QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey SPIKED in the End Zone

Chekhov insisted his plays were comedies. Indeed there are very funny characters like Masha in THE SEAGULL who wears her depression like an oversized Russian greatcoat that threatens to consume her whole. Yet the overwhelming sadness of his characters’ wasted lives and crushed ambitions seems so tragic (at least it does to us Americans-maybe not to Russians)—and, surprise, surprise, it turns out, it’s so ripe for parody.

Playwrights are lining up left and right to borrow Chekhov’s characters for their spoofs. This last season I saw three untouched (up) Chekhov productions and two out and out spoofs. Aaron Posner’s STUPID F***ING BIRD lifted THE SEAGULL to hilarious heights at the Apollinaire Theatre last season and now Christopher Durang’s Tony winning VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE (at the Huntington Theatre through Feb. 1^st) crams that SEAGULL, THE CHERRY ORCHARD, UNCLE VANYA and those THREE SISTERS, not to mention a refugee from THE ORESTEIA into one outrageous send-up.

The poor creatures: Durang takes no prisoners with his guerrilla style of comedy: He keeps you laughing so hard at the sheer absurdity of the mash-up that you’re not thinking very deeply about the play. In fact, the structure of the piece works its way sideways at best. Durang embraces the set-up and the knock down of physical comedy but he interrupts the form with an extended bit of phone business à la Bob Newhart and a soliloquy right out of Seinfeld’s stand-up routines. Mind you, it all works because it is amusing, just not very weighty.

Half the battle is finding comic actors who can make the wacky dialogue fly. Director Jessica Stone has a game cast with several standouts. Marcia DeBonis has the advantage of playing a three dimensional character, someone we can care about, where the rest of the characters are there to put over the comedy, not that DeBonis isn’t a master comedienne.

Sonia laments that she’s fifty-two and hasn’t had a date in decades. If that’s not pathetic enough, she may have to leave behind her clump of ten cherry trees (which she of course calls her “orchard”). The audience adored DeBonis’ sad sack, “incipient bipolar” sister, so much so that they gasped when it looked like she would turn down an opportunity… and they cheered when she reconsidered.

Haneefah Wood hits her dialogue out of the park as the prophetess/housekeeper named Cassandra (because it’s quite delicious to foresee the future, have no one believe you, and be vindicated in seconds flat). She celebrates her prescient gifts with a whoop and a triumphant semi-backbend that kept us in stitches…no matter how many times she did it.

Martin Moran adroitly delivers the rambling paean to the postage stamp and to our “shared national past” (before electronic devices destroyed it). It’s the money shot in the play and the scene which brought home the Tony.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey Luke Warm Appreciation

Molly Ivins raised hell. She couldn’t abide slackers and self-serving politicians—and she had a platform to rail about injustice. She excoriated the incompetent and self-righteous in her books and newspaper articles. She got away with it thanks to her considerable Southern charm. Even when the New York Times canned her (for her candor) she didn’t miss a beat. She had charisma to spare and late night television loved her Texas spunk.

Two journalists, Margaret Engel & Allison Engel, penned the one-woman show called RED HOT PATRIOT: THE KICK-ASS WIT OF MOLLY IVINS (up @ Lyric Stage through Jan. 31^st) to pay tribute to the late political satirist and fearless muckraker. (The play has a second character to bring Ivins the fast breaking wires from Associated Press but this is Karen MacDonald’s show).

RED HOT PATRIOT should be a tour de force but curiously, the Lyric production starts on a pretty low key with Ivins ruminating about the subject of an article. She calls it “letting the idea steep.” Unfortunately the play steeps for too long. Now I presume director Courtney O’Connor wanted to build intensity in the piece by starting out slowly but “Kick-Ass” is in the title for heaven sakes. We need to see Molly kicking it from the get-go. If you don’t lasso the audience right up front, as Molly might have said, they’ll slip away from you.

Perhaps if she had entered with a cowboy hat (She’s wearing the boots) and some metaphorical guns a-blazing, we’d be more than happy to hop on for the ride but the tepid material doesn’t heat up until pretty late in 75 minute show. The Engels drop lots of names and repeat lots of Ivins’ pithy quotes (like “the trouble with Baptists is they don’t hold ‘em under water long enough”) but there’s no story there…and no fire.

