Joe Pindelski, who starred in The Banger’s Flopera with me last year, is currently appearing in Titus X, running Thursday nights at The Tank at Collective:Unconscious in Tribeca. This is one of several incarnations of the punk rock adaptation of Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy, by Fugly Productions. Shakespeare + punk rock + Joe = something I desperately needed to see!

I have very few bad things to say about this show. I was blown away by it and had an amazing time. I have to say, however, it’s not really a musical; more like a punk show that happens to tell a story. The cast is powerful and sings the hell out of the music, which is very pure in its punk rock origins. None of it sounds musical theatrey. Shawn Northrip, the playwright/composer (who also fronts the onstage band on guitar) clearly has a great affection for punk music.

Unsurprisingly, there were a few minor diction issues. As this was their first time running in this space with this particular sound system, I actually didn’t expect to be able to understand much of the dialogue (punk rock in a tiny black-box theatre = hard to hear!) but surprisingly I caught most of it. The band is very loud but they graciously provide earplugs at the door (which I didn’t use because I am hardcore). Titus Andronicus has an unfortunately very complicated (traditionally Shakespearian) plot with many, many characters, which doesn’t lend itself well to loud, unintelligible lyrics. I was fine, but I wonder however if someone unfamiliar to the plot would have had trouble catching all the clever lyrics.

What is most impressive is the cast. They are fully committed to the insane, headbanging ridiculousness that they’re performing. Furthermore, I could see each and every one of them fronting a legitimate punk band - with the exception of the actress playing Lavinia - but that’s fine, she’s the sweet ingenue, and it works better that way anyway. It’s rare to find legit musical theatre people who can sing this kind of music and 1) not look like posers and 2) not shred their voices!

On this particular evening’s show, my experience was hampered a bit by the reserved nature of the audience. The show is loud, in your face, in full-on punk attire and makeup, and goes up at 10pm. So you would think, rowdy drunken crowd. Wrong. I was the only audience member who seemed willing to get into the spirit of things. They were very quiet and I think perhaps a bit confused. Were they expecting a more traditional version of the show? It was un peu bizarre. But their reserve didn’t put the actors into a coma - on the contrary their energy was amazing. And infectious. At least for me it was infectious.

The writing is great. It’s a giant love letter to both punk and to Shakespeare. It’s bloody and silly and campy and wrong. Perhaps this night’s audience didn’t find this funny? A favorite moment is Lavinia’s song she sings, well, moans, after having her tongue cut out and hands cut off. She drools blood all over herself and moans a reprise of a previous song. I suppose it does take a very specific crowd to find that funny. I loved it. Plastic baby dolls dripping blood, people baked into pies, rape, drugs, insanity, incest - it all lends very well to the world of punk. Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t fare nearly as well in such a universe. It’s a place I’d revisit anytime, with joy.

During a recent trip to Maine, where my boyfriend’s parents live, we all went to see a show at Carousel Music Theater, in nearby Boothbay Harbor. Having seen dinner theatre only once before in my life (and not dining there), and definitely having sent in my headshots (but never auditioning) for this theatre, I was very interested to see the quality of the production.

The space appears to be a converted barn - wide and open, with a stage in the front, piano and bar to the side, and kitchen in a seperate room. We enjoyed a cocktail at the bar before being seated (lovely gin and tonic) and learned that the bartender also directed the show. Shortly after taking our seats, we were showed menus and our dinner order was taken. The dinner orders were brought to the kitchen, and what I didn’t realize is that the young people waiting on the tables, are also the actors in the show. Seriously double-tasking! During dinner, they sang cabaret for us (this one was the music of Neil Diamond). After dinner was the actual show, which was a musical revue of Cole Porter songs, loosely tied together by a makeshift plot.

First, the house was very poorly sold. When they have bus tours come in, the house is apparently sometimes full, but on this particular evening, it was sparse. Even so, the salmon advertized as a dinner special was sold out by the time our order got into the kitchen. So I had the chicken. The dinner consisted of a smallish piece of chicken, root veggies that had obviously, recently been defrosted, and very buttery white rice. Inoffensive, bland quisine, (very much enjoyed by the elderly couple next to me). Only offensive because of it’s price of $15.95 per plate!

