Building on the wonderful world of a play within a play, Stage Kiss takes the audience behind the scenes with as much surprise and fun as Noises Off. There are the actors (two of whom were lovers 20 years ago), there are the characters they play (two of whom were lovers 20 years ago), and then – in additional layers — there is the impact of the role on the one who must perform it.
The story focuses on the destruction of Hazel (Paul S. Holmquest) and his brother Fiver’s (Scott T. Barsotti)’s birthplace warren that necessitates them to lead a band of misfit rabbit survivors toward a new safe home. This quest turns into an adventure filled with terror, insurmountable dangers, strange alliances that is brisk and entertaining.
The story is sort of like a film-noir version of Comedy of Errors – instead of ever Plautus play rolled into one, it’s every noir hit rolled into one. The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, various early Hitchcock . . . .
Initially, the three clowns – who had red ears rather than bulbous red noses – appeared anything but confined as they bounced around, over seats, down the aisles, warming up the audience with action packed improv before they gathered drums and cymbals for a cacophony of sound.
The film diva, Liv, is in a medical induced coma to prevent further injury. Kemp is a frustrated poor nurse desperate to make both money and gain self-respect, devises a plan to fulfill is needs. When he realizes that a spiritual bestseller (Lattes With God) sold 12 million copies and that his girl’s daughter Leah claims to see angels, he concocts a plan to create another spiritual book…
As the tension rises and the emotions erupt, the party devolves into a painfully raucous night of revelations as several family members struggle to reckon with the accusations. The play manically moves between celebration and pathos, from exploding repressed emotions to acknowledgment of long held secrets.
According to co-producer Mat Churchill, “Total theater means an immersion into a variety of staging techniques, from traditional to the heretofore unseen.” That was present in threesixty production’s amazingly thrilling production of Peter Pan. This show will blow you away with its inventive story telling and eye-popping video that complimented and enhanced the visual experience of flying over London in 1904.
The costumes, makeup, and set all create this bizarre world, within which characters refuse to look at each other, staring straight at the audience, or start trembling and convulsing, throwing tables and chairs, and behaving in generally outlandish and weird manners. It’s sort of like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on a very heavy Ibogaine trip. And it works so well.
This material could be really vital, really brutal, heart wrenching stuff. But instead it’s just entertainment. It doesn’t really grapple with the issues, you don’t leave the theater thinking about how our school systems need to be changed, updated, for the times.
A Little Night Music is something of a novelty: it is a musical set completely in waltz time (technically 3/4, although there is also some 6/8). This makes it sound like it could get monotonous: how varied can music be if it’s nothing but one time signature? But America has never had a problem with music in only one time signature (has Lady Gaga done anything that’s not 4/4 yet?), and what’s more, Sondheim’s music is so rich, so varied, so clever and complex, that it is anything but monotony.