Here’s what works: When Mac Donald sits astride a chair to give us “a history lesson,” she’s excited and engaged and so are we. And it’s a nice touch when Ivins hears her beloved, departed dog calling her. (It reminded me of the recent “controversial” headlines from Pope Francis about animals going to heaven.) What did not work for me is the paraphrase of Tom Joad’s “Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there” or the peculiar, intrusive background music intended to punch up a scene.

Ivins famously mocked the news business for “thriving on the weird, the astonishing and the absurd.” Maybe that’s what’s lacking in the Engels’ play: It’s too ordinary. I remember what she looked and sounded like (on TV) and I’m sure that makes it much harder for an actor. She had both democrats and republicans eating out of her hand. I would like to have heard how she did it. But that’s just one opinion.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey DELIGHTFULLY NAUGHTY

The Apollinaire Theatre Company has a midwinter hit on their hands in David Grieg & Gordon MacIntyre’s saucy Scottish romp, MIDSUMMER (a play with songs). Start the New Year off with peals of laughter at Apollinaire. Director Danielle Fauteux Jacques knows a thing or two about comedy. Alas, it’s only playing through January 11^th.

MIDSUMMER is just naughty enough. The cheeky dialogue and wacky humor make the “boy meets girl” set-up anything but conventional. For one thing, she’s the wrong girl and he’s definitely the wrong guy: He’s not really a criminal, he tells us. He just works for criminals. She knows he’s not her type but what the heck: A fling might help her forget her latest disaster of a boyfriend.

Their songs (which are delivered sometimes as vaudeville commentary and sometimes as romantic punctuation) may remind you of (the film or the Broadway musical) ONCE but MIDSUMMER is grittier—It’s more like those black Irish comedies where robberies go south and all hell breaks loose—like that but without the violence. There’s plenty of mayhem but no blood and no guts. I promise.

Fauteax Jacques has the perfect cast. Courtland Jones and Brooks Reeves portray all the zany characters in this ninety minute romp: They play the mismatched lovers, their hysterical relatives, a peeved mobster and an upper class body part who sounds like John Cleese. (That’s all I’ll say about that.)

Jones manages to be tough as nails and vulnerably soft at the same time! And she’s a first rate comedienne. Reeves is one of the best actors in town, hands down. His manic ten year old is a thing of beauty. I’d see the play again just to see that spectacular meltdown. And his Big Tiny Tom, not to mention all of his hilarious inner thoughts—I’m still in stitches. Enough said.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey Is this Really NECESSARY?

The world according to John Kuntz is a bizarre and often perilous place, whether he’s writing about beginnings (THE ANNOTATED HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MUSKRAT) or endings (NECESSARY MONSTERS) or even limbo (THE HOTEL NEPENTHE).

For NECESSARY MONSTERS (playing at SpeakEasy Stage through Jan.3^rd), Kuntz has created a dramatic wasteland a la Hieronymus Bosch. Eight actors are confined in an enormous cage—which may be a plane, judging from the stewardess’ safety instructions at the very start of the play—or it may be a sound stage, judging from the hand held cameras, the delightful rewinds and the slew of blindingly bright television screens (which sometimes record real time).

Where MUSCRAT and NEPENTHE tapped into a universal consciousness, NECESSARY MONSTERS does not, although it references the seamy side of pop culture with a vengeance. Instead of SNAKES ON A PLANE, we witness the serial killer from FRIDAY THE 13^th (who had the bad luck of stopping en route for A BEHANDING IN SPOKANE) ruthlessly stalking his unsuspecting victims in their upright seats.

Characters aren’t dispatched just once, mind you. The mayhem is repeated and repeated. One woman, Kuntz wryly explains, is spared because she “looked already dead” and to kill her “would be redundant.” If you’re expecting the clever humor of his other plays, you won’t be happy. Not until Thomas Derrah wakes up an hour or so in (Didn’t he hear the explosions?) are we treated to a nifty, naughty monologue about faulty child rearing practices. Then as quickly as he arrives, he slinks back down to the floor and snoozes for the rest of the play, as did the man seated next to me.

Kuntz, himself, is one of the characters or rather two of the characters because he seems to be a psychiatrist at one point, and a swimmer in another scene in which he saves Michael Underhill (and monkey) from drowning. McCaela Donovan and Underhill meet on a blind date (in the plane?). As a child, Underhill may have been abused by Georgia Lyman’s babysitter. Stacey Fischer’s character is depressed throughout. Evelyn Howe keeps getting slashed by Greg Maraio’s killer…who manages a playful strip tease but later becomes a terrorist and blows up the plane, maybe. I couldn’t swear to any of this.

