February Berzerk with Insurgent Theatre and Alamo Basement

I’d arrived at the Alchemist Theatre with a little over an hour to spare before this month’s Berzerk!!! program. I’d us seen the emotionally-touching domestic drama at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre staring Mani and Truschinski. Not more than four hours after I watched a father’s inability to articulate feelings for his son’s happiness in the theatre district, I was watching Liz Shipe sink her teeth into the neck of a mindless drone at the Alchemist.

LEAVING THE MOUSTACHE BEHIND

Prior to the show, I found myself talking to Tyler Kroll of the Gentlemen’s Hour.

He had shown-up at the theatre to pick-up some props that he’d left behind at the Alchemist. (The Gentlemen’s Hour does a regular show there.) He had come back from the basement with plastic meat cleaver, a false moustache and a few other things. Tools of the trade for a sketch comic probably would seem pretty strange . . . he talked with a degree of enthusiasm about a false moustache kit that he’d gotten as a gift. Evidently, the best place for costume and prop on a budget is a second hand store . . . the only difficulty there being the fact that you can’t go back for a replacement if something gets lost or damaged . . .

LEAVING THE STAGE FOR RICE-DWELLING MICRO-ORGANISMS

Not too long after Kroll left with his large plastic knife and other assorted props, I ran into Insurgent Theatre co-founder Tracy Doyle. She had picked-up a few additional roles for the evening due to a few people who were unable to show-up. The weather had been dreadful earlier in the day, keeping some from making it to the show. Nevertheless, the Alchemist was nearly packed by 8pm when the show started . . .

I hadn’t seen Tracy in quite some time. She had picked-up the role of Authority for my little short, which was due at the end of the program. Evidently she has been accepted for a doctoral microbiology program. They’ve told her she won’t have much time for the stage, as she will be spending a great deal of time in a lab with a small civilization of rice-dwelling micro-organisms. She’s doing genetic work with them. She seems really excited to be working with an entirely different kind of audience . . .

THE SHOW

As stated before elsewhere, Alamo Basement/Insurgent Theatre's Berzerk!!! is a series of shorts that were all written in ten minutes. Many of them are strange, incomplete fragments of comedy and drama. Having been to a numb of these shows, I’d seen enough to know each show is quite a bit different from each of the other shows. Here are some highlights from this month’s show

Fool’s Daggers--A piece by Peter J. Woods. Alamo Basement co-founder and Berzerk guru Mike Q Hanlon, Tacy Doyle and Josh Berg ran through a surprisingly accessible piece by Woods which involved a lot of implied offstage stabbing. Intereting piece with an interesting end.

Misfortune Cookies was not what I might've expected. Elliot Gould played a food critic in the afterlife on TV in a Twilight Zone with a title like this, but this piece didn’t have anything to do with that. It was a bit written by Kurt Hartwig involving three people eating Chinese food and having a conversation. Oddly disturbing for no real reason.

Count Orloff was John Manno’s entry. It felt surprisingly complex for something written in ten minutes, but this strange little Dark Shadows-like piece had an elegantly cheesy plot that fit the format perfectly. Considering many of those old Dark Shadows episodes were probably written in roughly ten minutes, it was perfect. Everyone involved was brilliantly over the top. Nice to see something with a complete plot arc.

14 ½ Scenes On Unnatural Deeds by Alisa Rosenthal was a bit odd. Hanlon and Carrie Masse did 14 scenes written by Rosenthal complete with attempts at quick change. Each scene consisted of a pair of lines or less. Fun, but a bit silly.

Whatever Rex Wants To Title His by Insurgent co-founder Rex Winsome. Winsome was trying to sketch a serous conversation between people about intimacy. It was an interesting fragment.

Xenomorph Ballet was a bizarre little bit of drama by Jeff Gygny. Tracy Doyle and Carrie Masse addressed the audience lying on their backs with heads raised to speak in inverted symmetry with as an evidently symbiotic pair of xenomorphs. The language was lost in what sounded to be pseudo-authentic biological chemistry. Fun stuff.  The piece involved black light and strange costuming.

Sex In God was a simple bit with a punch line. It was  a Tam Nguyen script about a prostitute who turns out to be having sex with a priest. Short, concise and to the point. It was a one-liner for the stage.

The best transition had to be the Hanlon-fest that happened towards the end of the show. In Dave Hanlon’s Packing Up, Mike Q. Hanlon and Tracy Doyle played a couple that was breaking-up. The scene ended with Hanlon (Mike Q.) getting comically angry, overturning tables and generally making a mess of the stage. This led directly into Amy Hanlon’s Unmerry Wanderer of the Night featuring Hanlon taking a call from an insurance salesman amidst the wreckage. It was probably the most coherent moment in the show and a lot of fun.

Alamo Basement/Insurgent Theatre’s next Berzerk!!! will make it to the stage of the Alchemist Theatre on March 22nd.