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1 Quandary Place
Abundance
ADVENTURES OF A SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
Barroom Philosophers
Border Crossings

The Children's Museum

Class Notes
Embarrassment & Death
The Falls of Vincent Millay
Found and Lost: Goals for 2002
Frisco Fred's Cabaret!
Fuck You Cancer
Great Hymn of Thanksgiving / Conversation Storm
The Hasheesh Eater
Heavy Metal Playground
HER KIND: The Life & Poetry of Anne Sexton
i hate my friends
Jesus Rant
Kiss My Booth
Korean Badass
Low Hanging Fruit
Monkey Poet Stand-Up!
Organic Boxed Chicken Stock
parts is parts:
Party of One
RM3
The Sewers
Shopping as a Spiritual Path
Spotless
Stetson Manifesto
A Strange Black Passion
Super Glossy!
TeleMongol
Terrible Voice
Tesla's White Pigeon
Turn of the Screw
You Go First

Play: the hasheesh eater
Reviewer: eric

see a slide show of current images from

THE HASHEESH EATER:

http://www.myspace.com/sfbuffoons

Reviewer Email: whoisthemysteryman@yahoo.com

Play: The Hashesh Eater
Reviewer: Bob Hayden
5 Stars
The Hashesh Eater is well worth the climb up Mason Street to the Phoenix. Tom Fletcher’s over-the-top and florid prose takes you back to the time when San Francisco was awash in cheap booze, men were men, and there weren’t nearly enough women to account for the legendary sexual activity.

In a day when it costs a fortune to mount even a one-man show, The Hashesh Eater flaunts a cast of seven, as well as the live background music of a fiddle-playing minstrel. Moreover, there was no skimping on costumes. Based on an historic character in an historic era, the play opens with a rather factual representation of a slice of life in San Francisco in the mid-18th century, albeit seen through a boozy lens. This lens becomes more and more befogged as Mr. Ludlow’s hashesh fix takes hold, finally culminating in a demonic ballet. Never a dull moment, the stage is akways filled with the boisterous action that displays the full range of Tom Fletcher’s debauched imagination.

The cast knows what it is doing. You may think the sailor’s tattoos are faked, unless you saw Mr. Satyricon in "Wilde Boys", in which case you will also remember that his red hair is not faked either. Mr. Wilcox turns in his usual fine performance. He is a frequent star of Tom Fletcher’s plays, and one hopes that Fletcher will soon give him a part that does not force him to alternate between rat-like groveling and declaiming to the heavens like a madman.

Highly recommended.

Play: The Hasheesh Eater
Reviewer: John
4 Stars
As with any drug-narrative, the trip is the story; so there is no plot, no arch to characters. There is, however, a fantastical journey through the underbelly of 1860's San Francisco via the mind of the Hasheesh Eater. The minimal lighting and the intimate Phoenix Theater setting perfectly suggests gas-light parlors and dark streets along the Barbary Coast. The costumes reinforce the time and place and obviously allow the performers a proper skin in which to embrace their parts with such zeal. All of the performances are wonderfully demented and there isn’t a weak link in this collective. And most striking are those elements that comprise the hallucination, reminiscent of Dutch and German silent film images that celebrated the occult and the wicked. And where else can one enjoy period fiddling while under-the-influence?
The Hasheesh Eater delivers a lot more than the previous posts suggest; make up your own mind on this one and take the trip yourself.

Play: The Hasheesh Eater
Reviewer: Ilsa Schindler
3 Stars
At the post-show curtain speech, we were admonished to donate some dollars to keep the cast drunk and horny. But such a pack of drunk and horny creatures! The level of degeneration depicted by the characters made me feel we're all just sacks of blood, guts and s---. Who could be horny for that?
I loved the costumes and props; very imaginative and innovative. The 'hell' vision was over-the-top and the most fun to watch. Acting-wise, Eric Wilcox was credible as the 'hop-head' writer, Steven Satyricon was a great binge-bent horny sailor, and the super-lanky Paul Knowles was a stand-out, truly fascinating in both his roles. I also liked the fiddler, Artemas Rex, who underscored the whole e play beautifully.
Very dark, with a good dose of buffoonery, this was an enjoyable hour of theater.

Play: The Hasheesh Eater
Reviewer: one of those darkies
1 Star
I have to concur with RRR in that after waiting and waiting for the play (Saturday 9/8) to start it was announced that the holdup was due to the cast’s desire to accommodate the members of another cast who, of course, never showed up. I wish I could say that things turned around once the house lights dimmed but it continued down hill from there. The SF Buffoons dubs itself as “edgy” and “expressive”, presenting “crass cultural commentary from the underground”. When done intelligently, I feel this type of humor can be quite funny, but too often what winds up happening is that self proclaimed “edginess” is used to thinly mask the same odious rhetoric that can be found in any outlet of mainstream entertainment. I smelled trouble coming a mile away.

Within the first 15 minutes of the production the main character referred to African Americans as “darkies”, touting how rhythmic they are as a people. Being African American myself (one of only two in the audience) I didn’t find this edgy, amusing, or even insulting for that matter. Had The Hasheesh Eater contained any higher level of production value maybe I would have been, but the comment, a least from a script perspective, added no credence to the character or storyline. It was there just to be there, and that, in my opinion, didn’t make the production edgy at all but weak in addition to the already flimsy stage direction, sub-par acting, and the poorly lit stage which only served to make the theater itself darker than the main character’s drug narrative could have ever been.

By the end of the evening my friends and I wished we had pooled our money and bought some hash instead seeing The Hasheesh Eater. The SF Buffoon’s proclamation of so-called edgy and offensive commentary never really panned out and certainly didn’t bother to take jabs at any other demographic group in attendance (namely white people and gays whom primarily made up the audience and cast). From my perspective The Hasheesh Eater only served to feebly rehash (sorry, couldn’t resist another pun) the same kind of stereotype-based humor that I don’t have to go out and pay money to experience. I can stay home and watch television for that.

Play: The Hasheesh Eaters
Reviewer: RRR's pics
2 Stars
First I was a bit put off for the delay beginning and then more put off when it was announced that the delay was because they wanted the cast of Sewers to arrive. Hey, we're the audience. The cast never showed and in fact when at the end of the play the main character asked whether there were any members from other productions present who may want to plug their piece only one hand came up. So remember, we're the audience. By the way the Sewers' cast never showed.
Okay, well being an advocate for the decrimilization of marijuana I had to see this play. And I'm glad I did. These buffoons are just that and with the costuming, a very good job indeed, the show had a good Barbary Coast feel to it. Michael Riddle and Ron Richardson were very funny togetther and I could see were a production like this play over a period of time these two would be hilarious. Steve Satyricon played a drunken sailor but there was something missing and I never could put my finger on it. But he did all right and it never did take away from the action and that was what was lacking when ever the play went into very dimly lit scenes. You wanted more giving the lack of visual stimulation. But when the characters got together the play moved along. And then therre was this skinny dude who just took his role to another level. The bufoon of bufoons. Paul Knowles was hilarious in both his roles and now talk about body movement in a play and how to use it without it being !
boring, go see this this guy. He was 'good'. Mr. Wilcox did a fine job as Fitzhugh
Ludlow, the Hashish Eater' but I was never convinced about the dreams and again when the stage went dim so did the play. But all in all it is an entertaining piece of work.
And my many thanks to Artemas Rex for his fiddling which enterrtained the audience while we waited for the play to begin. I wondered how long he could keep it up as we waited and waited and waited...