Talking Babies, Sci-Fi Cabarets & The Return of Circle Jerk
It's (Another) Off and Off-Off-Broadway Round Up
Buggy Baby (Astoria Performing Arts Center—thru June 26)
Astoria Performing Arts Center presents this U.S. premiere of a surreal horror comedy from buzzy U.K. writer Josh Azouz. Buggy Baby takes us inside the dilapidated London home of two young refugees, Nur and Jaden, caring for Jaden’s baby and seeking stability after fleeing an unspecified country.
Adrift and jobless, Nur becomes addicted to “chewing leaves,” to the point that a tree grows inside the flat—addiction literally taking root. Baby Aya speaks to both adults (and to the audience), though only her mother seems to comprehend. When Nur begins having visions of giant rabbits invading the home, Jaden must consider leaving with the child. If she can find anywhere to go.
Despite some solid jump-scares, director Rory McGregor can’t pull off the play’s horror elements within the limits of APAC’s space, which is too expansive and gym-like to feel confining. Transitions intended to unsettle are mostly clumsy. And the wackier elements of Azouz’s text, like the tree and those threatening rabbits, come to feel like window dressing on what is ultimately a fairly rote psychodrama.
However, the play is buoyed by a tremendous performance from Erin Neufer as baby Aya. She is at once innocent and all-knowing, and captures the squirms and tics of a distressed infant with incredible precision.
HYPERFANTASIA (The Brick, June 3-10; ANT Fest, June 15)
What is Hyperfantasia? You won’t leave this stunning sci-fi fantasy drag cabaret, created and performed by Evan Silver (aka Tiresias the Oracle), entirely knowing the answer. Hyperfantasia is a world beyond our own, a luscious space of camp extravagance where needless binaries are transcended. Or it’s a really good trip. Or, something else entirely.
Definitions aren’t important in Silver’s joyous and transporting piece, which combines music, dance and drag performance. Silver creates a warm and welcoming queer space, assisted by sublime projections and an array of fabulous special guest stars.
At my performance, Silver was even joined on stage by their mother, for a duet of “I Will Survive.” This sweet moment felt unrehearsed in the best way—a bit rough, and not always harmonized, but as parent and child gradually found a rhythm together, their love filled the space.
Theatre For One: Déjà Vu (Octopus Theatricals & Signature Theatre—thru June 26)
Following a successful digital iteration over the shutdown, Theatre For One returns to in-person performance in its mobile booth with revivals of five short plays from 2016, along with one new work by Samuel D. Hunter.
My 5 minute piece was My Anniversary, playwright David Henry Hwang’s powerful recollection of his stabbing in November 2015—a seemingly random attack for which no perpetrator was ever caught. Following the Atlanta shootings and amidst a startling rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans (a motive which police dismissed in Hwang’s case), the piece is, sadly, all the more potent today.
Ariel Estrada performs the monologue with wit and warmth, but mostly with rage. As his eyes locked directly with mine, I felt a necessary insistence on Estrada’s part: do not distance yourself, don’t take this at a remove. It is a danger which lurks around every dark corner for far too many people. In this darkened box, feel it creeping over your own shoulder, if only for a moment.
Sky of Darkness (Theaterlab, June 2-12)
Siting Yang’s engrossing, often confusing new work is a documentary-style piece which both adapts and corrects Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (a celebrated work, but one also critiqued for dehumanizing Africans). Yang frames this analysis through the modern-day story of young Chinese pilot Ma Lou (HanJie Chow), who travels to West Africa with lofty ideals but is soon disillusioned by the structural barriers to positive change. His journey is narrated (and commentated on) by the ghost of Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, one of Conrad’s most prominent critics, played captivatingly by the very talented Malcolm Opoku.
Yang refuses to guide the audience by the hand, which is admirable. But the play attacks such a specific and underreported issue—Chinese nationals stumbling into the service of government-owned conglomerates selling and operate military equipment in West Africa—that its refusal to explain itself does make certain sections impenetrable. Even so, Sky of Darkness remains involving thanks to Rakesh Palisetty’s atmospheric production, which makes smart, sparing use of video and the Theaterlab space.
Yang’s text only really comes to life when Achebe’s ghost confronts Ma Lou directly. Incorporating the ghost of any celebrated author should and would normally be an absolute no-no, the sign of a young writer overreaching. But the confrontation crackles with intellectual energy, as Achebe goads Ma Lou to confront the guilt and self-hatred that lurks underneath his bigotry.
Circle Jerk (Fake Friends at The Connelly Theater, thru June 25)
Circle Jerk is, amazingly enough, even better in person. It’s a pleasant surprise. Who knew if Fake Friends’ shutdown-era piece would even feel as sharp and incisive two years later, let alone make sense as an in-the-flesh experience at The Connelly Theater.
Credit goes mainly to director Rory Pelsue, who smartly weaves multiple mediums into one live experience. Audiences at the Connelly see the livestream projected above the stage, and may at times enjoy watching it more than those actual humans in front of you (I did this).
But in-personers also get to experience every quick change, every seamless jump from pre-recorded to live, every hurried scuttle from one iPhone stand to the other. The high tech affair clashes pleasingly with the historic space, adding to the general sense of mayhem. This show is just an infectious joy - now more than ever.