With so many guerilla theatre groups now regularly presenting at UpStage, perhaps it was inevitable that through cooperating and conspiring, a League of Independent Theatres of Charlotte would form. It’s not a new idea in NoDa, for once upon a time, when the millennium was young, Charlotte’s Off Broadway bloomed in a now-demolished quonset on Cullman Avenue. Of course, nothing ever came of the idealistic project — except Chickspeare, Queen City Theatre Company, BareBones Theatre Group, and Carolina Actors Studio Theatre.
The two heavyweights on the card, Christopher Durang and Theresa Rebeck, were bunched in the middle, framed by the two lighter-weight pieces by Jordan Crittenden and Taproot, which tends to roll their own behind closed doors. But if Taproot’s This Message Must Be Consumed was hardly more than an agreeable after-dinner cordial, emceed by Chris Herring with a high-strung gameshow glibness, Seay’s Thursday Is My Day for Cleaning — with an even bumpier ride from Vivian (née Jay, I suspect) Russell — was frothier and more substantial than a mere aperitif.
Crossdressing rather primly, Russell portrayed Louise McFadden with a trashy elegance appropriate for a well-dressed middle-aged housewife who has just shot her vacuum cleaner. In this solo tour de force, Russell communicated with a deaf mute repairman she wouldn’t allow through her front door and an assortment of men on the phone, including a policeman, a guy from the phone company, and a husband. Pile on a few merry touches of the absurd and a time warp and you had a comedy delight worthy of being grouped among the evening’s main dishes.
There was also a touch of the absurd in Wanda’s Visit, Durang’s riff on the houseguest-from-hell storyline. Since her hapless host Jim broke her heart many years ago, discarding her when he went off to college, Wanda has been in such a prolonged emotional and psychological tailspin that she has had to undergo extensive plastic surgery to elude her violent — or asylum goon — pursuers. So Jim has never seen anyone like this Wanda before, leaving us to wonder whether the pathologically affectionate and grabby visitor is really who she claims to be.
Jim’s wife of 13 years, Marsha, has a few questions of her own — and she’s clearly not amused. Jennifer Jamsky took the zesty no-holds-barred approach to Wanda’s extreme obnoxiousness that you might expect from somebody performing it at a bar, while Robert Brafford and Leslie Ann Giles were wonderfully contoured as the besieged marrieds. Brafford showed us how deftly he can handle conflicted protagonists earlier this summer in The Misanthrope, and here he juggled feeling of guilt, alarm, and being flattered by his old girlfriend while remaining sensitive to the tectonic rumblings in his marriage.
Since Jamsky pushed the obnoxiousness needle so much further than Anne Lambert did when Wanda visited the Warehouse PAC in Cornelius three years ago, it’s not surprising that Giles reacted to the invasion with so much more overt hostility than Joanna Gerdy did. Quixotic proved it’s hilarious both ways, and I’d forgotten how mischievously Durang had given an extended monologue to a restaurant waiter (Katie Hickling) late in the action.
Of course, any intro to a bunch of fringe groups ought to present at least one piece that is difficult to warm to. After Quixotic’s crowd-pleaser, Appalachian’s Does This Woman Have a Name? certainly achieved that objective. Going back to Omnium Gatherum, the first of her works to run here, Rebeck has persistently questioned the political and philosophical underpinnings of our lives. Here she probes the independent spirit of a writer named Mel whose feminism is taking her overboard.
To avoid accepting repeated offers from her well-to-do boyfriend Jon and moving in with him, she embarks on a seedy enterprise with her best friend Sarah. They become partners in a two-bit phone sex business, Sarah answering the salacious and perverted callers and Mel speedwriting the scripts for what she says. Repeatedly, Jon brings up the lifestyle argument. She could be living comfortably with him, spending time doing serious writing, and carving out a respectable career. What he doesn’t ask her is: if she’s wary of prostituting herself by living off his money, what does think she’s doing now as she panders to the pervs?
Rebeck doesn’t give Mel much to counter with, except for her determination to pay her own way through life and her revulsion at being possessed by Jon. Not the sexiest attitude for someone who is wallowing in the sex trade — and keeping her distance there, too. But Mel’s best argument doesn’t need to be expressed out loud, for we’re seeing it every minute. To be an artist and to write a play like this, you need to authentically experience the milieu more than you need the luxury of sitting cocooned in your boyfriend’s house with your every need taken care of.
Nope, that doesn’t make Mel less selfish and pig-headed or more likable, but she is an artist. Through all her jousting with Jon and Sarah, Jennifer Quigley played her with just barely enough calmness to make us believe that there was some thought-out conviction behind her stubbornness. Jon was easily the most likable character here, but Justin Attkisson didn’t lean too hard on his advantage, so I ended up growing quite impatient with his patience.
Sitting in the way — or in the middle — of the Mel-Jon crossfire, Sarah turned out to be an interesting study in her own right. Jen Altizer, in a promising debut, showed us a flirt who is willing to play the slut when shielded by a phone. But Altizer also let us see that there’s a price for doing this job well, and it was fascinating to watch her growing sense of disgust and defilement.
If you want to sample more of these fringe groups, keep your eye on what’s happening at UpStage in NoDa. If you’re curious about experiencing Durang, your next opportunity is around the corner as Actor’s Theatre brings us the Charlotte premiere of Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike next month.