Kuntz and director David R. Gammons struck gold with HOTEL NEPENTHE but the imagery in MONSTERS is so overwhelming that I couldn’t piece it together, I’m sorry to say. I didn’t even realize that actors were doubling roles or that locales had changed, let alone follow a time line but I did enjoy the cat videos.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey COMFORT AND JOY

In a season of CHRISTMAS CAROLs from Rhode Island to the North Shore, Neil McGarry’s deserves the “highest praise”…and if not, as one of the Dickens characters boasts, “Tell me higher and I’ll use it.” Bay Colony Shakespeare makes its home in Plymouth most of the year but they travel to Boston over the holidays for McGarry to perform Scrooge…and Marley…and the ghosts….and Bob Crachet, etc.

The performance is fully staged, with McGarry playing every role with gusto. Mind you, this is not a reading, although the one-man tour de force allows for Dickens’ glorious descriptions to remain intact. Most dramatizations drop the rich imagery in favor of dialogue. But because McGarry is every character, he can think aloud, can set the scene, even talk to the audience. Wee children at my performance sat wide-eyed to see MvGarry’s transformations and hear his commanding baritone.

Director Ross MacDonald pays close heed to Dickens’ language, especially to the description of the wretched children Scrooge observes behind the great robe of the Ghost of Christmas Present. In most productions they’re named “Ignorance” and “Want” and that’s that. Now we hear the whole explanation. MacDonald and McGarry use only a few props but you see the icy streets in your mind’s eye as Scrooge’s nephew contemplates a “slide.” You see the countryside as Scrooge relives his solitary school days. Miraculously, you see a room full of jolly celebrants at the Fezziwig Party. Scrooge is overjoyed to be in their company again.

He dances a reel from one side of the stage to the other, and up the aisle. His arms thrown open in sheer jubilation, his head bobbing up and down, he passes one partner with his right hand and another with his left, then returns with great bounds to the head of the line. McGarry’s performance is extraordinary on many counts but one especially: His characters are all so sincere and innocently drawn, that you give yourself over to the story like a child. He inhabits every inch of these charming characters…But wait, if you catch McGarry’s eye just for a second, it wrinkles a bit to say we’re allowed to laugh. It’s a neat trick, to be in the moment and without detracting from it, gently comment on it.

If you missed it in Barnstable tonight, the show continues in Boson at the First Church on Marlborough Street Fri, Sat and Sun Dec. 12, 13, 14. Then back to Plymouth, at the Bay Colony Theater space Thurs, Fri, Sat Dec. 18, 19, 20. For Times and directions, you’ll find it all at BAY COLONY SHAKESPEARE.org

QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey OVER THE TOP

If you’re fried and overwhelmed by the fast approaching holidays, I have the perfect Rx: Moonbox Productions’ THE MUSICAL OF MUSICALS (playing at the BCA through Dec. 20^th) is non-stop hilarity. If you adore the musicals of Kander & Ebb, Sondheim, Rogers & Hammerstein and Jerry Herman, you mustn’t miss Eric Rockwell and Joanne Bogart’s mash-up, send-up tribute to the greats. (You know in your heart that they’re ripe for parody.)

The Bogart/Rockwell musical is not “Forbidden Broadway.” It’s actually a whole musical with new, close-to-the bone, mind you, lyrics almost like the originals but naughtier. You’ll recognize the music, too, although it seems to morph into similar tunes from another show by the same composer, that is, when it’s not tempted to run rogue and sound like Rachmaninoff. In fact pianist/music director Dan Rodriguez makes the keyboard sound like a whole orchestra.

Picture a fella who looks for all the world like Curly strolling on stage singing “Oh, what beautiful corn.” The woman shucking those ears seems to be Aunt Eller but isn’t. The tune is Rogers’ but here “the cattle plié in a dreamy ballet…while a chipmunk is readin’ the Bible.” It’s sort of OKLAHOMA but now Laurie will do anything to pay the rent and Aunt Eller seems to have become an Abbess, not to mention the shenanigans for poor Agnes DeMille. And a real fine clambake has yielded oodles of clam dip which when left in the sun too long—Well, you can guess what happens next.

When the troupe turns to Sondheim, the scary Judd of OKLAHOMA (renamed “Jitter”) has become Sweeney Todd and his daughter Johanna needs to pay the rent. In case you haven’t guessed, rent (not the musical RENT) is the through-line. In one of the best parodies (of both character and song) Johanna (renamed “Jeune”) is bonkers from the get-go, delivering a wide-eyed, florid “I Have Little Birds.”

