It’s unusual for me to find much worthwhile in a contemporary musical that is not obviously wise to its own artifice. Call me cynical (and people do) but the heart-on-your-sleeve approach just doesn’t do it for me. I like my musicals (such as they are) worldly-wise, dirty, and with a twist. Which is why I can safely approve Christian De Gré and Mind the Art Entertainment‘s noisome spectacle, Story Time with Mr. Butterman; Fables for Adults Living in a Modern World. It’s broadly cynical, grumpy, disaffected and, in parts, just plain nasty.

Mr. Butterman is a homeless vagabond, a listening type, who collects the myriad tales of woe and undoing of other down-and-outs in a concrete jungle somewhere near you. These woeful presences – characters, ghosts, spirits – flock around him to give testimony of their troubles, find a sympathetic ear, and hope to encounter someone worse-off than they are. Butterman enjoys a good tragedy, and for all his kindly indulgence of the put-upons who seek him out, cracks the whip to keep them in line and keeps his own baleful history a secret. The tattered company of sad cases entertain each others’ stories in music and dance enactments that take delight in the harshness of the world and in the depths to which each has fallen. One blasted, bitter fable follows upon another, wringing out the wretchedness and sneering at the notion of a happy ending. Is there any low to which these connoisseurs of shame and tragedy will not sink in order to get a rise? Well … possibly.

Boasting a cast of fourteen singing and dancing actors, Story Time blasts its audience with a series of sharply co-ordinated vocalizations and tightly drilled dance numbers that could easily challenge any Broadway house ensemble. The energy is high. This is an able troupe of performers who understand physical illusion-making, how to tout character individuality, and how to come together as a unified team. Choreographer Paula Wilson may not be in the ground-breaking business, but she has her people in sync and on point, even working in the confines of a restricted space. Musically too there may not be any major awards for innovation, but the variety – ranging from big noise anthems, to ballads, and flirtations with hip-hop – is impressive, the musicality rich and assured. De Gré is joined in the compositional role by Jake “Dazed and Confused” Holmes, and Aaron Butler reigns as musical director.

