Jill's PLAF Diary for Saturday, September 16-Sunday, September 17

Performances: The Rocky Horror PUPPET Show (Little Fish Collaborative) (Future performances in October); Tragical, Comical, Historical, Pastoral (Seth Leary) (No future performances); When Boys Cry (The Fabulous Theater Company) (No future performances).

Whew! Thirty shows and a few hundred dollars worth of tickets (thanks, Canary!). I'm beat. But I had one hell of a good time. Amazingly, I only saw a few shows that I wouldn't have been willing to pay money for. And I saw several shows that I would GLADLY have paid money for.

Funny thing about seeing this many shows: after a while, you start recognizing people. You recognize them because they were in other casts, or in other audiences, and you're seeing them at other PLAF shows. What's weird is when you see them out and about in the real world. Last night while doing something decidedly un-theatrical, I saw Sean Roach, an actor on whom I may have said I'd developed a crush, and it took me several minutes to figure out why he looked so familiar. (If you're reading this, Sean? Sorry, man. PLAF overload.)

But, now the festival is over and I can go back to humdrum corporate life with occasional spurts of fantastic theatre in between. I just need to get my last three reviews out of the way.

Rocky Horror PUPPET Show
I'm simultaneously sad and relieved that I read Star's diary on Rocky Horror PUPPET Show. Sad because it lowered my expectations. Relieved because it meant I didn't have to find a corset to wear to the show. But, it would have been mighty entertaining for me to walk through Rittenhouse Square in the middle of the day (I caught a matinee performance) in all my Rocky Horrror glory.

Rocky Horror PUPPET Show is a feat on an artistic and technical level that likely took a lot of creativity to even envision. (Creativity or marijuana, that is.) The puppeteers were amazing (even when they dropped a flying Columbia); I honestly would have been content to watch their hands move for hours. Like Star, I very much enjoyed Brad and Janet's performances (they had the dopey, campy innocence down pat), and I thought that the actor voicing Riff Raff was terrific. But the show wasn't without its problems. First of all, Rocky Horror simply isn't Rocky Horror without the audience participation. No matter how strong your cast and staging is, you need to be able to yell out "SLUT!" and "ASSHOLE!" with great frequency. You don't even have to throw stuff at the stage (although that's fun, too), but the ad libs from the audience are a must, and I hope very much that when Little Fish remounts the production next month, they bear that in mind. My other main complaint was against the Criminologist. I know that you can't expect the film's proper British Charles Gray every time the show is produced, but I did expect slightly better than someone who could easily have been cast as an extra on The Sopranos. Every time he appeared on screen, I awaited the end of his monologue. I also have a small comment about the music. Now, I'm not super familiar with the score, but it seems to me that some of the tempos were, well, off. ("Antici...pation" felt rushed!) Maybe it's just because I'm way more familiar with the movie soundtrack than the play soundtrack, but it sometimes felt as if some background harmonies were missing, and some songs sung faster or slower than usual. I can't complain about that, really (except for "Antici...pation"), but it does seem to me that there's a little more room for improvement.

In all, the show was a good time, but Star's right: It's not a good script. It needs the audience participation. No matter how amazing the feats of puppetry are onstage, the show can get awfully long and boring if you don't keep the viewers involved.
Festival rating: Good. But the puppetry was excellent.

Tragical, Comical, Hysterical, Pastoral
This show is tied with Granuaile and a Place at Howth for the dubious honor of my most painful Fringe experience. But it pulls ahead a bit because at least at Granuaile, I could have escaped. Writer/director/performer Seth Leary was blocking the exit to his performance, and all the lights were on, so there was no escaping.

I'd like to begin by offering Mr. Leary a bit of advice that I've been offered, and that I feel anyone who's taken any theatre performance class anywhere has probably been offered: never direct yourself in a one-man show. It's tempting, I know. And it seems so convenient. No worries about scheduling conflicts. No need to produce a contact list. But it is a BAD idea. Because there's nobody there to tell you when you're ruining Shakespeare.

Okay, "ruining" may be a little strong. But what Mr. Leary was doing down in the basement of the Ethical Society couldn't ever, in a million years, be considered good acting. Frankly, it could hardly be considered acting at all. It was more like shouting and pacing, all the while gesturing with one's elbows planted firmly in one's ribs, thereby forcing all gestures to be generated at the wrist. I doubt very seriously that the St. Crispin's Day monologue from Henry V was meant to end in what seemed to be, for all intents and purposes, an orgasm. I don't think that any actor playing Hamlet has ever yelled "Whore" into the ear of one of his audience members. And by the way, Mr. Leary, it's BenedicK, not Benedict, and Ja-kwees, not JaqueS. The rhymes only work if you've got a British accent, so learn the accent well or give up on them completely. You can't have it both ways. The Shakespearean actor you claim to be should know that.

Mr. Leary obviously knows his Shakespeare, because the connecting materials between his monologues were all quite thoughtful. I get the feeling that he'd be one helluva high school English teacher. But he should maybe leave the acting to the pros. And proofread his programs before sending them to the printer.
Festival rating: Poor.

When Boys Cry
My good friend Dominick Romeo was in this play, so I had some qualms about reviewing it, both as a matter of "journalistic integrity," and as a matter of not alienating a friend in case I hated the play. But Dominick wrote me an email a few hours before curtain that promised whatever I said, there'd be no hard feelings. Fortunately for both of us, I don't have to test that promise, because I really quite enjoyed the show. (And this is the last you'll hear me speak of Dominick, because I'm still not entirely comfortable reviewing him. I can tell you all that he's a damn good dancer, though.)

When Boys Cry clocked in at an uncomfortable three hours, but the length didn't really bother me. I think I maybe looked at my watch twice over the whole production, and one of those times was at intermission so it doesn't count. The script is clever, full of in-jokes that you have to be gay/live in Philadelphia/be gay in Philadelphia to get. I'm neither the first nor the third, but I'm a theatre person living in the Gayborhood, so I think I held my own in the audience. (As an aside, I attended the show with editor Star. Upon arriving, we noticed that there were only two or three other women waiting to get into the theatre. Think the play had a target audience?) The cast was very versatile (most of the supporting cast had multiple roles to play), and was very lucky to have Anne Allen, Robert Bauer, Kaci M. Fannin, Dan Rich and the very attractive Kelly Groves (who I would classify as "tragically gay"—as in, it's tragic for all the straight women of the world that he'll never be on our market) at their helm. Props also to Jacob Walton for creating an all-purpose set that didn't need much time for scenic changes. The performances were all touching, and there honestly wasn't a single actor whose performance I could criticize. Rusty Dersch, Theater Fabulous' artistic director and the writer of When Boys Cry, should be commended for his script. It's long, it's true, but he's really got something there. He calls it a work in progress, and I do hope to see it progressing in the not-too-distant future.
Festival rating: Very good.