School daze
The Red Paintball
Written and
directed by Laura and Alyssa Waldron
Midtown
International Theatre Festival (www.midtownfestival.org)
Dorothy
Strelsin Theatre,
Non-union (through
Review by Michael
D. Jackson
This one act comedy traces
the antics of a group of teens who shoot their principal with a paint gun. Once
the deed is done, the majority of the tedious hour of nonsense is spent with
the principal (Vincent DiGeronimo)
grilling the students to find out which one is the culprit. Turns out that the
most untrustworthy of the gang went and spilled the beans, though she didn’t
say exactly which one of the group fired the shot.
The gang of teens is made up
of Mary (Alyssa Schroeter) the
tattletale, Luke (Robbie Simpson)
the leader of the pranksters, Johanna (Mary
Pasquale, an Irish looking actress playing an ebonics speaking ghetto
girl), and Matthew (Will Szigethy)
the geek and Mark (Matthew Patane)
the jock. All perform as well as can be expected while harnessed to a script
that takes a long time to go nowhere. Most of the characters barely have enough
material to define a character. An exception to the mix is a delightful
character named Norma Spiegel, a secretary at the school played with a comic
deadpan by Alexandra Heinen. As the
play is completely absurd, the enterprise might have worked if all the
characters were as comically inspired as Norma Spiegel. DiGeronimo’s principal
fits well into this absurdist world, but the character wanders about without
any focus. And although DiGeronimo is giving one hundred percent and is
sweating bullets to keep the production at full comic tilt with a perplexed
Billie Burke delivery, he only seems aimless.
When finally at last the
culprit is found (there is no suspense here, we know who it is from the
beginning), the play takes a bizarre turn to focus on the principal making
sexual advances to a male student. The remaining comic business concerns the
student trying to get away from the principal in a locked office. What all of
this is supposed to mean is unknown. There is no clear point of view from the
authors and no idea of what the audience is supposed to learn from this play about
high school, teenagers or inappropriate principals. The play basically consists
of three scenes: a short set up, a long plodding middle, and a final scene that
is nearly unrelated to the build up of the first two thirds of the play. There
were plenty of laughable antics, but without any of the comedy being tied to
some basis of truth, the lunacy only registered as experimental antics laced
with easy gags.
Writing: 0
Directing: 0
Acting: 2
Sets: 0
Costumes: 1
Lighting/Sound: 1
Copyright 2008 by Michael D.
Jackson
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