A product of several writer contributors, not every turn in Story Time hits the mark. Ariana Paganetti‘s The Girl Who Cried Rape, a moment of reflexive solemnity, suffers from the sudden shift in tone, and by a somewhat under-projected choral performance on the part of the three actresses singing. Losing the song lyrics is a shame in such a thoughtfully written show. De Gré’s Ant Rant, Holmes’s Pigmailman, and Lauren Brady‘s slight Calculators sparkle in contrast. There’s a bit of the revue about it all, and a touch of cabaret, and a poetry slam, but it all comes together quite efficiently. Special mention should be made of Scout Isensee‘s considered costuming, which runs a wild gamut, and all but acts as a brand in itself. The cast are a tight-knit crew, as mentioned, and everyone gets a decent shake. It would be churlish not to mention however, Anthony M. Lopez‘s contribution as the MC-ing Mr. Butterman. When it’s finally eked out of him, his shame-faced tale (David Williams, writer), is delivered with restraint and passion, and worth waiting for.

~~~

Story Time with Mr. Buttermen: Fables for Adults Living in a Modern World
Mind The Art Entertainment
Writer: Mind The Art Entertainment’s Poetry Division
Director: Christian De Gré, Musical Director: Aaron Butler
Join the beloved Mr. Buttermen as he leads us on a journey of depravity, including the classic fables Petey the Impotent Rabbit, The Girl Who Cried Rape, and Pigmailman. Come giggle like a school child! [Peeing of pants highly discouraged.]
1h 45m   Local   Brooklyn, New York
Spoken Word/Poetry   Vaudeville/Sideshow/Magic/Burlesque
Staycation: Fantasy Island Excursion   My NYC Story
www.MrButtermen.com
VENUE #18: HERE Mainstage Theater
Fri 10 @ 5:15  Sun 12 @ 9:45  Wed 15 @ 6  Thu 16 @ 9  Sat 25 @ 2

Related Posts:

• GRIMM: A New Musical – Two Sisters, One Necklace (Fringe Festival 2012)
• The Extraordinary Fall of the Four-Legged Woman: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Outskirts of Eden: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Lil’ Women: a rap musical: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Don’t Move To Toronto: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

Sure, Mariah MacCarthy’s new play, Magic Trick, is full of sexy goodness, what with its burlesque routines, girls kissin’ boys, girls kissin’ girls, full on nekkid scenes and all the steamy, flirty, hungry passion that can erupt between two (or three) people caught in a windstorm of lust and love and like and leaving. But scratch the surface of all the seduction and right below you’ll find a strong play filled with true emotion, hard choices, honest conversation, not-always-likable characters, and unanswered questions.

Magic Trick clocks in at over 2 hours but don’t let the run time fool you – the pacing of this show has it feeling much faster thanks to the solid direction of Christina Roussos who uses every opportunity to bring as much information to the audience at once so that each moment is filled to the brim with the identities of these individuals.

The story revolves around Bana (Diana Oh) the beautiful, sexual, confident, wheelchair-bound girlfriend of Eric (Nic Grelli) who, on the night we meet them, are in a club hooting and hollering their admiration for Clara (Kim Gainer) who is performing a sizzling burlesque number.  Talk turns to the couple taking the performer home, and while it doesn’t happen this first scene nicely sets up the parameters of Bana and Eric’s relationship, their views on their sexuality as a couple, and exactly where Bana’s paralysis falls on the spectrum of difficulty- for the couple, for Bana, and for the tone of the play. It also lets the audience in on the secret that Bana and Clara have already been involved for a while.   Additionally MacCarthy neatly informs the audience, with this first scene, that while Bana is paralysed this detail does not define her … it’s simply another one of her characteristics as much as her sense of humor; something to be taken into consideration, but nothing to be singled out.  Like setting up the chess pieces on a board, everything is now in place for the game to be played with a vengeance.

Hereafter MacCarthy plays hard and fast with the timeline mixing present day with flashback so vigorously that – even with the help of cue cards – it can be a bit of a task to sort out where you are in the story line.   If Magic Trick were a more linear story where “A” leading to “B” was the only thing you could rely upon in order for Sherlock Holmes to reveal the criminal in the end, all this jumping around would work against the plot. For Magic Trick, however,  it’s not necessary to follow the time-line as much as follow the need.  While cause and effect generally occurs in a linear way, our minds put the pieces together in an altogether different way, one which lines up events according to importance and flavor and color and texture and sight and sound … not time.  That’s something that McCarthy intuitively understands as she delivers her characters in snapshot moments of happiness, confusion, lust, honesty, despair and anger.

So while the relationship of Bana and Eric is a complicated one, so is the one between Bana and Clara – and the one between Eric and Clara.  Each coupling produces a different side to the individual and Gainer, Grelli and Oh are all fantastic at portraying not only the many different sides that one other individual brings out in them, but then the whole palate and range of different sides that another individual coaxes out.  We watch as Bana goes from loving Eric to experiencing feelings of emotional and physical betrayal.  She moves out  and on to a relationship with Clara – one which she does not label or define, even as Clara longs to define it.  In a powerful scene that highlights Gainer’s raw strength Clara – with Bana’s blessing – couples with Eric only to turn on him in a way that is unnerving to watch.

Whether it’s with a brooding strip routine that coincides with a scene of despair, dancing as metaphor, stripping in anger or baring one’s body because it’s easier than baring one’s soul, all forms of display are evident in Magic Trick - there to illuminate the person as a whole, not simply to titillate.  And while Diana Oh, Kim Gainer and Nic Grelli all strip seductively, with expert wickedness and nuanced allure there’s no mistaking that this play is not about baring skin but about baring emotions.  Which, once revealed to another, can’t be hidden again behind a feather boa.

~~~

Magic Trick
Caps Lock Theatre
Writer: Mariah MacCarthy
Director: Christina Roussos
Bana: Beautiful, paraplegic, missing. Eric: her (ex?) boyfriend, looking for her. Clara: That burlesque dancer they almost took home. Bana’s donning pasties, Eric’s losing his sh*t, and Clara gets naked and won’t leave. A love story with burlesque.
2h 40m   Local   Manhattan, New York
Drama   Vaudeville/Sideshow/Magic/Burlesque
Staycation: Ride the Rollercoaster of Love   My NYC Story
www.capslocktheatre.com/
VENUE #18: HERE Mainstage Theater
Sat 18 @ 12  Sun 19 @ 3  Tue 21 @ 4  Thu 23 @ 8  Sat 25 @ 7

Related Posts:

• The Foreplay Play – What Comes Before
• Mariah MacCarthy’s New Play Looks For Laughs In All The Dark Places: Lysistrata Rape Play
• Songs Of Love: A Theatrical Mixtape (Fringe Festival 2012)
• GRIMM: A New Musical – Two Sisters, One Necklace (Fringe Festival 2012)
• The Connected: Bundle #1 (Fringe Festival 2012)

Step into the world of GRIMM: A New Musical created by BIG Theatre Company and be ready to settle into old favorites, new wonders and satisfyingly imaginative scenes played out before your eyes.  While GRIMM falls on the “Fringe Jr” spectrum of this festival’s offerings there’s nothing  unsophisticated or underdeveloped about this beautifully rich and textured show; in fact it is a complex, deeply stirring and at times even provocative story that serves up a happy ending but not before plumbing the depths of the darkest of human emotions, as all good Grimms’ Fairy Tales have always done.

