Act I of Leah Nanako
Winkler’s TWO MILE HOLLOW (@ Apollinaire through Jan 20th) reminded
me a little of Charles Busch’s wild send-up of those 1950’s Annette Funicella /
Frankie Avalon BEACH movies. Winkler certainly catches Busch’s over the top
spirit but to sustain that level of outrageous hilarity, the liveliness has to increase
exponentially. Act I is hilarious but only in waves. The success of outsized
farce depends on brazen momentum and Winkler’s parody of rich white families
picks up steam, then runs out of it, then gathers it again and runs out again.
The plot, if there is
one, hinges on a fraught reunion, when, after the patriarch’s death, the surviving
family members return to their sprawling beach house in the Hamptons
The beach house,
we’re told, has a strange way of “affecting” its inhabitants. Evidently, it’s
haunted by the ghost of the late father who seems, in his afterlife, to have
grown fond of lightening strikes. Peculiarly, the HOLLOW affects the play, too,
turning Act II into a serious attempt at “message” drama, pontificating about
being “true to oneself.” This carnival of the bizarre is a marathon of unwieldy
dialogue and nonsensical allusions to weighty dramas by Chekov and Tennessee
Speaking of
carnivals, David Reiffel’s delightful sound design whisks us from “The Days of
Wine and Roses” to Saint-Saens’ gorgeous “Aquarium,” with clever original music
thrown in for the wonderfully goofy “Extraordinary.” Director Danielle Fauteux
Jacques knows her way around comedy and there are plenty of opportunities for
merriment but the playwright moves the target on her—and
for me, it was too late for the rather weak socio-political points about race
and status. The revelations come tardy as well. (We didn’t even know there were
any for most of the play. What is a revelation anyway, without suspense and
anticipation to precede it?)
What there is in TWO
MILE HOLLOW is an abundance of silliness, like the zany, recurring mispronunciations—which
made me giggle every time because I didn’t see them coming… Even though I knew
there’d be more of them. So, if you can shift gears half way through, you may
“get” what the playwright is trying to accomplish. There is an exhibit of photos
in the lobby which makes the point that the play missed. You’ll cringe when you
see Lawrence Oliver in blackface as Othello (hovering over a young, white
Maggie Smith). The exhibit doesn’t include brown/black faced opera singers but
it should. The Metropolitan Opera still presents white singers “bronzed up” as
Othello and as Aida, broadcasting the performances without shame, to millions
of viewers in theaters via HD simulcast. No one bats an eyelash!
