- OTHER MEDIA
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- Little Bites
An entertaining tasting menu of sweet and savory short plays
- review by Chloe Veltman, SF Weekly February 1, 2006
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- Last summer, at an SF Weekly party, I suggested to my editor that all
the critics at the paper switch jobs for one week. "The art critic
could review theater, the food critic could write about exhibitions, and
I could try my hand at covering restaurants," I shouted above the
din of a packed SOMA club. "It would be an interesting experience,
don't you think?" I don't know whether the music was so loud that
my boss didn't hear me or if she doubted that the experience would be of
interest to anyone besides myself, but the conversation quickly turned
to other topics.
- I haven't brought the subject up again. But having recently tasted
Sean Owens' "Odd by Nature" at the Exit Theatre, I now realize
that I don't need to hijack Meredith Brody's column in order to write about
fine dining. For Chef Owens' evening of short plays brings to mind the
experience of supping at Gary Danko or the French Laundry -- and at a fraction
of the calories and price.
- "Odd by Nature" can perhaps best be described as an adventurous
10-course tasting menu. It's not that Owens' theatrical amuse-bouches transfigure
the soul in the way that a meal at Thomas Keller's triple-Michelin-star-rated
French Laundry invariably does; rather, "Odd" might casually
be summed up as a thoughtful and witty, if slightly patchy, night out at
the theater -- no more, no less. But the analogy is apt in the sense that
the playwright/director/actor has not only created a feast of bite-size
comedies that entertain and provoke like high-end haute cuisine, but he's
also structured the evening as one would a royal banquet.
- Owens whets the appetite with a strange little hors d'oeuvre. The five
cast members -- Owens, Libby O'Connell, Joshua Pollock, Nick Sholley, and
Michelle Talgarow -- float around the stage to the sound of Don Seaver's
saloon-style piano playing, alternately draping themselves over bits of
shabby antique furniture and, somewhat incongruously, exchanging oven gloves
with each other. Seaver even makes a bold attempt at playing the piano
while wearing a pair.
- This charade segues smoothly into the first course. Climax -- Owens'
curtain raiser concerning a stilted, pre-dinner party conversation between
a middle-aged couple played by Owens and O'Connell -- gives the audience
a taste of the playwright's flamboyant style. With soufflé-light
wit, he shows us the lengths to which two people will go to avoid really
talking to each other. The couple, Mason and Beryl, prattle on inanely
while more pressing issues, such as the state of their marriage, are comically
deferred. Take this snippet of conversation, for instance:
- Beryl: We've been so many places ... over the years.
- Mason: (Re-enters, with the pearl necklace.) Oh I wouldn't wear them
over the ears, dear, you'll shock the children.
- Beryl: If only we had any ...
- Mason: Any what?
- Beryl: Any biscuits, I'm very hungry.
- This double act's word-association games are about as clumsy and heavy-handed
as playing the piano in oven gloves -- the perfect metaphor for Beryl and
Mason's life together. And as the play perversely undermines its own title
by deliberately putting off any sense of climax, Owens draws us tantalizingly
on to the next dish.
- Sudden Descent is, as its name suggests, a bit of a letdown. Though
the comedy, a whimsical spin on the old adage "Pigs might fly,"
shows off the chef's flair for witty one-liners, the staginess of the piece,
with its endless waltzing and monotonous, fourth wall-breaking narrative
style, leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Potentially interesting underlying
ideas about chaos theory and the relationship between will and causality
get lost in the pork stew.
- Owens spices things up again with his vivaciously warped monologue
Buried Alive by the Hottest Guy. Beginning with the words "Dear Diary,"
a nonplussed young gay man explains how he wound up buried six feet underground.
Owens' sharply drawn portrayal of this naive yet lovable character is as
dark as it is hilarious.
- Je Ne Sais Pas and The Chattanooga are the plats de résistance.
Separated by the briefest of palate cleansers -- One Man (At a Time), a
nouveau-Noel Coward song about tempering one's (sexual) appetite -- these
two meaty main courses are as rich in lunatic wordplay as they are in topsy-turvy
logic.
- Je Ne Sais Pas takes place, appropriately, in a fancy French restaurant.
Exploring, as the play's subtitle explains, "the fallacy of causal
relationships," the comedy begins, like the famous children's rhyme,
with an old woman who swallows a fly, then munches its way through other
ghoulish, nursery rhyme-inspired delicacies, including "l'arraigne
[sic] en brioche" (spider popover) and "le chien au vin"
(dog in wine), and finishes ... well, we all know what happens to the old
woman upon ingesting a horse. Owens builds to an explosive climax with
this piece, playing with genres as diverse as Hammett-style detective fiction
and Monty Python-esque sketch comedy while piling on the galloping rhymes.
- In the whacky Chattanooga, O'Connell -- who seems to have a particular
affinity for playing dignified matrons -- considers the benefits of a different
kind of climax. A picture of Victorian-era propriety, the actor (channeling
the prim chairwoman Letitia Cromwell) addresses the genteel members of
a ladies' club, as they sip tea and nibble crumb cake, about the "revivifying"
effects of the Chattanooga, a motor-powered, 6-foot-long "miraculous
invention" aimed at revolutionizing women's lives. This twisted reworking
of ideas most famously sent up in T. Coraghessan Boyle's 1993 novel The
Road to Wellville is pretty tasteless. Yet it still provides an appetizing
commentary on a century's worth of sexual revolution.
- A succession of desserts rounds off the evening, from amusing trifles
like The Sex Life of Rob & Laura Petrie, a musical meditation on the
bedtime antics of The Dick Van Dyke Show's central couple, to The Projectionist,
a peek into the sordid world of film fetishism. Once we've gorged ourselves
on the wobbling, Chantilly-laced layer cake that is Danger at the Dardenelles,
a comic melodrama that infuses Coward-inspired flamboyance with a dollop
of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, we can't imagine having
room left for even one wafer-thin mint. But after Everyone Loves Porn,
a chaser sung by the entire cast to a rousing show tune, Owens leaves us
wanting more.
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