“You do the most wildly inappropriate things when you think the world is about to end” is the excuse Alice (Michelle Woods) and long term boyfriend Bobby (Josiah DeAndrea) use for how they ended up at The Bunny Hole waiting to meet  Jerome and Kelly: prospective up-for-anything sex partners for the evening.  And so begins Alice & The Bunny Hole - a modern, grown up, sexed up take on the Lewis Carroll story we’re all so familiar with.  Playwright Alex DeFazio borrows a lot from Carroll, but he also plays fast and loose with many of the tamer standbys, ratcheting them up as high as he dares.

“We were drunk when we answered that online ad!” they keep protesting when, much to Bobby’s dismay, the ‘Kelly’ of the pair turns out to be male. Jerome is pan-sexual (not bisexual — never that!) and has no qualms about bedding the freaked out straight and narrow couple, something Kelly is a little less into, but if opportunity comes a-knockin’ at your particular bunny hole, never pass up the chance to chase after it, kiddies. Jerome (Dan Johnson) and Kelly (Patrick Martin) gleefully poke at the skittish pair until all their evil prodding and jabbing prompts prim Alice to bark “My shame has just as much right to speak as your shamelessness”.

Of course it does.

At The Bunny Hole the music is loud, the drinks light up, the sex is plentiful, casual, mix-and-matchable, and not always memorable.  The kids who play there are shocking, but parenthetically, or in quotes, as if they’re boring even themselves with their own shocking-just-to-shock behavior.  Despite the fact that the familiar “we’re all quite mad here” line is quoted, it’s uttered as less of an anthem and more of a jaded yawn.

Speaking of mad, yes … the entire gang’s all here: the mad hatter (known to this bunch as The Man With The Tiny Hat and played by co-director Jody R. Person) wears a selection of itty bitty party hats and hangs around the club despite the fact that he seems decades older than his c0horts: a grown up, less nefarious Michale Alig who speaks with a Shakespearean flair because he thinks those words sound beautiful.  Which, of course, they do, Man with Tiny Hat.

Interwoven into this club scene with its go-go boys and them that lurves them is the rather-drab-in-comparison daily life of Alice.  By day she works for a dating site creating mathematical algorithms to help couples find their perfect match.  Apparently she doesn’t avail herself of their services when confronted with the almost non-existent sex life she has with her otherwise pretty hot boyfriend, opting to stay where she is out of comfort for the moment and voyeuristically pop on over to Bunny’s using three weak excuses ( 1. oops, I think I have your mail.  2. can you help me create an [ooooh! naughty!] sex questionnaire for my dating site?  3. Does the go-go boy you call your son need a math tutor?) She peppers her speech with Wonderland phrases such as “I feel so small” and “am I disappearing?” She also eats whatever’s put in front of her, drinks whatever’s put in front of her, and suffers the consequences.  Oh, Alice.

Sliced and diced right into this metaphoric place is the actual tea party scene from Wonderland, almost word for word (No room! No room!  `There’s PLENTY of room!’ / `Why is a raven like a writing-desk?’ / `You should say what you mean,’  `I do, at least–at least I mean what I say–that’s the same thing, you know.’)  which, after all the metaphor was almost a little too much of an homage.

But then there was Bunny.  Played by  Deena Jiles, Bunny rose from the clamor and noise and distraction of this play like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.  Not only did Jiles have complete control of the character but she commanded each scene and put forth a power and strength that gave a deeper resonance to the play overall.  At first brusk and caustic, she slowly becomes not just a guide to Alice through an internal journey, but she embodies the woman who mothers wayward souls and is the epitome of what it means to rule with an iron fist in a velvet glove.

A voice of reason in the midst of cacophony! Curiouser and curiouser!

