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Walking through Williamsburg these days is getting downright scary. The streets are looking too clean, the buildings too well-kept, the graffiti too self-conscious and contained. And the Good Times dive bar at Metropolitan and Berry? Goodbye. This week, it's some chi-chi south-of-the-border theme joint. Next week, who knows. Starbucks, maybe. Fortunately, the dive next door is still just that -- a cheerfully fetid little barn otherwise known as the Collapsable Hole, home to those estimable theatrical outlaws, Collapsable Giraffe and Radiohole. And, recently, worthy guests as well: Banana, Bag & Bodice -- late of San Francisco, now of Brooklyn, soon to be of Montreal -- with a pair of one-acts, "Panel (The Young War: A Panel Discussion on the Death of Love)" and "Animal (Sandwich: A Musical about Killing Animals)." In "Panel," BB&B founders Jason Craig and Jessica Jelliffe join with Heather Peroni, Rod Hipskind (who looks more than a little like Willem Dafoe) and Peter Blomquist (who looks kind of like Christopher Walken) to unleash a collective musing on the nature of love that is by turns jaded and hopeful, manic and lethargic. Amidst recurring themes of hula hoops, denim slacks, counting to 20 and the definition of perineum, BB&B delivers its poetic barrage as a kind of modal-scale, post-bop quintet of the spoken word, scattering a dancing pattern of word-notes over a deep, swelling octave of desire. "Panel"'s ultimate power is one of a torrent of vivid word-images, at once fleetingly familiar and disconcertingly askew. It is as if being swept into a waking dream, ineffable and unsettling on its surface, yet seductive and enticing in its power as it pulls you down, ever down in a swirling alliterative whirlpool of lust, longing and loss. "Animal" is less cohesive than "Panel" but more purely, ecstatically theatrical. Where Dave Malloy's original compositions tended toward Satie-inflected wistfulness in "Panel," "Animal" is primarily two-fisted Kurt Weill cabaret. To this end, BB&B's second offering benefits greatly from the live piano presence of the very supple Sarah Engelke, who segues seamlessly from Malloy's robust Bierhalle stein-clankers to a lilting cover of "Embraceable You" inbetwixt sprawling flat on her belly pounding the innards of her piano and flapping about the stage in a frantic, frenzied tap dance. And then there's Craig's Apocalyptic Armadillo sequence that brings Jamie McElhinney's sound design and Miranda Hardy's lighting to an appropriately bizarre and very effective crescendo. When was the last time you saw a giant armadillo gripped by the throes of an angst-ridden monologue whilst being hounded by The Giant Blue Light From Beyond? Thought so. Which is reason enough right there to encourage Craig, Jelliffe & Co, to return right here following that gig up north. NYC theater needs them. Williamsburg needs them. If only to help keep the Starbucks away a little while longer. "Panel
. Animal" Copyright © 2005 by theater2k.com. All rights reserved. |