The story is set in the distant past when good queens reigned but were still able to be thwarted by cruel spells and evil menacing adversaries who meant harm to those with kind hearts.  Two sisters, the good Catherine (Theresa Burns) and her … well … grim sister – the conversely named Angelica (Gina Cucci) – are at odds the minute Catherine is given her sister’s birthright: a necklace that holds the promise to be queen.  Angelica is banished but spends her time away honing her skills at the dark arts; when she returns she successfully switches bodies with Catherine (a la Freaky Friday or Prelude to a Kiss) and kicks the queen off her thrown.    The rest of the tale involves the journey home.  Along the way Catherine births Hansel (Grant Bowen) and Gretel (Sierra Marcks – who drew great laughs from the audience) and has her dealings with the loathsome Rumpelstiltskin (Jake Bridges) who is in cahoots with the now-reigning Angelica.

It’s no difficult feat to take these tried and true fairy tales and interweave them, a forest from this one, an evil queen from that one, and generally a Grimm wicked witch is garden variety so she can jump from story to story. Sondheim built the template for this type of thing with Into The Woods.  So no – it’s not difficult to attempt, the stories braid together as easily as Rapunzel’s long tresses.  Therefore the trick lies not in weaving the tale, but in doing so in a way that will have the audience invested.

Cue music director, composer, and writer Ken Kruper who composed a score so lush, evocative and beautiful that from the first notes of the opening ensemble number “Things Are Looking Awfully Grimm” I was catching my breath.  Each song not only moved the plot along but gave each character a deeper connection to the audience as well as an opportunity to tug a little more at your heartstrings.  The score covered a variety of emotions, from the touching “Let Your Heart Lead” (sung beautifully by Gina Cucci) as a mother’s advice to her children who are about to leave home for the first time without her, to the almost vaudevillian “They’ll Never Know” sung gleefully by the evil queen (at this moment embodied by Burns) and her lackey Rumpelstiltskin.  Yet, while there are a variety of styles, it’s not as if Kruper is haphazardly throwing in an assortment of songs simply to exhibit his musical dexterity – there’s still a common thread throughout the base of the musical that clearly identifies these pieces as part of a whole.

Director Olivia Hartle has imbued the production with lovely flourishes that hearken back to the magic of childhood; scarves waved wildly become a blazing fire, later a long white gauze is pulled through a bicycle wheel only to become a golden gossamer cloth signifying straw turning to gold.  Equally, she teams well with Burns and Cucci who both do a remarkable job embracing both the good as well as the evil with one hundred percent commitment - casting off the vestiges of their previous roles as thoroughly as they do their costumes.  They are both devoted and believable as the dark as well as the light sides of humanity, so when the switch happens it is as if you can see their souls jump from one to the other.  For this to happen in a small theatre is a remarkable feat.

Costumes designed by Taylor Pedane were both reminiscent of a bygone era as well as of a rag-tag bunch of street performers who bring tales to life using what is around them.  All was obviously planned down to the smallest detail, yet appeared to be pulled off effortlessly which  - especially in a festival setting where there is such little time to prepare for sets and costume (let alone for a cast of 12!) – is a fairy tale in and of itself.