The cabaret section of the show was fine. All the singers were good, a few stood out as quite good. After roughly an hour of cabaret, and the actors rushing offstage to tend to their tables, they take a quick break in order to change into their costumes for the main show. The poorly constructed plot centers around people who work at a radio station during wartime. Really it’s just a construct used to string together the hits of Cole Porter, which are lovely. Many were unfamiliar and it was nice to hear these classics for the first time, performed competently by the cast. However, the storyline was as bland and inoffensive as the food. I like a little spice in my cuisine and in my entertainment.

The cast seemed a bit low on energy, which could be due to their hectic show schedule and the fact that they’re running themselves ragged, both performing and serving at the same time. I hope they make good money, but I did see a lot of $1 bills in the tip bucket at the end of the night (not surprisingly, as the small audience was predominantly seniors). And at $17 a head plus the cost of dinner, plus drinks, plus tip, it was not a cheap night out.

Theresa Falco, a Brooklyn native (representin’!) bought the theatre two years ago and serves as artistic director. She also works as a cast member - which means she’s also waiting on tables, just like her hired staff. I really respect a theatre owner who works like a dog with the rest of the cast. That was great to see.

The food left something to be desired. The singing was good. The acting was fine. The playwrighting was weak. The dancing was great and there needed to be more. Many of the actors were competent tappers who’s skills were used only in one number. All in all, I would say it was more of an educational experience than anything else. I learned that I don’t have the desire or energy to work in theatres like this. Not to deter anyone else, as I’m sure it is a great, fun, summer job for someone right out of school. But not for me.

The Sewers is the newest piece from the avant-guarde theatre troupe Banana Bag & Bodice. I discovered these San Francisco natives last summer when I saw their brilliant piece, Panel.Animal (previously reviewed). After loving that show so much, and getting to meet Jessica and Jason last year after a performance of The Bangers Flopera, I was very much anticipating their latest project, playing at The Ontological Theatre. What I didn’t expect, which perhaps shows my inability for abstract thinking, is that this play was going to be vastly different from the last.

This play centers around 4 characters who exist in a fantastical netherworld. Everything is dark, bleak and filthy. One character’s hand is rotting and turning black (and smells of marzipan. And she likes marzipan). Generally, it’s a horrible world of rotting and decay.

The action (or lack thereof) centers around two women with an ambiguously close relationship (sisters?), and one man, to whom one of the women is married. But then there’s sexual tension between the other woman and the husband. Then, there’s the arrival of “The Playwright,” who is a character in the play yet also claims to be the creator of the play. His character strangely melds with that of the husband, who only speaks one time. Physically, he’s all over the place, yet never speaks.

What follows is a wacky, disturbing discussion about the relationship of children and art. Specifically, the issue that art kills the possibility of children, and vice versa. In the world of The Sewers, the playwright has deemed it so that there are no children. They simply do not exist, because they do not serve his purposes. At first, this is a funny concept. Then we realize that this is a sad bleak existence where there are no children, and therefore no future. During the climactic scene, in which both women have become pregnant, they are both hooked up to a horrifying electric machine, and a procedure is performed on them simeltaneously. Not sure if it was a double abortion, or if they were both giving birth. The end result was two tiny lightbulbs. Either way, in this world, no children.

It’s an interesting idea, perhaps one that comes directly from the lives and feelings of the people involved. For people that choose to be artists, having kids is not always an option. I wish, however, that the specific feelings involved were a little more bare and open. It seemed more like a discussion of the issue, but covered up with lots of poetic jargon, bleak visuals and weirdness. I like that, but I also wanted a bit more specificity and honesty. It didn’t quite come to any logical conclusion or end to the discussion. Perhaps that’s the point.

Then there’s the scene where the husband manipulates the women as if they were robots - were they? Was he? Does it matter? It was touched on in the beginning and not mentioned again. I missed something there.

I liked the technical work very much. Peter Ksander on sets and Miranda Hardy on lights collaborated to use a lot of small lights that move all over the stage - the universe of The Sewers is one in which wires and small lamps move all over and are intertwined and confused and manipulated to many ends. Loved the look of it, but again I think it might have been better served along with some more specificity in the dialogue. It almost seemed that playing with lights and language was more important than the overall meaning.

