Cleverness trumps profundity in a couple of new, brief plays currently on at area theaters. Neither Dave Hanson’s Waiting for Waiting for Godot at Thinking Cap Theatre nor Mad Cat Theatre’s Lazy Fair by Theo Reyna have that much to say, but they both know how to divert and entertain, which is saying a lot for them.
Hanson clearly knows his way around Samuel Beckett’s seminal existential comedy of the 20th century, which takes hopelessness to a new level as a pair of tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait on a desolate plain for Godot, who is a renowned no-show. Hanson holds a mirror up to that situation by imagining two understudies, symbiotically tied to one another, waiting backstage to go on in place of one of the A-cast actors or, worse, waiting for the arrival of the show-within-the-show’s director to arrive and perhaps fire them.
As they wait, there is “nothing to be done” — a frequently heard Beckett line that comes in handy — except muse on the state of theater and on the profession they have dubiously chosen, all the while staying limber in case some calamity befalls the actors just offstage, which is onstage in the unseen auditorium.
Mark Duncan and Scott Douglas Wilson play understudies Val and Ester, and their physical resemblance and demeanor are likely to bring to mind Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, a comparison which is entirely apt. And as they converse in a circular pattern, the other duo they echo is Bud Abbott and Lou Costello with patter in the style of their classic “Who’s on First” routine. Add a droll series of Marlon Brando impressions by Wilson, plus a lot of comic business with his too small vest, as well as Duncan’s frequent need to relieve himself in a bathroom and you have a great deal of comic shtick. So much, in fact, that you may not notice that the play is not going anywhere, which is exactly the point. Nothing to be done.
Like the arrival of Pozzo and Lucky in that other play, Waiting for Waiting for Godot does feature an unexpected character, the assistant stage manager Laura (Vanessa Elise), who comes backstage to release Val and Ester from yet another performance at which they were unneeded. For all of their obsessing over the towering challenges of acting in the thea-tuh, Laura cuts them down to size, explaining how much more difficult stage managing is than playing a character than someone has already created. If nothing else, her entrance on the scene lends the play an added tension and Elise performs the role with a pragmatic presence.
The invisible fourth accomplice in this lampoon is director Margaret M. Ledford, who makes inventive use of Alyiece Moretto’s backstage clutter, levels and ladders to turn this intrinsically static material into a relatively lively romp. The more you know Waiting for Godot or the closer you are to the theater business, the more you are likely to enjoy Hanson’s celebration of two tangential practitioners of the stage art.
WAITING FOR WAITING FOR GODOT, Thinking Cap Theatre at The Vanguard Sanctuary for the Arts, 1501 S. Andrews Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Through Sunday, Sept. 13. Tickets: $35. Call: 813-220-1546.
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Both Hanson’s play and Reyna’s Lazy Fair run about 90 minutes, which is not terribly unusual, but they each have an unnecessary intermission during that time span, which is pretty curious.
Reyna, whose geopolitical sketch The Scottish Play was featured in Summer Shorts a couple of years ago as well as in one of Mad Cat’s Mixtapes, is clearly a writer to be reckoned with, a guy who can make words do his bidding, but he is in need of a director who can edit him down. His financial heist allegory Lazy Fair has a first-rate premise, but it would be far more effective at about half its length. Unfortunately, Reyna decided to direct this world premiere production himself, so it never got the blue-pencil treatment it needs.
Subtitled “A New Myth on the Power of Greed,” it opens on three would-be thieves among whom there is no honor. There is Rip (Ken Clement), an unscrupulous conniver, Otto (Andy Quiroga), a malleable soldier of fortune, and Sandra (Meredith Bartmon), the inevitable femme fatale. We find them outside an unassuming Middle Eastern fortress inside of which, they have been assured, is an unfathomly large repository of the world’s wealth. All they have to do is trust each other long enough to break in, find the dough and make their getaway. Sounds easy in theory, but pretty unlikely in practice.
For starters, the three of them flap their gums over the morality of such a robbery, whether the rich deserve such resources and whether they would be able to handle such a windfall with more equanimity. Of course, they should not have stressed over the matter, for what they find inside is an exotic-looking man named Monkey guarding and talking to a rather small wooden box. It is Reyna’s most inspired conceit that the box contains no tangible wealth but something more precious — “the spirit of money,” the essence of all moolah. So without the foggiest notion of how to spend money’s spirit, the trio back-stab each other and worse to be the surviving recipient of the stash. Fast forward ten years, we see the effects of the money on them as they reunite, still with larceny on the brain.
Throughout it all, Reyna laces the script with bon mots of financial philosophy, references to the ups and downs of the past decade, the woes of the haves and have nots and pluses and minuses of filthy lucre. As sharp as much of his wordplay is — and as deftly as it is delivered by the Mad Cat cast — Lazy Fair would be more effective, and more coherent, if a lot of it were pruned away. Still, Reyna is a talent to watch — he even gets into the act, playing the unlisted role of Monkey — and Lazy Fair, though hardly perfect, is one of the most promising, audacious new works the company has ever developed.
LAZY FAIR (A NEW MYTH ON THE POWER OF GREED), Mad Cat Theatre, The SandBox at Miami Theater Center, 9816 N.E. 2nd Ave., Miami Shores. Through Sunday, Sept. 6. Tickets: $25. Call: 305-751-9550.