F. Kathleen Foley

Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair

Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair

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Photo by lotta photo.kp
Photo by lotta photo.kp

Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair

Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Toil and Trouble Burlesque at The Three Clubs

Through August 26

RECOMMENDED

You may come out of Twelfth Night: A Darkly Enchanting Burlesque Affair feeling as if your head has been caught in a blender.

But it’s a good dizziness, the kind you get after exiting the highest velocity attraction at an amusement park. You may not know exactly what you have just seen, but you know you’ve had a wild ride.

Judging from its present production, an extremely loosey-goosey musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at The Three Clubs in Hollywood, Toil and Trouble Burlesque is one of the more unusual theatrical companies you are likely to see on the local theater scene — and that’s putting it mildly.

If this present production is no exception, Toil and Trouble’s stock in trade is assembling a cast of talented and daring actors who are willing to bare all — well, practically all — in the service of Shakespeare. (In its seven years of existence, the company has also produced a couple of original plays.)

The evening opens with seasoned performer Amaya Absynthe doing a sinuous burlesque turn as an appreciative audience hoots its approbation.

The remainder of the cast is less seasoned when it comes to stripping and strutting. However, the actors all have amazing voices, and under the co-direction of Angie Hobin and James Ferrero, augmented by Ferrero and Jim Niedzialkowski’s excellent sound, all have their opportunities to individually shine. All are fearless when it comes to the slapstick requirements of this burlesque, mugging and gesticulating without constraint. And whatever their shapes or sizes, all are also fearless when it comes to divesting themselves of Jessica Jones’ colorful, fetish-inspired costumes. In fact, this show could be labeled a must-see tutorial in body positivity — an unexpectedly inspiring byproduct of the generalized raunchiness.

This wildly over-the-top adaptation takes Shakespeare’s gender-bending comedy and bends it into pretzel permutations. Plenty of same-sex osculation — occasionally mirrored by Jayne Hobin’s crucial large-screen video designs — gives us an indication of where the action is headed. At play’s end, Duke Orsino’s (Walt Gray) palpable disappointment upon learning that his young courtier Cesario (Kim Dalton) is actually the female Viola in disguise, puts the perfect punctuation point on this untrammeled entertainment, which reinvents the Bard for a new audience yet keeps true to his bawdy comical traditions.

Toil and Trouble Burlesque at The Three Clubs, 1123 Vine St., Hollywood. Sat., 8 p.m.: thru Aug. 26. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/twelfth-night-tickets-648521604577 Running time: two hours and 30 minutes, with one 30 minute intermission.

A Black and White Cookie

A Black and White Cookie

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Aisha Kabia, Morry Schorr (Photo by Shelby Janes)
Aisha Kabia, Morry Schorr (Photo by Shelby Janes)

A Black and White Cookie

Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Sky Pilot Theatre 
Through August 20

 You can almost hear the mechanisms clanking behind playwright Gary Morgenstein’s A Black and White Cookie, now being presented by SkyPilot Theater at Anthony Meindl’s Actor Workshop.

Protagonist Harold (Tommy Franklin), a Black Vietnam vet who has run a New York newsstand for the past 30 years, has just reopened after the Covid shutdown. However, Harold’s lease has expired, and since he cannot afford the whopping rent increase, he is being forced to vacate at the end of the month.

That’s the trigger that calls his regular customer Albie (Morry Schorr), a fiery-eyed Jewish activist who spouts off about fascism, capitalism, and every “ism” in between, back into battle. Convincing the initially reluctant Harold to fight his eviction, the two mount a social protest campaign. When Harold’s niece Carol (Aisha Kabia), who plans to give Harold a home with her in Clearwater, Fl., learns of their plans, she is livid. She fears that Harold will lose the 25 grand he has been offered as a payout, leaving him almost penniless.

Moreover, Carol, whose father committed suicide after being ruined by a conniving Jewish lawyer and his associate, is a virulent anti-Semite who thinks that Albie is manipulating Harold so that he can get a share of the settlement.

Cookie sometimes feels as if Morgenstein threw ideas at the wall and used what stuck in this belabored wannabe buddy comedy. He strives for humor mingled with pathos, but an antic story line and superficial characters strand him in artificiality. Compounding the problem is plodding pacing, but whether that derives from Franklin and Schorr’s line hesitancies or director Tudy Roche’s staging is debatable.

We learn that Carol is gay in the most cursory fashion — an expedience, we suspect, that is more Morgenstein’s attempt to appear topical than it is an organic expression of who Carol actually is. Then we have Mitchell (Dylan Bowers), a young leftist who promises to feature the men’s mission statement in his online forum, an oddly tacked-on scene that functions more as filler than a substantive device to further the action. And when Harold belatedly reveals he is a Republican — prompting Albie’s agonized “say it ain’t so” reaction — it seems another perfunctory ploy for a few more laughs

An attempt at pathos arises when we learn that Albie is homeless, which prompts Harold to take him in, which prompts Carol to throw Albie out into the rain. And just when we thought Morgenstein was getting into some meaty stuff about the nature of racism and bigotry, Carol’s vicious views about Jews go magically “poof.”

Perhaps her turnaround is prompted when she learns that Albie is “the only homeless Jew in New York” (a somewhat crass and reductionist “laugh” line.) But suddenly, we have Team Albie, Carol and Harold, all battling together to prevent Albie’s eviction. And somehow, during their lightning transition into a unified force, that 25 thousand has become inconsequential. In fact, there’s even some discussion about whether it would be morally advisable to accept the cash.

