NYMF Roundup

Oedipus for Kids

It's pretty much all in the title. It's Sophocles' classic Oedipus, reimagined as a childrens theatre piece. That's it. Nothing deep here. Just the pure joy of actors trying to dance around topics like murder, incest, suicide and mutilation. What more do you need for a comedy?

Unfortunately, presented more as a play-within-a-play, Oedipus for Kids loses some of the punch it could have. As we follow "Oeddie's" adventures with his pal "Sphinxy" and his maternal wife Jocasta, we also follow the backstage shenanigans of the fictional Fuzzy Duck Theatre Company, which isn't nearly as funny. Were those offstage hijinks kept to a minimum and the disaster on stage allowed to unfold further, the play's many comic strengths would shine through much brighter.

While Kimberly Patterson and Gil Varod's book is often delightfully silly, Varod and Robert J. Saferstein's songs are not a match for it. In fact, this is one of the few musicals I've ever seen that would probably work better as a play. While there are some cute numbers (the Fuzzy Duck theme song that bookends the show, Oedipus' pun-filled "A Little Complex" and Jocasta's torch song "My Lover is My Husband is My Son"), most of the others could be cut, as could the intermission, and the strongest material would remain.

Playing themselves as the three members of the Fuzzy Duck Theatre Company, Laura Jordan, Gavin Lewis, and Reed Prescott share a great chemistry and sense of comic timing, working wonderfully together as a tight ensemble. In fact, Ms. Jordan recently injured her foot, and had to perform almost all of her scenes from an ad-hoc wheelchair. It should speak volumes about the quality of the cast and the surreal nature of the show that the chair was barely noticeable, and that the inspired lunacy was not dampened a bit.

This is a musical that succeeds beyond all logic. Like Warrior, this horrifying true story is not an obvious choice for musicalization (or, really, opera-ization), though the brutal 1964 rape and murder of Kitty Genovese and the inaction of her neighbors is full of intense emotion and psyches ripe for profiling. And to his credit, composer Will Todd channels that emotion into some gloriously powerful neo-operatic music that gets inside those psyches and makes them vivid and terrifying. The ten symbolic witnesses and their shared dilemma are fully developed characters, hauntingly real and disturbingly familiar. They all want to do the right thing, but when push comes to shove, they simply don't. More than the graphic and bloody murder that is recreated before our eyes, the inaction of the neighbors becomes the true horror on the stage.

The cast is largely isolated throughout the show, remaining on the small platforms that indicate each apartment. (Kudos to Daniel Meeker for his ingeniously simple set.) Most of the actors only speak to one other person throughout the entire show (or, more impressive, speak no one else at all), and yet they share an intense energy that binds them into a cohesive whole. Sheri Sanders and Arthur W. Marks deserve special praise for their performances as Kitty and Winston Mosley, which run the gamut from tender to terrifying.

David Simpatico's lyrics are not quite up to Mr. Todd's music, often relying on cliches and weak rhymes (at one point, Kitty sings "Reach out and touch me"). But the music, the story, and the performances are all strong enough to make this show one of the most emotionally wrenching ensemble pieces to grace a stage in quite a while.

I haven't seen an audience this nervous since Parade was on Broadway in 1998. After almost all of the horrifically beautiful and catchy songs advocating white supremacy, audience members glanced at their friends and neighbors as they tentatively applauded, no doubt wondering (as I did), "Should we really be clapping for this?"

Of course, the answer is a resounding yes, and for many reasons. Compared by creator Joe Drymala to Cabaret and subtitled "A Cautionary New Musical," White Noise echoes Kander & Ebb's masterpiece in both style and substance, following the rise of the eponymous hate-fueled band (based, in part, on the very real duo Prussian Blue). This is no satirical mock-concert like Altar Boyz; this is a chilling story that is all too believable... and as one character describes it, "all too familiar." Had Mr. Drymala or director Ryan J. Davis thrown in a few winks to the audience, something that said "Aren't these people silly?," it would be an easier pill to swallow, but it would also have completely negated the horror that the story deserves. The Nazis aren't funny in Cabaret, and they're no funnier here.

As singing sisters Blanche and Eva, Molly Laurel and Libby Winters are frighteningly passionate and believable, making extremism and hate sound perfectly natural. Lovely and winsome in both face and voice, it is all too easy to see how people would follow these pipers into hell. Rick Crom (who also contributed one of the songs to the multi-authored list) is sly and conniving as the girls' manager, who doesn't care what message they deliver so long as they rake in the bucks. Danny Calvert is disturbingly winsome as the least radical member of the band, and his gradual moral decay is frighteningly realistic. Micah Shepard is perversely funny as a deadpan skinhead, and Phillip Taratula takes on a range of roles with chameleon-like skill.

The "band's" catchy songs are by numerous artists (though most are by Mr. Drymala), and nicely capture an authentic modern rock sound. Whether darkly funny or deadly serious, the hummable numbers make it all too easy to imagine a band like White Noise gaining mainstream popularity, and of millions of listeners being exposed to hate-mongering. Perhaps that is the most terrifying aspect of all.