EST presents a rooster, a hen, and some unpleasant not-quite-humans

Ensemble Studio Theatre’s production of Year of the Rooster by Eric Dufault is dully pretentious, superficially acted (with two exceptions), and altogether disappointing.  The play, in its current incarnation, was last done at EST just a few months ago, receiving enough good press to influence the theatre company to present it again.  Having sat through its tedious two hours, I do not understand what all the fuss was about, and John Giampietro’s tepid direction did nothing to pull the overlong piece out of the mire.

The main character, a pathetic little guy named Gil whose McDonald’s name tag reads “Girl,” is played cartoonishly by Thomas Lyons.  He is put upon by the various bullies in his life.  This “protagonist” is the same at the play’s end as at its beginning, and his cyclical journey was not in the slightest bit interesting or surprising.

 

Lyons, Bess, and Moreno in Year of the Rooster.  Photo Credit:  Russ Kuhner

The play opens with Dickie Timble (played with oozing slime by Denny Dale Bess), as a master of ceremonies at a cockfight, comparing that habitual torture to “culture” handed down from the Golden Age of Greece.  Dickie is a vulgar bully and an ass-grabbing back-slapping good old boy.  He is not an individual human being with realistically human traits.  We follow him to meet Gil behind the counter at the McDonalds.  Gil is the epitome of ineffectual, easily intimidated by his mean-spirited mother, Dickie, and the young woman who has just made manager at McDonald’s, Philipa.

Megan Tusing does remarkably good work with Philipa, a character full of stereotypical anger issues, then continues to stand out as the overfed McDonald’s hen with whom Gil wants his rooster to mate.  Said rooster is the most interesting creature in the play, the very angry and drug-abused cock Odysseus Rex, extremely well played by Bobby Moreno with birdlike twitches and physical and verbal passion.  Cockfighting is offensive yet the scene portraying it had the best staging of the play, choreographed by fight director Qui Nguyen.

It is a bit disturbing that the best drawn and acted characters in the play are not human. Gil’s mother Lou is a liar and a cheat, but Delphi Harrington is wasted on an outline of a caricature.  Everyone in this play is foul-mouthed and full of hate for everyone and everything around them, except for the hen.  When Gil makes it to the top of the pile of his insular cockfighting circle for a short while, he’s just as vicious and ugly as everyone who was cruel to him.  Because he’s as stupid as he is dull, he of course is not on top for long.

 

Apparently roosters, like cats, will attack their reflections

If that is the point of the play, please someone beg playwright Eric Dufault to revise it as a one-act.  In its present stage of “development,” it is two hours of torture. Mr. Dufault must go back to school.  Tossing in some cockfighting sports history of the Greeks merely implies he read some Cliff Notes about ancient Greece.  What he needs to do is finish reading Aristotle’s Poetics in order to understand what constitutes a play.  Year of the Rooster does not make the grade. 

~ Molly Matera, recommending you go see some other play in NYC.

First of Three Evenings of One Acts at EST

The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s 34^th Marathon of One Act Plays begins with Series A, running from May 18^th through June 2^nd. 

The first half of the evening includes three one-act plays.  First up, a short play that John Patrick Shanley probably had lying around on a floppy disc for years.  Poison, directed by John Giampietro, is cute and ends with a joke.  It’s merely a sketch, with Jacqueline Antaramian funny as the Gypsy, Aaron Serotsky put upon and impatient as Kenny, and Alicia Goranson mostly manic.

Next up was presumably an excerpt from a longer work, dramatic or otherwise.  Kandahar to Canada by Dan O’Brien, directed by Mark Armstrong, was rather pointless and lazy, but at least it was brief.  It is not a one-act anything, rather a chronology going nowhere but Ottawa.

The evening picked up a bit with Something Fine by Eric Dufault, directed by Larissa Lury.  Beth is a trucker, and her truck’s cab is depicted on the stage adorned with a balloon, a cooler with cake and ice cream for her daughter’s birthday, and a pair of statuettes on the dashboard:  a bobble-hipped hula girl and a Virgin Mary.  Beth (Cathy Curtin) is brash and crass and sleepless, chugging 5-hour energy drinks.  Hula Girl (Lucy Devito) and Virgin Mary (Diana Ruppe) also appear as full grown people – they sway and jiggle with the truck’s journey.  Hula girl chats happily, while Virgin Mary is furious that they’re merely plastic statuettes.  Beth has been driving for 36 hours without sleep, so we are in constant fear she’ll drive herself off the road before she makes it home.  Instead she comes to a different crisis.  Something Fine was quirkily entertaining, going from hilarious to almost poignant.

You Belong to Me by Daniel Reitz, directed by Marcia Jean Kurtz, opened the second half of the evening with a New York story that included gorgeous performances by Patricia Randell as Susan and Scott Parkinson as Robby.  Ms. Randell’s stark white face is frozen in horror as the lights come up on a subway car setting.  In a spring dress and lightweight cardigan, she stares at a man a few seats away, a rather messy man in a winter coat, his thin arms wrapped around his backpack.  He is apparently homeless.  Ms. Randell’s character finally speaks:  “Robby?”  The man recognizes his name, perhaps the voice, and turns to look at her.  “Susan?” he says.  Thus begins a surreal portrayal of a New Yorker’s nightmare, that we know the homeless man we are trying desperately to not see or hear or smell.  Susan and Robby knew one another well, when they were both at Columbia University.  Their lives took different turnings, his more obvious than hers, although Susan is lost in her way, too.  It’s a heartbreaking exchange between them, and Patricia Randell and Scott Parkinson both shine through.

The final play of the evening has a perfect title:  Curmudgeons in Love by Joshua Conkel, directed by Ralph Peña.  Curmudgeon #1 is Ralph (the wonderful David Margulies), a grumpy old man in a nice assisted living facility, who yells at his nurse (tough and tender Daniela was well played by Veronica Cruz), who yells back.  Ralph’s granddaughter Robin (Nina Hellman, who looks frail but can hold her own) comes to visit and he yells at her. When she yells back, it becomes clear that yelling means love.  Ralph is not a happy fellow, though.  After a 30-year marriage with children and grandchildren then years alone, at 80 he fell in love.  All he wants now is to live with Jackie, but he’s told he cannot.  Jackie’s grandson Brant (Alex Manette) comes to visit, and Ralph yells at him, too, so we know how he feels about Brant.  Finally someone else is yelling from outside, and Brant runs out to wheel in his grandfather, dressed in a tux but confined to a wheelchair.  This is Jackie (Martin Shakar), and all becomes clear.  Two old widowers fell in love, and their grandchildren connive to have them married now that same sex marriage is legal in New York. The old men who discovered true love late in life can live together in wedded bliss.  Totally believable robust characters give us the sweetest moment of the evening, when Jackie’s grandson dances as proxy with Ralph. 

Everyone left the theatre happy — smart programming.  Five plays in two hours (including a 10-minute intermission) is an auspicious start to this year’s marathon.  List of plays and playwrights at:  http://www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org/node/2009

~ Molly Matera, signing off, drying off, hoping everyone has a fabulous Memorial Day Weekend.