Among the
advantages to living in or near New York City (I’m in the ‘burbs), quite aside
from the well-known upscale and expensive varieties of entertainment on hand, is
the abundance of quirky but very professional acts of all kinds playing in
small venues. They include musicians, comedians, performance artists, off-Broadway
plays, and more. (To local boosters elsewhere, I know NYC is not alone in this
regard, but the point still holds.)
Some of
the acts go on to greater fame. The walls of The Bitter End (a small and rather dingy place) are covered with
posters of past performers who became stars. The overwhelming majority become nothing of the kind; they play a few dates
and then vanish without a trace. Sometimes the evanished ones are the best ones. For instance, about a decade ago my
friend Ken suggested I catch Fiona Sand at Arlene’s Grocery – that’s the first club
featured in the movie Nick and Nora’s
Infinite Playlist. I agreed with him she had a sound and stage presence that were (in the good sense) commercial, but apparently
we were wrong; eventually Fiona moved back to Norway and on to other things.
(Some of her songs are still up on Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/fionasand .) Other artists gain notoriety without quite being
stars, such as playwright/actor Charles Busch whose off-Broadway plays in the
80s were marvelous; when he went Hollywood, however, the plays really didn’t translate
as well into movies (e.g. Die, Mommy,
Die! and Psycho Beach Party), though one might yet.
Last
Friday, I scanned the offerings on Playbill
and, just on whimsy, bought a ticket for that night’s performance of a little
off-Broadway production called Triassic
Parq at the Soho
Playhouse. A musical comedy parody of Jurassic Park, it opens with a raptor in a cage and the familiar
shout, “Shoot her! Shoot her!” No, the actors are not all in Barney
costumes. They rely on a little make-up, clothes with somewhat reptilian patterns,
and …well … acting to portray dinosaurs. The plot: a T. Rex spontaneously turns
into a male. As you may recall from the book or movie Jurassic Park, all the dinos on the island are female to prevent
breeding outside the lab, but some of the critters change. (It’s just a plot device not meant to be
examined for accuracy, of course, but, as it happens, some amphibian and
reptile species can change sex due to environmental factors, though usually
while still in the egg.) The event causes great consternation among the dinosaurs;
it shakes the peculiar faith they have developed regarding the lab and humans –
and regarding the goats that mysteriously appear out of the ground at feeding time. The roles
are gender bending with the newly male dino played by a woman and several of
the females played by men. To the extent the play is serious (or at least rises
above simple farce – it’s never altogether serious) the script addresses gender
perspectives, intolerance of alternate viewpoints, and the normality of
hypocrisy.
The play
is clever and funny, though I do not see it breaking out into larger venues in
the way Little Shop of Horrors leapt
out of its East Village New York
audiences like to think they are more sophisticated than others, but the
evidence isn’t on their side. The actors must comment among themselves, “You
know, if we just dropped our pants and forgot about the play, the audience
would be just as happy.” By and large, that is probably true, but I’m glad all
the same that the writers, producers, and cast aimed at something a little more
ambitious.
So, if
any dinos show up in a theater in your neighborhood (or if you already live a
reasonable distance from Soho ), take a ride
past the Tyrannosaur pen. You might enjoy it.
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