If you don’t know the original lyrics, you may be temporarily puzzled but the madness on stage will get you through. (At least that’s the consensus of the women from the Ladies Room line.) You’ll be wowed by the versatility of the performers, who can match anything thrown at them in say, COMPANY. Sondheim’s “Not Getting Married Today” is even, dare I say, funnier in parody because it’s a joke sitting on top of a joke.

Director/choreographer Rachel Bertone and music director Rodriguez have a field day finding bits to enhance the comedy. At one point the performers add instruments to the mix while they’re making magic. Bertone’s choreography looks an awful lot like the real thing and happily, she has dancers who can pull off OKLAHOMA’s dream ballet and Bob Fosse’s bumps and grinds for the mutant CHICAGO/CABARET show. And the dancers deliver vocally, too, in all the diverse song stylings that Rockwell cooks up.

The creators get lots of laughs at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s expense, pointing out his penchant for “borrowing” tunes from Puccini, Meyerbeer, Berlioz et al, not to mention his rococo plots (or non-plots in CATS). You may have already thought that Jerry Herman’s leading ladies seem awfully similar. Now you can plainly see that’s because they are! Mame is Dolly is even Aubin in the Moonbox triumph. The faux Fosse is my favorite, with its hysterical riff on the “Jailhouse Tango.”

What a cast to pull this off! Katie Clark, whose crazy, baby voice rips the artifice right out of SWEENEY TODD…to Meredith Stypinski, whose Witch/Abbess brings Sondheim’s fairy tale message to its knees with “We’re All Gonna Die.” Phil Tayler is such a strong leading man that he doesn’t often get the chance to be funny (coming right out of SWEENEY TODD @ Lyric Stage) and is he ever! Kudos, too, to the high kicking chorus and to Peter Mill who wows the audience with his remarkable dexterity, from hero to jester, from zero to sixty in five seconds like the new Mustang.

QUICK TAKE REVIEW By Beverly Creasey A CASE OF TELLTALE SNIFFLES

With THE TALE OF THE ALLERGIST’S WIFE (playing through Dec. 20^th), Lyric Stage joins in on the celebration of thirty years of Charles Busch’s quirky, off the wall comedies. Busch specializes in wacky characters that are often cross dressed or (as in THE THIRD STORY) rendered embryonic. His fans adore VAMPIRE LESBIANS OF SODOM and his wild and wooly PSYCHO BEACH PARTY.

He’s a lot more main stream with the ALLERGIST’S WIFE, although the peripheral material around the characters is aimed firmly below the belt. (The jokes about intestinal distress are non-stop.) Busch offers some amusing constructs, like dueling depressives (mother and daughter) on identical couches across from each other, arguing about who is the biggest loser…or Busch’s inspired idea of an “accidental suicide” in a Disney Store.

Director Larry Coen has a cast of experienced actors but alas, there’s no comic escalation to be had when everyone starts at Def Con 5. If all the characters are shouting at fever pitch from the start, there’s really no place to go. (Busch fatigue set in to my audience even before intermission.) Also compromising matters is Busch’s own inability to commit: The characters are in place for hilarity to ensue when Busch hedges his bets about who is conning whom and who imagined what.

Poor Margerie (Marina Re) wants meaning in her life. Her husband, the allergist, is still in demand even though he’s retired, saving lives by spraying cortisone up the deviated septa of stricken New Yorkers. Joel Colodner, as the expert on wheezes and sneezes, swells with pride at the very mention of the rescues. Ellen Colton, too, is a pro at milking a laugh but Busch doesn’t give her a lot to work with: She has to find the comic gold in bouts of diarrhea which I don’t think is metallurgically possible. But her double takes are divine.

Caroline Lawton is a whirlwind as Marjorie’s childhood friend (I did the math and I don’t think that is numerically possible) but Lawton keeps them all afloat with her excess of buoyant energy. Zaven Ovian is delightful as the extremely helpful doorman but come to think of it, he doesn’t put in much time in the lobby. The secret to a Busch comedy is not to think concretely. Usually there are so many balls in the air, that you don’t have time to think—but Busch has slowed the action down in the ALLERGIST’S WIFE and there’s the rub. You begin to ponder all the working (or non-working) parts. As they say in the ear, nose and throat business, that’s something to sneeze at.