So, while Alice & The Bunny Hole didn’t exactly show me something new, or challenge me, or shock me as I was hoping, it did serve up a strong female character who lives life by her own rules, isn’t afraid to create her own mad world, and doesn’t turn away anyone who is on a journey of discovery.   Not bad for a Bunny.

~~~

Alice & The Bunny Hole
Elixir Productions Theatre Company
Writer: Alex DeFazio
Director: Jody P. Person & Alex DeFazio
What’s inside The Bunny Hole? Swinging twinks. Height-altering cocktails. Clues to mathematical mysteries of online matchmaking. Alice thought she’d calculated the perfect life – until she discovers a wonderland of fools, gogo boys, and one Black Bunny that scrambles her formulas.
2h 0m   Local   Jersey City, New Jersey
Comedy   Drama
Staycation: Ride the Rollercoaster of Love   Fantasy Island Excursion
www.elixirproductions.org
VENUE #08: The First Floor Theatre @ LA MAMA        
Mon 13 @ 8  Thu 16 @ 4:15  Fri 17 @ 4  Sat 18 @ 9  Fri 24 @ 4:15

Related Posts:

• 2 Burn (Fringe Festival 2011)
• Friends Of Dorothy – An Oz Cabaret (Fringe Festival 2010)
• “It’s A Wonderful Day To Be A Woman!” In Jurassic Parq (Fringe Festival 2010)

There’s an undeniable darkness at the heart of Alex DeFazio’s new play, 2 Burn, produced by Elixir Productions Theatre Company for this year’s NY Fringe Festival at The Living Theatre. And the darkness in a large measure resides in the character of Paul, an earnest college educator, as played by Jody P. Person, one of the show’s co-directors along with Jennifer Joyce. The darkness is all the more remarkable for being manifest in a character who seems pointedly to reject such categorization, as he subjects all experiences to the un-nuanced spotlight of his intellect, opining ultimately that there is no such thing as Love. Love is merely a social construct deployed by people for their own ends, Paul declares, and not in a tone that is hard-bitten or love-weary. Rather in an earnest and instructive manner, careful that his listeners do not fall into the folly of believing in such an illusion. Person’s Paul exudes an openness, an unblinking wholesomeness, apparently devoid of shadow. He’s kind of like a nihilistic Julie Andrews. Which is why we settle back and read him as a sort of chump, heading for a classic theatrical pratfall. Of course he’s going to fall in love. And love is going to rip him a new one.

The play wastes no time in setting up the scenario, ushering in Manny, a seductive if slight, failing student who appears to have handpicked the readably gay Paul to rescue him; and to teach him ‘other things’ besides. Manny has several large “do not engage” signs flashing about him, and we can only wonder at Paul’s naivete in overlooking them and rising to Manny’s sexualized bait. There’s plenty of shadow clinging to Manny and only a chump would take him at his word. Paul’s friend, Maureen, a precariously positioned black, lesbian adjunct professor at the college, attempting to teach Manny about poetry, sees what is going on and tries to warn Paul off. Will Paul listen? It’s possible that some hangover demons from Paul’s last relationship are propelling him onward, but armed with the belief in his own rationality, and a sense of mission, he proceeds, being pulled deeper and deeper into the deceits and evasions Manny lives by. Out pops Sarah, a figure from Manny’s past, undeniable proof of his duplicity and manipulation. Everything begins to stink and Paul finds himself on the brink of his own professional and personal destruction, as fate and plot would fittingly dictate. But in the final scene’s unsuspected revelation, a hidden darkness wells up out of Paul and a sudden reversal occurs, casting a much creepier light on the proceedings, and swapping the roles of predator and prey. Was Paul really blind all along, or was he just indifferent, certain in the knowledge that he was ultimately holding an ace up his sleeve, the ace of spades no less?

It’s a tale alright, though it is perhaps a little over long in the telling. It’s all very well casting Paul as the frontal-lobe-loaded rationalist, but do we have to hear so much of his academic name-dropping, or his turgid intellectualizations? The specters of homophobia and HIV/AIDS are invoked and contribute to the complexity of the story, but seem merely serviceable dramatic tropes played to up the ante.  The dialogue sometimes feels over-extended and over-heated, which brings us to another problem with the physical aspects of this production. There just is not enough heat. It would be a trial for anyone to discover the erotic side of Person’s Paul, wide-eyed and reasonable as he is, but Patrick Martin’s troubled, waif-ish Manny cannot convincingly do it. Much depends in the play on the contact between these two, but there is, alas, no chemistry. The problem is compounded by the fact that the staging seems somewhat adrift in the expansive performance space of the venue, diffusing any attempt at generating atmosphere. The sound effects reverberate from somewhere well off stage and their unevenness and surprising volume is distorting. The production struggles to emotionally and physically  fill the space. Given these setbacks, it is left to the actors to rescue what they can. Deena Jiles in the thankless role of Maureen, and Michelle Wood as a potentially fatale Sarah, rise gracefully to the moment.

LaFazio has produced a serious and deep-delving piece of drama here, and is to be applauded for that much. Nevertheless, it is profoundly difficult to establish an erotic atmosphere on any stage, be it a platform or a basement, and while one can sit through the present production willing the best for all concerned, sadly this 2 Burn just does not spark.

~~~

2 Burn
Elixir Productions Theatre Company
Writer: Alex DeFazio
Director: Jennifer Joyce & Jody P. Person

1h 40m
www.elixirproductions.org
VENUE #6: The Living Theatre
Sat 20 @ 11 Sun 21 @ 9:45 Wed 24 @ 5:15 Thu 25 @ 2

Related Posts:

• Alice &The Bunny Hole – We’re All Mad Here (Fringe Festival 2012)
• FringeNYC 2011 Announces Overall Excellence Award Winners
• Paper Cut (Fringe Festival 2011)
• The Panic Diaries (Fringe Festival 2011)
• Top Drawer (Fringe Festival 2011)