When Albie and Harold finally meet with the detested landlord — or make that landperson — they learn that she is Ms. J.N. Pham (Laura Trent), a very nice and understanding Vietnamese-American woman whose South Vietnamese family escaped the Viet Cong. Forced to raise Harold’s rent through economic necessity, Ms. Pham fully honors Harold’s service back in ‘Nam. In fact, she winds up paying Harold’s settlement out of her own (not the company’s) account. I guess that makes it acceptable for him to accept the cash, which he then promptly uses to open yet another newsstand.

But aren’t newsstands, in the age of online media, relatively obsolete? But then, so is this crumbling and anachronistic Cookie.

SkyPilot Theatre Company, 905 N. Cole St., Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm: thru Aug. 20. https://cookie.bpt.me.  Running time: one hour and 20 minutes, without an intermission.

 

Nothing, Nothing

Nothing, Nothing

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Angie Green and Nedra Snipes (Photo by Aaron Gallegos)
Angie Green and Nedra Snipes (Photo by Aaron Gallegos)

Nothing, Nothing

Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Hero Theatre          
Through July 29

It’s difficult to review a social movement.

When it comes to reaching out to underserved communities, the non-profit Hero Theatre is as much a social outreach as it is a theater.

Elisa Bocanegra, the founder and artistic director of this “social and environmental justice theatre company,” is a boots-on-the-ground leader — a Fulbright grantee who’s made grueling trips to Colombia for the purpose of researching environmental justice. Those trips have inspired a planned 10-play cycle to treat the effects of the climate crisis on Latinx communities.  Last year, the company took on another topic, with Rise: An Immersive Exploration of Gun Violence in Schools.

Bocanegra’s present offering, Nothing, Nothing, a commissioned piece by playwright Amina Henry, also has a social outreach component — namely, busing in unhoused women from local shelters to see the show.

In the face of such magnanimity, it feels like the worst sort of nitpicking to find fault with the current production.

However, Nothing, Nothing, which is very loosely based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, is a comedy with errors — some of which could be at least partially addressed with a rewrite by Henry and a few tweaks by Bocanegra, who also directs.

A primary difficulty is one of sheer audibility. That’s possibly due to the fact that the company lost their intended site and had to move to Pasadena’s Friendship Baptist Church, a historical Black church established shortly after the turn of the last century. It’s a serendipitously fitting venue, considering that this is an all-Black cast and the bulk of the action takes place in a Black church.

It was certainly friendly of Friendship Baptist to offer their premises at the last moment, but the new site has obvious limitations: the playing area in front of the altar is makeshift, the lighting is necessarily limited, and the relatively cavernous nave, where the audience is seated, swallows up sound.

That’s particularly problematic when we are expected to overhear a scene of offstage sex play – the catalyst for the subsequent denunciation of the play’s heroine, Hero (Angie Green.) But since we can’t hear the specific interplay, we are left in the dark about what is actually going on, and why.

A rousing gospel number, backed by a live band headed by music director Dre Gipson, opens the proceedings. That opener sets the tone. We are in church, where hell is real and the devout gather to praise the Lord (not to mention dish a little dirt.) Sin is taken very seriously here, so when young Hero takes a vow of chastity in front of the entire congregation, all are thrilled that she is remaining “pure” until marriage.

Not so thrilled is Hero’s worldly cousin Beatrice (Nedra Snipes), who had the audacity to divorce her philandering husband. Pilloried among her fellow churchgoers for not honoring her marriage vows, Beatrice takes the church’s teachings with a grain of salt. She cautions Hero that there’s such a thing as being too naïve.

Anxious to test her sexual compatibility with her intended, Claudio (Joseph Henderson), Hero retreats to a church restroom for a tutorial (hence that confusingly inaudible sex play.) When Claudio’s good friend Benny (Clinton Lowe) overhears their tryst, he assumes that Hero is having sex with another man.

When Benny subsequently denounces Hero to Claudio as a floozy, the enraged Claudio breaks their engagement. Rumors of Hero’s dalliance sweep through the church, to the dismay of Hero’s sanctimonious mother Leona (Stacy Highsmith) and gossipy church ladies, Sister Connie and Sister Betty (Georgina Elizabeth Okon and Tamika Simpkins.) Even beloved pastor Don Juan (Cary Thompson) is not immune to the falsehood.

Even more enraged is Beatrice, who is horrified to learn that Benny is the source of the rumor. Benny and Beatrice have always had a fractious relationship, as evidenced by their caustic interchanges. Yet under all the outward hostility, these two are ripe to fall in love.

Bocanegra’s pacing sometimes lags, making an arguably overlong play seem even longer. As for Henry’s adaptation, perhaps multiple Zumba scenes, in which the women characters gather to work out and share the latest scandal, could have been consolidated to make for a brisker running time.

However, Henry’s underlying feminist message is bracing, while her sly criticism of organized religion’s attitude towards women is particularly timely, especially considering the medium where her message is being delivered.

As for the engaging cast, which includes Shanae Wise in an essential ensemble role, they are ebullient and consistently entertaining. They chew the scenery — or lack of it — with gusto, going way, way over the top in pursuit of laughs — and getting them.

Friendship Baptist Church, 80 W. Dayton St., Pasadena. Fri., 8 pm, Sat., 2:30 pm & 7 pm; thru July 29. www.herotheatre.org. Running time two hours and 15 minutes including an intermission.