Exhibitionism

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The Velveeta Room & the Paramount Theatre,
Thursday & Friday, May 22 & 23

Improv is the perfect sport for a person who is a mass media sponge with an agile mind. Full of strange and unusual suggestions from an audience, an improv scene can last 10 seconds or three hours and traverse diverse lands, such as bee brothels and space pods. Anything can happen and it is the improviser who knows his references who will truly succeed.

The music capital of the world was invaded by the minions of this peculiar form of comedy last week during the Big Stinkin' International Improv Festival 2, a five-day celebration of working without a net that brought to town both well-known and obscure acts from across the country. Performances by just a handful of these acts were amazing proof of how folks using the same essential methods can vary greatly in terms of style and success.

Some of the younger groups, such as The New Thing from Long Island University and Freudian Slip from College Station, proved that seasoning is crucial to improvisational success. It takes practice to learn how to work a crowd and the fest, I suppose, provides valuable experience.

Fool's Play from Seattle provided short-form improvs, ranging in duration from 10 seconds to about five minutes. They drew gasps from the Velveeta Room crowd as the players repeatedly flung themselves about the stage as quickly as possible. The physicality of these two guys with matching T-shirts was matched by their witty humor. You could tell that they were having as much fun as the audience.

In contrast to the Fools' short forms, Chicago's Screw Puppies presented a half-hour improv, this one begun with the line "Excuse me, but that's my fish," suggested by a seafood-loving audience member. While each segment of this long-form piece was not equally entertaining, the Puppies amused and titillated the Paramount Theatre audience with scenes that ranged from touching stories of young lovers to the tribulations of a flamboyant lawn care crew.

The highlights of Thursday and Friday for me, however, were the performances by Washington D.C.'s Mission IMPROVable and ex-MTVers The State. Comparing the two may be unfair, as Mission IMPROVable does improv and The State does sketch comedy. Both, though, attacked their material with fierce excitement and a rough edge. You could tell by their respective performances that this was more than a game to these comedians; this was a sharp battle in which the winner was the group who garnered the most laughs. A full-out audience assault insured that we got what we came for, and we were rolling in the aisles, gasping for air and begging for mercy. -- Adrienne Martini

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Flame Failure, Episode 1: A Cool Puzzle in 12 Boxes

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The Public Domain Gallery,
through June 1
Running Time: 40 min

Couple of months ago I was in some gift shop looking for a wedding gift for an old college buddy. I stumbled upon a puzzle box, an intricate construction of cut wood that is designed to hide a treasure underneath all its layers. Intrigued by the concept, I took the thing apart right in the middle of the store and, hidden within the last, tiny box was a touching haiku printed on rice paper. It felt like a great reward, the satisfaction of both figuring out how all of the tricks worked and finding a scrap of poetry as a prize. I started to purchase this engrossing treasure and realized that this kind of adventure can be very expensive.

Flame Failure is kind of like that puzzle box, but done on the cheap with a panoramic scope. This first installment, Firebox, begins our journey through the layers of playwright Dan Bonfitto's imagination, a place that seems to be largely influenced by graphic novels, old-style science fiction, and Tarantino. It's a pretty cool place to be, but you can't take in all of the scenery until all 12 episodes have been played out, one every month through April of next year. It's an ambitious project. Bonfitto and company, however, seem up to the challenge, judging from the strength of this piece.

Set in the firebox of a boiler, this episode introduces us to Drake, a triple agent with a trick brain designed like a Nautilus shell who has pissed off the wrong person, and

Wormwood, a transient who has crawled into the cramped and dangerous firebox to get warm, or so he says. The actors are confined by the set, which consists of an 8' X 8' cube of plywood and chicken wire, but these physical limitations do not stop actors Walter Clark and Marshall Ryan Maresca from launching themselves into their performances with abandon. David Sebastian Boone's lighting design heightens the drama and captures the tension inherent in Bonfitto's script.

While Flame Failure may not be next in line to become a great American classic à la some play by A. R. Gurney or Tony Kushner, it is an interesting departure from the norm, rife with layers of meaning and intrigue, and full of well-written dialogue. Hopefully, as we open the layers of future installments, we will be rewarded with scraps of poetry. -- Adrienne Martini

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Leslie Bonnell: Sounds to Savor

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Zachary Scott Theatre Center,
Saturday, May 24

Mr. Shakespeare, I owe you another one. For years, I've been dismissing your phrase likening music to "the food of love" as nothing more than another fine metaphor. I mean, that idea of music as something which whets and sates our romantic appetite is neat, but I couldn't see anything beyond that, any practical connection between artistic expressions enjoyed through the ear and pleasures of the table savored through the mouth. This past week, though, that all changed. I went to a cabaret and heard a woman sing, and I tasted music.

Leslie Bonnell is a vocalist who makes good on your union of music and food and love. She favors songs that are steeped in romance, most of them culled from that grand collection of pop confections we 20th-century types call "the Great American Songbook," songs by Ellington, the Gershwins, Porter, and the like. Their melodies drip with the joys and aches of the heart, their lyrics limn those singular emotions in tart and zestful phrases. Bonnell savors these qualities in her delivery. She draws out words ever so deliciously, elongating the vowels as if she's holding an exquisite flavor in her mouth. When she finally lets go of one, it's with a consonant that pops, releasing a whole new burst of flavor like the juice when you bite through the ripe skin of a grape. Her "Honeysuckle Rose," given a languid and sensual reading, comes toward you thick and slow, and when it reaches you, it lands not on your ear but on your tongue, where it's golden-warm and oh so sweet.

Bonnell's recent two-hour set as part of the new Z Cabaret launched by the Zachary Scott Theatre Center was a tribute to both her growth as an interpreter of lush romantic standards and Zach's presentation of cabaret as theatre. Everything about the evening was carried off with a dramatic flair. Bonnell entered looking like a flapper empress, sporting rich chocolate shades from her beaded headband sparkling in the light to her striking silk dress overlaid with a lacy chiffon sheath to her suede pumps, even to her nails -- and that was just her first act attire! Her accompanist, Bill Forrest, showed himself to be every bit as into the music as Bonnell, swaying on his bench like a willow in a high wind, his notes sounding out as fully and satisfyingly as fat drops of rain in a pond. And the lighting followed Bonnell's every mood: bathing her in sultry blues, dappling her in shadows, covering her and the audience in spinning stars. (Alas, I neglected to find out who designed the lights.) What can I say, Old Will? You know whereof you speak. Not only did I realize that night how music is the food of love, I wished, in the words of your moonstruck young count, for Bonnell and Forrest to "play on!" And on and on and on.... -- Robert Faires