Two Great Shorts, An Enjoyable Monologue and an Overriding Desire to See Randall T. Anderson in a production of THE ZOO STORY

I love shorts programs. Apart from feeding that part of me that loves to cram as much experience as possible into a small frame of time, the shorts program offers an opportunity to examine a whole bunch of tiny productions in a single evening. Having debuted this past weekend, Jeffrey James Ircink's Hashtag Mayhem was a fun exploration into 6 distinctly different moods. Ircink is working with some fresh stuff here with a fun and enjoyably skewed aesthetic. Here are some impressions of the six shorts on the program:

Billy Balfoor Wants An Apology--Matthew Roth plays the title character--a young man holding another man hostage. The other man is played by Mack Heath. There is no questioning that it's really, really difficult to stage a whole bunch of different reasons. Director Gretchen Mahkorn does a pretty good job of bringing it together onstage . . . and it's clear that she and Roth and Heath have done a really good job of weaving together the character work. It's a delicate tango of aggression between the two characters that plays out with a degree of sophistication. 

The problem with the short lies in the central challenge of bringing the immediacy of the hostage situation to the stage. Obviously, we're doing a little bit of work on this as an audience in ANY hostage drama. We know this is just an actor onstage playing a hostage. We know he could get off the stage at any moment if he wanted to. And we know that for the sake of safety, he can't really be tied to the chair with no chance of escape, but there's got to be some believable sense of desperation. He's got to look trapped. And Heath isn't doing a good enough job of bringing that across in order to make the fundamental incarceration of the play feel convincing. This is important, because of all of the mind games that are going on in this short. If he's not actually trapped, then the central conflict of the drama becomes far too nebulous to be terribly effective. Thankfully, Heath and Roth do a good enough job with the finer points of the aggression between the two characters to keep this thoroughly watchable while it's onstage. 

Choking the Choad In Bel Air--Here the playwright delivers an autobiographical monologue. Ircink is a nice guy. He's got a charming stage presence. Here he's talking about time he'd spent working on an estate in Bel Air. A good portion of engaging an audience in an autobiographical monologue lies in getting an audience to empathize with the person onstage. Ircink's stage presence goes a long way here . . . he's soft-spoken and unassuming. He's well-spoken with really crisply-defined midwestern diction. But the story he's telling isn't framed as well as it could be. And certain elements about the story could have been fleshed out a little bit better. A big turning point in the monologue involves something that happens to him while he's on the job at the posh estate in Bel Air. In order for that event to have its proper impact, I wanted more of an understanding of his working relationship with the rest of the people working the estate. So it didn't quite have as much impact as it needed to. But Ircink's a nice guy so the story comes across quite well anyway. 

Pass the Salt, Please--Here Ircink directs Greg Ryan and Brooke Maroldi as a couple in one of my two favorite pieces on the program. A man and a woman eat side-by-side cafeteria-style facing the audience. There is enough in their dialogue to suggest that they have known each other for a very long time . . . been intimate for a very, very long time. The dispassionate conversation between the two of them turns to sex. And they talk about sex they might have in graphic detail--not entirely disinterested, but not exactly passionately. Ircink has fostered very tender characterization here and we get a profound sense of two characters who have reached a kind of day-to-day intimacy that has worn out much of any kind of passion. But they still care about each other. It's not the type of thing that often gets staged. The sex lives of anyone who isn't quite young isn't often addressed in serious drama. It's compelling to see this sort of thing addressed for the sake of a serious (if whimsical) dramatic piece. Here's where we're seeing what appears to be Ircink's distinct voice come out. And it's a welcome addition to the mix of voices in local theatre.

Ircink has the show entering intermission on the strongest piece of the first half. 

We come back from intermission on what I felt was the weakest piece of the show--Jesus Pushed a Grocery Cart. That it was the weakest piece of the evening would not have been the fault of anyone other than Ircink. Randall T. Anderson--one of the most charming actors in town plays a guy with a mobile phone in an urban space who is accosted by a man who is evidently homeless . . . a man played with a disheveled charm of his own by Mike Loranger. Everything in this short came across well except the script--an uninspired dialogue between the two men that has more than a little bit in common with Edward Albee's The Zoo Story. Where as Albee's The Zoo Story was an inspired dissection on the fundamentals of human nature, there's nothing in the dialogue between these two characters that feels terribly interesting. Really all this short did was leave me with a really strong desire to see Randall T. Anderson in a production of The Zoo Story. I'm serious about this--I would donate money to anyone starting a Kickstarter project to see that happen. I love that play. And now I'm really convinced that Anderson would be great in a production. 

The direction of the show improves a bit in its penultimate short--Conor Francis Comes Home To Ballycullen. Jason Waszak directs a less-than-inspired script in which Kathy Landry and Greg Ryan play a rural Irish couple who are soon to be visited by their son (played by Thom Cauley) and his guest (Matthew Roth, with probably the best Irish accent of the lot of 'em.) The son is coming home to deliver news. Cauley is compelling as a son trying to connect-up with his parents. There's a nice dynamic between Ryan and Landry, but the nature of the dramatic interaction never quite manages to overcome the tragic cliche of its subject matter. Through no fault of the cast, it feels dull when it should feel fiery and passionate. If the script had been framed even a little bit different, this could have been more interesting. 

The show ends on the other of my favorites--Twisted Nice Mirage. Bo Johnson directs Kyle Gallagher-Schmitz and Zoe Shwartz in the story of a young couple meeting at a party. They evidently hit it off and go back to his place to watch a movie. Schwartz is effervescent as a woman being approached by a Kyle Gallagher-Schmitz as a charismatically over- analytical man who is attracted to her in a social setting. The awkwardness of that first contact is kind of fun . . . and the awkwardness continues to be fun and enjoyable straight out into the end--even when things get REALLY uncomfortable because there's kind of a pleasant sense of uneasiness about it all--an innate chaos about it that keeps it interesting throughout. 

Okay . . . so I guess going back over what I wrote above makes the whole thing feel kind of . . . I don't know . . . bad. It's actually not a bad show at all. Ircink is, as I said, charming and he's a gracious host here. The six shorts smoothly glide from one moment to the next--one mood to the next in the exceedingly comfortable atmosphere of the Alchemist Theatre. Here's hoping that Ircink finds enough success with this show to do a series of programs like this. They weren't all great, but I had a good time.

Hashtag Mayhem runs through April 6th at the Alchemist Theatre. For ticket reservations, visit the Alchemist online.