Review: B3 Productions Presents TRUE BELIEVER And THE LAST CASTRATO

A streak of madness reigns on the unadorned stage of B3 Productions as two one-acters explore the thin lines that separate truth from fiction, love from hate, and piety from hypocrisy.

The three Bs stand for Bare Black Box. The company has been abuzz with a series of noteworthy productions (my love | my lumberjack, Droppin' Johns) since its inception earlier this year, compliments of its founder Franc Gaxiola and its Artistic Director Ilana Lydia (the 2017 recipient of the New England Theatre Conference's Aurand Harris Memorial Playwriting Award).

Now, in a match-up of plays that feature riveting performances by Kim Lavelle and Mr. Gaxiola, the company is further nailing down its distinctive niche as "experimental provocative" theatre .

The opening bout of lunacy is Ms. Lydia's TRUE BELIEVER. Lavelle's Maria Santiago Ionesco, clad in a frumpy nun's habit and hawking for alms, is a self-described tinkerer of souls and an unapologetic apostle of a god who is ever-present in a universe that must be, in Panglossian terms, "the best of all possible worlds." Maria is a celebrant of a world order that, after four thousand years of man, as disordered as it is, is a testament to her god's divine vision. She is in love with her calling and, in its pursuit, she engages a prospect for conversion to her unorthodox sect. Her dialogue with an unseen "Frank" unfolds like an evangelical sales pitch. Hers is an attempted seduction of another's soul that takes Maria to her limits in a shocking denouement. Ms. Lavelle's appearance as the curiously reverent but irreversibly unhinged nun is a work of mercurial quality.

Franc Gaxiola follows with a knockout performance in Andrew Eninger's bizarre morality play,

THE LAST CASTRATO. The central figure is disfigured. Joseph, born fully intact with the exception of his genitals, is regarded by his family as a grotesquerie that is best confined to a school for idiot savants, albeit the institution is as well a safe keep for other deformed exiles. Here he meets and falls in love with Elena who was no skin in the game of life ~ she was born inside out ~ but is blessed with a crystalline voice. Joseph's desperation for meaning and worth is relieved when he and Elena contrive a plan that enables them both to be fulfilled, so to speak. They gain fame and notoriety (admirers are clipping and shipping their testacles to Joseph) on the world stage as Joseph, the great castrato, lip syncs to Elena's voice from the wings...until a catastrophe, born of envy and ego, unravels their best laid plans and spirals out of control.

As weird as the premise of THE LAST CASTRATO may be, there is nothing inconsequential about contemplating what is the essence of one's humanity. When stripped of all physical attributes and adornments, what is the essential element that defines one's value?

Gaxiola brings urgency and humanity to a lost soul seeking the answers to these questions ~ in a quest to discover his redeeming value. His face is a roadmap to a maze of emotions. His stagecraft is impeccable. His is a visceral and inspired performance that will etch itself into one's memory long beyond the performance.

B3 Productions' double bill of TRUE BELIEVER and THE LAST CASTRATO runs through November 18th at the SIC Sense Theatre on 1902 E McDowell Road in Phoenix.

Photo credit to Michael Sean LeSueur

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