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But if offering a cookie to a friend with your asshole is your idea of hilarity, this is definitely your ticket. Dress appropriately -- and sit defensively.
FringeNYC [Ended on Aug. 30]
Victoria and Frederick for President (***1/4) -- Previously premiered at the Create Carolina Festival in May 2008 on the Winthrop University campus, Jonathan L. Davidson's historical curiosity has been admirably trimmed of its gossipy, salacious excesses, focusing our attention more sharply on substance. How is it possible that Frederick Douglass campaigned for the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant while running against him as a vice presidential candidate? The fascinating answer is loopy suffragette visionary Victoria Woodhull, who drafted Douglass onto her ticket without consulting the great orator.
The original climax, a confrontation between Douglas and Grant after somebody -- bigots? Grant supporters? -- has burned down Douglas's house, is still a powerhouse. So is Mel Johnson Jr's portrait of Douglass, the best element of the Rock Hill production. All the other parts in the FringeNYC production were in capable Actor's Equity hands. Best were Antoinette Levecchia, nicely adulterating her principled Victoria with a wink of wantonness, and Edward Hyland as Grant, earthy, convivial, and unshakably self-assured.
Give that man a cigar! Seriously, that one extra prop wouldn't have busted the budget. Johnson, on the other hand, tours with his own one-man show, Frederick Douglass in the Shadow of Slavery, so his leonine mane and beard are imposing no-cost extras the producers have passed along.
Graveyard Shift: The American Tragedy Musical (***) -- Zombies are eating the flesh of American citizens in Ren Casey's new horror spoof, and the corpses of the slaughtered victims are coming back to life, killing more and swelling the zombie army. The President has pre-empted normal TV programming to advise all citizens to abandon all hope. Promising beginning!
But Casey turns down the intensity afterwards, transporting us to a besieged big box retailer, ValueVille, and showing us how the late shift employees deal with the threats of cannibalism and the end of civilization. All the while, V-Ville newbie Ellie is being indoctrinated into the store's ideals by manager David Hussey -- and the grim underpaid realities by cashier Sharonda and supervisor Stacy.
Romance? That would be on Aisle 9, if I'm not mistaken, in the person of Petey, an $8.95-an-hour lifer who still lives with his grandma.
As you can readily divine, this set-up allows Graveyard Shift to shuttle gracefully between episodes satirizing the spirit-sucking culture of mass retail and desperate action sequences with the fate of the world at stake. Sort of like a musical Chuck, n'est-ce pas?
There are longueurs in Casey's script, to be sure, but the fecundity of his musical imagination and the barbs in his lyrics make him someone we're almost sure to be hearing from on larger stages. Ditto for Tonilyn Hornung, singing Ellie, and Connie Jackson, belting out Sharonda. Their big voices are also too big for the Minetta Lane Theatre.
Dancing With Abandon (**1/2) -- Charlotte émigré Sandy Binion bravely starred in this quirky, quixotic, and charming first stab at a full-blown stage musical by singer/actress/writer Karen Hartman. We remember Binion here as a dusky contralto who sang the lead in such musicals as Applause and Sunday in the Park With George. Apparently, she also has operatic training, enabling her to lift up her voice into the soprano range.
She sensationally dusts off those capabilities here as Alice Silverstein, a Jewish operatic phenom who sacrifices parenthood to pursue diva glory. Brought up by Italian peasants as Dwayne Boccacio, Alice's rock-'n'-roll son shows up at the Kennedy Center and moons his mom as she is about to receive the lifetime achievement medal in front of the world's glitterati.
So eventually, institutionalized, Silverstein gets to sing a mad scene for real! Trouble is, Hartman has so overloaded the diva's role with vocal demands, sprinkling it with arias from Madama Butterfly, Carmen, and Gianni Schicchi, that it's impossible for even the two singers who split the Silverstein part -- Natalie Charlé Ellis is the younger Alice -- to perform it every night.
At its best, when Binion and Zachary Clause as Dwayne combine in an opera-against-rock duet, "Rock Me Mama," Hartman is onto something new and exciting. But she needs to confine the insanity to her autobiographical diva, borrow less from the classics, and nurture her own compositional gifts. Above all, Hartman, a Met Opera audition winner in her youth, should have compassion for her singers and give them a break.
