The Buttons and Bows Show: Hilah's Dollhouse

The Buttons and Bows Show: Hilah's Dollhouse

Salvage Vanguard Theater, through July 21

Running time: 1 hr, 20 min

In a culture that is increasingly corporate, sarcastic, and bored, how can one find a moral force? I mean, moral farce. Force or farce, you will find both in Tongue and Groove Theatre's The Buttons and Bows Show: Hilah's Dollhouse. A note in the program reads, "Here is your chance to see how the world could be." In actuality, the gentle power of this show is that it exposes how the world cannot be. The two main characters, Buttons and Bows, exist in the same realm as Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. They are beautiful souls who deal with the world directly and understand only its simplest truths. Their innocence is heartbreaking because it cannot actually exist.

Between Mark Stewart's beautifully crafted songs, Elizabeth Doss' appropriate direction, Chase Staggs and Craig Matthew Staggs' delightful production design, and Hilah Johnson's hilarious costumes (all of Buttons' and Bows' clothing is constructed from the same American-flag-print material), this show comes together into 80 cohesive minutes of entertainment. The Buttons and Bows Show is very user-friendly. The characters, the world, and the tension are quickly understood. From there, it's all about enjoying the unfolding.

When we first meet Buttons and Bows, played by Stewart and Johnson, they are performing a musical routine at Beerland. Their routine is completely inappropriate for its setting. They sing songs about mermaids and modest attire. They tell jokes about cheese ("Welcome Back, Ricotta"). Soon we are introduced to four seedy characters from the "real world." As Buttons and Bows cross the stage, the four seedy characters fall in line behind them, laughing maniacally, amused by their own malignance. Thus we are introduced to the conflict: the confrontation of innocence and corruption. These seedy characters never amount to much more than their initial impression. Whereas Buttons and Bows seem capable of encompassing all dimensions, the antagonistic characters encompass only one. To their credit, they are very entertaining. Each has an introductory monologue describing his or her own particular brand of bad.

At times, Mark Stewart's writing is better than Tongue and Groove's production. He has incorporated some hilarious subplots. The criminals in this world deal in musical instruments ("You think you can buy a ukulele in this town without me knowing about it?"), and there is much discussion of the dollhouse real estate market. Feliz Dia McDonald plays Sunshine Middlesex, a dollhouse speculator. McDonald does fierce work with her character, but at times her sharp edges eclipse the subtlety of her material. George Riley III plays Dewey Diddit, a music-industry con man and a committed womanizer. Riley's performance got big laughs, but it bordered on abrasive. Craig Matthew Staggs and Omid Ghorashi, respectively playing a drunk and a gangster, strike solid notes with their characters. Johnson and Stewart have nearly perfect comedic timing when they work as a duet, but when all six characters come together, the pacing gets slightly muddled.

The Buttons and Bows Show is an odd synthesis of the timeless and the timely. The characters exist outside the realm of real life, yet they encounter elements of real life. They live in Austin. There is an entire song dedicated to MySpace. It is incongruous and amusing to think of Buttons and Bows surfing the Internet. The play ends with them hosting a political-play festival. They imagine that it will be attended by anarchists.

The Buttons and Bows Show is ultimately a redemption story. Its plot wraps up tidily and predictably, but the plot is the least interesting part. At the end, as it is throughout, the strength of the show lies in Buttons and Bows. Their closing duet, performed at the political-play festival, is astonishingly excellent. This song is the entire show in a nutshell. Bows describes it as a "lullaby to anarchists." Its simple tuneful plea is, "Please don't throw bombs at the people in your dreams." The potency of their innocence exposes how far our world is from what it could be. I miss Buttons and Bows already. I miss their harmless humor, and I miss the surprising amusement of songs like "What Bird Is That?" I will not find them again except in stories or onstage. That is where such articulate innocence exists. Absent of their company, I will have to settle for eager anticipation of the MySpace posting of "Good Night, Anarchists."