A Trio from the Midtown International Theater Festival

Do You Have Anything Closer?

"You can't be sold out! I just walked here all the way from the East Side. In the rain. Carrying heavy bags!"

Just as it's best not to piss off the waiter who can determine whether or not your meal will be marinated in a bit of his saliva, it's also a good idea to be polite to the Broadway box office worker who can determine if you'll be watching the latest smash hit from the fifth row center $101.25 seats or the last row corner partial view $101.25 seats.

Not that Lawrence Paone, performer and co-author (with Matthew Aibel) of Do You Have Anything Closer?, seems the type to intentionally withhold a primo pair (nor spit in your linguine, for that matter), but his snappy hour-long presentation based on 18 years of experience selling tickets in Broadway box offices effectively brings home the message of one of life's harsher realities; the customer is not always right.

"Presentation" is the key word here. Dressed conservatively in a blue shirt, red tie and dark, creased trousers, Paone has an appealingly stiff, Al Gore-ish delivery, like he's the guest speaker at a corporate staff meeting or an instructor at The Learning Center. His story is a typical one; guy has dreams of being a writer, but to pay the bills he takes a day job that keeps him close to the business. Then one day he wakes up and realizes that his day job has become his career.

And although this story adds humanity to the evening, he knows darn well that what we wanna hear is the dirt. The dumb questions customers ask ("Can I see everything from the partial view seats?"), the romantic possibilities with attractive customers and the chance meetings with celebrities who could take him away from all of it if they like just one of his unproduced teleplays. It's also an informative show, instructing theatre-goers on the proper volume to use when saying the word "comps" in a crowded lobby and why you should never, ever say the words "house seats" to a box office worker.

Audiences are obviously responding to this charming tale of the man behind the window, as Do You Have Anything Closer? has been extended with five remaining performances through the end of this week. Visit midtownfestival.org for more information.

 

A Shining Love

Skim through any American history text book and you'll find good ideas for musicals on every page. But aside from those that featured Peter Stuyvesant crooning "September Song" or John Adams pleading "Is Anybody There?", very few of these attempts have met with a great deal of popular success. So kudos to book writer/lyricist Greg Senf and composers Jeremy Rosen and Richard Sussman for taking a crack at basing a musical around the political and military career of John Fremont, who may have been elected president in 1856 had he renounced his opposition to slavery.

A pioneer in the settling of California, Fremont served as that state's senator before being appointed a Major General in Lincoln's Union Army. Based in Missouri, he took it upon himself to declare a statewide martial law, ordering all slaves within its borders emancipated. At the time Lincoln was not ready to make abolition a war issue and asked Fremont to modify his order for fear of losing the support of the border states. Fremont refused, sending his wife Jessie, the daughter of former Senate leader Thomas Hart Benton, to Washington to plead his case. But Lincoln would not back down, revoking the proclamation which freed Missouri's slaves and removing Fremont from his command. His military career and reputation took a a steady decline from that point until his death in 1890.

Telling the story in flashback from the point of view of Fremont's widow, Senf generally follows a redundant structure where Jessie describes a period in their lives which is followed by a scene which dramatizes most of what she just said, capped off by a song that repeats everything we just heard. Much ground is covered but very little is explored. Of the two composers, Rosen scores highest with a rousing campaign song (enthusiastically sung by Kevin T. Collins) and a catchy march sung by a trio of ladies demanding the right to vote, which unfortunately has nothing to do with anything else in the musical.

What does shine in A Shining Love is Beth Chiarelli's performance as Jessie Benton Fremont. Stuck in that old cliche' of playing an elderly woman inspiring her youthful female companions with stories of her spunky youth, alternating with scenes where she's actually playing that spunky youth, Chiarelli is a graceful and dignified presence, adding subtle texture and a spark of intelligence to her role as well as a pleasant lyric-emphasizing mezzo. Centering the show around her was the production's most inspired decision.

 

In Spite of Myself

In this nation of immigrants, the friction between old world parents and their Americanized off-spring is a source of comedy that probably started when the first Jamestown kids hit puberty. And of course, the favorite character in this generation gap is the annoyingly attentive, well-meaning yet guilt-inflicting ethnic mother. No matter what her background, she's been a thorn in the side and a tickle to the funny bone for generations of American audiences.

But when Antoinette LaVecchia spoofs her relationship with her Italian ma in her solo play In Spite of Myself, she does so with such fresh and hilariously inventive ideas that you'd think she was trailblazing virgin comic territory.

A skilled physical clown, LaVecchia opens the show with her earliest mother/daughter argument, taking place while she's still in the womb. Quickly alternating between parent and child, LaVecchia seamlessly gives birth to herself. Such a tour de force would serve as an impressive finale, but Antoinette's just getting started.

Ma's daily phone calls (the telephone comes in so handy during solo performances) inspire a series of sketches affectionately commenting on her struggle for an understanding that she lives in a very different world than that of her heritage. A seminar in "How to Be a Great Italian Daughter" teaches that all communication between mother and daughter can be effortlessly mastered once you've learned the proper use of the word "Ma" in various situations. Another routine has an elderly Italian matriarch serenading a coffee house gathering with the "My-Daughter-Don't-Appreciate-Me-Blues." Later on, LaVecchia goes as far as to stage an argument with her own vagina in a glorious threesome of id, ego and superego.

But no matter how absurd her characters and situations may seem, director Ludovica Villar-Hauser makes sure she never slips into grotesque caricature. She's there to pay tribute to ma, never to mock her. This is especially apparent in a touching scene where she plays both her proud, handsome father and her shy, youthful mother on the day the couple first met. You barely notice her dexterity in switching from one character to the other because the scene, done completely in Italian, is so lovingly executed.

Though the hour-long show provides a steady stream of laughter from an extremely talented writer/performer, not so much as a giggle ever comes at the expense of honesty. LaVecchia's mother taught her well.

For more on In Spite of Myself visit antoinettelavecchia.com

For Michael Dale's "mad adventures of a straight boy living in a gay world" visit dry2olives.com