Last year’s musical (Sandwich - part of Panel.Animal), was similar in terms of how the dialogue was written. But it had a refreshing whimsical humor that made the strangeness of the non-linear dialogue much easier to digest. But in the world of The Sewers, the humorous moments are few. It’s all dark all the time. Which is extremely effective and horrible and beautiful. But where were the singing kitty cats!?!? I suppose they’re allowed to grow and change as artists (which incidentally, is one of the many themes in the show). And I hope to see them continue to grow and change and push the boundaries of traditional notions of theatre. Good job guys; I loved it and hated it, and my brain will be digesting it for quite some time.

Going into this production, all I knew was that it had something to do with Beowulf, and that Julie Taymor directed and designed it. That was enough to spark my interest. Best known for creating The Lion King on Broadway, I’m also a huge fan of her film version of Titus Andronicus, and know that a staged version of the Beowulf might be similarly dark and creepy, and also maybe have some puppets. I was correct in both of these assumptions.

What I didn’t know, however, is that the story centers around the monster of the Beowulf story, the evil ogre named Grendel. This is the premise of the 1971 novella by John Gardner, of the same title. Grendel, while still a monster, is more of a sympathetic character. We see him think, ache, and rage as he wars with humankind, and while we don’t necessarily sympathyze with him, we understand where he is coming from and we are able to recognize similarly human emotions and reactions. Therefore, when the hero Beowulf comes at the end to slay the monster, we’re sad for him. A little.

Visually, the production is stunning. A massive, rotating mountain dominates the stage, which flips around, and which the monster climbs over to reach various destinations. One issue with the set occured during the last moments of the show; that of the monster’s decision to hurl himself off the mountain. From where I was sitting in the fourth ring, it looked more like a slow, leaning hover, then a blackout. Perhaps from the floor seats it would have looked more impressively dramatic.

The music suited the feeling of the production quite well. While not particularly beautiful, Elliot Goldenthal wrote the score mostly in recitative. It follows vocal patterns of characters and is very complex in nature, which fit the dark gloominess of the production quite well. However, I wished there had been a few more arias in there. I found myself wanting and waiting for some deeply romantic, sweeping melodies, after so much harsh sounding disonance, and it never came. Furthermore, nearly 70% of the show’s music is sung by Eric Owens as Grendel. And while his deep baritone is great in the role, I wanted to hear more variations in the music - there’s only one soprano role in the whole show and she’s on stage for no more than 20 minutes, tops.

Props to Denyee Graves as The Dragon - which is written mostly in male tenor range - so vocally and visually, she’s the most interesting thing in the show. Her entrance, out of the mouth of a dragon, is most impressive, as is the fact that her tail is comprised of three mini-dragon ladies hovering in midair as the tip of her tail. The character’s one scene is a highlight, and she is missed in act 2.

Unfortunately, Grendel’s visual excellence and solid performances don’t make it a great performance. I just really wanted the score to be prettier.

In other news, best celebrity sighting of my life was entering the theatre at the same moment as I; Mr. David Bowie. Very exciting.

In other, other news, there was an issue I’ve never before had at the theatre, which needs to be addressed, as it nearly ruined my entire evening. The man sitting next to me was massively overweight. As a non-thin American myself, other people’s girth has never annoyed me, even when spilling over into my seat, say, on airplanes or at the theatre. This was not the issue. The problem was, the man also had a mysterious respiratory ailment. This condition forced him to gasp loudly upon each and every exhilation of breath. At a louder show, or perhaps, a rock concert, this would have been fine. But sitting in the 4th circle at an opera, which is not mechanically amplified at all, the audience needs to be completely silent in order to hear the show. His breathing was so distracting I was unable to hear the vast majority of the first act. Luckily, I was able to move away from him into different seats for act 2, so the evening wasn’t completely ruined.

Now, I would never be so insensitive to say that this man shouldn’t be allowed to the opera. However, he needs to be aware of the fact that he completely ruined the experience for everyone within the 10-or-so-foot radius around him. And he seemed completely oblivious to the situation. When people (2 rows down and 4 seats over) were repeatedly glaring up at him, he simply continued starring thru his opera glasses, oblivious to their discomfort. I’m not really sure what the protocall is for this situation. All I know is that he was so loud, I was close to asking him to personally refund my ticket money because he so robbed me of the full experience. I wonder, if he knew, would he continue going to the opera? Unfortunately, I presume the answer would be, yes. Yes he would.