I could go on and on about this show, but as its running time is only 50 minutes – and as there is only one more performance – I’ll end as all good tales do.  Let down your hair and let yourself feel like a child again by experiencing Grimm: A New Musical.  It’s an absolute must-see – and I promise if you go you’ll live happily ever after.

~~~

GRIMM: A New Musical

BIG Theatre Company
Writer: Ken Kruper, Co-creator: Jon Randhawa
Director: Olivia Hartle, Music Director: Ken Kruper
Familiar stories from the Brothers Grimm are entwined with a new cast of characters and set to a stirring original score. Twin sisters and rivals, Angelica and Catherine, vie for the crown in this haunting tale of good vs. evil.
0h 50m   Local   Queens, New York
FringeJR   Musical
Staycation: Literary Lane   Fantasy Island Excursion
www.bigtheatre.org
VENUE #18: HERE Mainstage Theater
Sat 11 @ 12  Sun 12 @ 2:15  Thu 16 @ 5:15  Fri 17 @ 4  Wed 22 @ 2

Related Posts:

• Story Time With Mr. Butterman (Fringe Festival 2012)
• Magic Trick – Baring It All (Fringe Festival 2012)
• The Connected: Bundle #1 (Fringe Festival 2012)
• Super Sidekick The Musical … Pawn (Fringe Festival 2012)
• The Extraordinary Fall of the Four-Legged Woman: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

The Bible meets Occupy Wall Street in this philosophical excurse into our wireless world where the modern day descendants of Cain and Abel text message each other underneath the ominous shade of the 21st century Babel colossus – utterly connected and ultimately divided. Written by Brian LaPerche, who also stars in the show, The Connected: Bundle #1 was inspired by The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, as omnipresent as ever in this objective scrutiny of our cyber-connected era.

Reclusive and meek Henry Connor (Brian LaPerche) hides from the world in his apartment, lost in thought and computer code. If it wasn’t for his bubbly girlfriend Ruth White (Emily Kaplan,) an artist and a budding social activist, he’d barely set foot outside the door at all. Ruth, however, spends most of her time running around and organizing social movement against the mighty flow of handheld technology assembled in the sweatshops of China – by typing her fervent speeches on her own smartphone. Henry’s fond of Ruth but has secrets he’s not telling her about.

Henry’s got a skeleton in his closet, or rather a brother – all the way up in the tower of Babel. His short-tempered older sibling Ken Janus (Jake Green) is the founder and CEO of Babel Technologies, a multibillion dollar computer-and-all-things-mobile giant, and Ruth’s number one enemy. Driven to find their father who had abandoned the family when they were kids, Ken had left home for good years ago, changed his name, constructed a supercomputer to conduct the search for the vanished patriarch and also built himself a wireless empire, sustained by the sweatshops on the other side of the earth. He has severed his ties with his kin, except for the occasional talks with Henry, which usually happen in a form of quick clandestine rendezvous in the park, to which Ken arrives in dark glasses and an oversized coat. Janus runs his kingdom much the same way as every other capitalist villain: sixteen-hour days are a norm and workers plunging off the factory’s roof to their deaths are a fact of life. In that world of conveyor belts and barracks, Chinese teenager Ming Chen (Ione Wang) polishes the newly assembled mobile toys to a high shine – day after day, with no clue of what they even do. She’s not allowed to turn them on.

Meanwhile, Ruth’s movement picks up momentum and she brings her cohorts to picket the Babel Tower. Problems bubble up in every corner of Ken’s empire – and beyond. Chen Ming suffers from nightmares and repetitive motion disorder, which is affecting her ability to work. She breaks the rule and not only turns on one of the slick black devices but takes her own pictures with it. Serendipitously, the phone and the pictures end up in Henry’s hands when he unwraps his new upgraded model – and becomes captivated with the sad-looking stranger worlds apart. Henry begs Ruth not to storm Babel Technologies, but she there’s no stopping her, which brings brothers to a dangerous brawl.

There are many ways this story may end, given its obvious parallels between the Occupy movement, Biblical legends and our obsession with having the web and its links in the palm of our hand – at any price. Yet, it’s not the ending that’s important. While the play’s multimedia effects transport us from the urban sprawl of the Babel metropolis to the concrete barracks of China faster than a tweet, the story forces us to slow down and contemplate our reality. The play’s coda is in the fact that our connected brains can still produce thoughts longer than 130 characters. And as long as that’s true, the mobile devices will remain what they are: vehicles for our views, opinions, and information, making us one hell of a connected bundle.

~~~

 The Connected: Bundle #1
Babel
Writer: Brian LaPerche
Director: Cody Holliday Haefner
Inspired by Mike Daisey’s “The Ecstasy and Agony of Steve Jobs”, The Connected: Bundle #1 explores the how technology binds us to one another worlds apart and separates us when we stand face to face. Are we rebuilding the Tower of Babel?
1h 15m   Local   Manhattan, New York
Drama   Multi-Media
Staycation: Ripped from the Headlines   Sci-Fi Tech SuperHero Camp
www.babelfringenyc.tumblr.com/
VENUE #18: HERE Mainstage Theater
Sun 12 @ 5  Thu 16 @ 7  Fri 17 @ 9:45  Sun 19 @ 7  Thu 23 @ 2  

Related Posts:

• Magic Trick – Baring It All (Fringe Festival 2012)
• GRIMM: A New Musical – Two Sisters, One Necklace (Fringe Festival 2012)
• Songs Of Love: A Theatrical Mixtape (Fringe Festival 2012)
• Final Schedule Announced for Fringe Encore Series
• Contrasts (Fringe Festival 2012)