the Lounge Theater 2 for Diversity Auditions (through June 28), an awkward and slightly uncomfortable showcase of monologues by several performers of various ethnicities, sexual orientations and disabilities, who commendably wish to make the point that actors of diversity do not get an even shake in terms of casting. The argument is worth having, certainly – and there’s nothing wrong with the idea of a showcase for performers not getting stage and air time elsewhere.
Sadly, though, the monologues and stand up routines assayed by the collection of performers generally run to prosaic autobiography, instead of showing range and variety. The issue turns out not to be one of diversity, but rather of experience: The performers are frankly too fresh and undertrained to make the impression they hope to make. We want to like them, and it’s certainly clear that they are likable people with stories worth hearing – but by defining themselves solely by being outcasts of certain ethnicities and orientations, they may ironically be getting in their own way in the pursuit of the Hollywood Dream.
Shows in the Hollywood Fringe are performing through June. 28.
