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Sandwich

Banana, Bag & Bodice
review by Robert Hurwitt in SF Chronicle March 23, 2004

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Bacon, lettuce and bunny rabbit

Beguiling hilarity is the rule rather than the exception in "Sandwich," a Banana, Bag & Bodice treat that opened Friday at Exit on Taylor. The oddball little Banana troupe has been a San Francisco Fringe Festival fixture since its first show in '99. "Sandwich," a hit of last fall's Fringe, has been revised, expanded and revived at the invitation of Exit Theatre Artistic Director Christina Augello as an actual Exit production.

Good thinking on Augello's part. With its bacon sizzling on a hotplate, anti-meat-eating plaints followed by mock-gory bunny-bashings, musical knives, piano-playing buffalo and militaristic armadillo, "Sandwich" is a casually madcap creation that isn't just funny and thought-provoking but funny about its thoughts and need to provoke. It's deceptively crisp, remarkably tight, cagily convoluted and curiously refreshing.

The story, which defies description, was created by the two remaining original Bodices, primary writer Jason Craig and Jessica Jelliffe -- the fetching mime-chef-singers in the bulbous foundation garments -- with Heather Peroni and eclectic composer David Malloy, the shaggy Buffalo on piano (keys and strings), knives and other instruments. It's been extensively revised with the assistance of Parnell Klug (replacing Peroni as Bitch Cat) and Meredith Eldred ("directorial support").

It's a show designed to sneak up on you on its stage draped in sheets of milky, translucent plastic. Even the standard pre-show plea to turn off cell phones comes after the opening sequence, like the title credits in many a movie.

A deadpan Craig and Stan Laurel-expressive Jelliffe comically construct a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Klug's hard-to-please Cat launches a brightly convoluted song about human cruelty to pigs. Before long, a rabbit has been disemboweled, Jelliffe -- half into a furry bunny suit -- is singing a heartfelt country plaint about the Cat's bloodlust ("I trusted her but she thrusted me") and Malloy is contemplating the mortality of a carrot.

There are moments when the cast seems to be on the verge of breakthroughs not yet achieved, but "Sandwich" is a tasty treat that leaves one hungry for more.

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