It’s not a bad review, in fact it’s a pretty decent and fair one, especially in the first half. He ignores a lot of the opening night mishaps and has given me plenty to think about if I decide to restage the show. Plus he uses words like ‘brave’ and ‘delightful’ and calls it an ‘impressive solo performance’, which of course will feature heavily in any future Gallant promotions, regardless of the activity.

Most important to me, he calls it a ‘clever and affecting script’ and that pretty much sums up my original aim. I admit that I’m not a performer at heart. For me it’s always secondary to the writing process and my commitment to acting, in terms of taking classes and improving my ‘craft’, is pretty weak. If I could get audience members to pay to come and sit in the theatre and read my script while drinking wine, I happily would. But maybe that’s not entirely true. There’s a part of me that relishes being onstage and having everyone look at me and listen to me. If only the rather pathetically insecure 13 year old me had known that. Just kidding, who would I be without my angst-ridden solo shows?

Here’s the review:

Review: Don’t Stop Me Now at City Theater

Maggie Gallant knows that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who understand their favorite band as a spiritual force that communicates important things about life to those listeners who are truly prepared to hear them, and those who don’t know anything about anything.

Don’t Stop Me Now, Gallant’s one-woman show, is a tribute to the former group. And, of course, to Queen.

Delivered as both a series of soliloquies to Freddie Mercury (and occasionally Roger Taylor) and as a handful of short scenes in which Gallant portrays every character, Don’t Stop Me Now is the story of Sonya Moore, “the number one Queen fan in the universe.” We follow her through early adolescence in the mid-70’s until the 2002 opening of We Will Rock You, the London stage musical based on the band’s music.

It’s a brave performance by Gallant, who’s unafraid to leap from character to character and scene to scene, with little in the way of exposition. She jumps from bedroom to classroom to a shopping trip with her mother, expecting the audience to follow along as she does little more than move a few feet, adjust her posture, and shift an octave in her voice as she switches from Sonya, to her class bully, to her mother. It’s a rewarding experience for an audience that might have otherwise been underestimated—the play wastes little time exploring the different facets of Sonya’s adolescence.

Gallant is subtle and insightful as she explores that adolescence as well. She intuitively transitions Sonya from a 13-year-old who wishes that Freddie Mercury was her father, to a 16-year-old with a crush on Roger Taylor, keeping the focus ostensibly on Queen, but functionally on growing up. And she’s delightful as she portrays the teenage Sonya, who’s charming, lost, and fun to watch.

It’s as Sonya grows up that the play loses momentum, and, as is the inherent risk of the one person performance, once that’s gone, there’s not really any way to bring it back. As Sonya reaches college age and justifies farting through life because Freddie Mercury was a slacker until his mid-twenties, the show starts to become a drag.

It’s clear that Gallant was a lot less confident in the latter part of the show, because the scattershot storytelling approach that made the first half so much fun is abandoned in favor of “Oh, Freddie!”-style monologues where she simply narrates how much her life has become a disappointment, rather than using the characters she’d proven so adept at creating to show us. As the show drags and becomes so focused on telling, it doesn’t play into Gallant’s strengths as a performer. It becomes frustrating to watch her pass natural ending point after natural ending point (Sonya’s graduation, Queen’s Live Aid performance, Freddie Mercury’s death, etc) in pursuit of a resolution that the lack of tension in the script never leaves the audience craving.

The Summer Acts festival at City Theater is a place to try new work, and Gallant can certainly be forgiven for putting on a show that’s conceptually strong, and a powerhouse for its first 45 minutes, but that doesn’t so much end as it farts out. At an hour, Don’t Stop Me Now might effectively highlight Gallant’s clever and affecting script and impressive solo performance, driving home its point of Sonya’s one-sided relationship with the band before it becomes exhausting. As it is, it’s not a bad play—just one in need of a radio edit.

The Summer Acts festival runs through July 19th at City Theater.

“The show is so uniformly excellent, so seamlessly integrated we hardly know where to begin describing its many virtues—”

and

“an exquisitely simple and thoughtful evening of theatre, one that will send audiences away feeling smarter than when they came in.”

Under different circumstances, my show could be described in just the same way. ‘Different circumstances’ really just being shorthand for a completely different show. Perhaps a girl who is obsessed with Shakespeare and whose decisions are influenced by the lives of his characters. WWFD. What Would Falstaff do?

I then wasted a few more hours on Google, because when you’re still having trouble remembering some of your lines and cues, there’s really no finer use of your time than trying to find shows that have had crappy reviews in order to make you feel better about your own.

I found some truly mean-spirited ones that I wouldn’t credit the reviewer by reprinting here, but I did discover this from this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival, which could easily have been written for me.

“It was a very Fringe-y sort of thing. Heartfelt, clearly toiled over, a one-woman show that might otherwise never get staged. But also, we must reluctantly report, still fairly rough around the edges.”

Oh I know, I’m so self-deprecating, but if I was writing a review of my own show, it would probably read something like this (but with the addition of the words ‘funny’ and ‘British’) I’ve definitely had audience members that enjoyed the show and told me so and others who left the theatre as quickly as possible to avoid any embarrassing post-show conversations.

I thank god that I have the experience of stand-up comedy to fall back on. Not really God, as he had no hand in that, unless he controls the open mic at CapCity Comedy Club, in which case the hand of God might sit in the cash register. But as a fairly average stand-up comedian, I’m used to playing to audiences of 4 or less, to jokes being greeted with silence and to post-show pity-comments. Pity comments (named after pity-fucks of course) are the ones that people make when you and they both know that you sucked, but still want to say something nice. So I’d take the walk of shame to the bar to be greeted with variations on ‘you have such a great accent’ or ‘your hair looks great, who’s your stylist?’. (Nancy Rankin, Kemestry).

The theatrical version of pity-comments seems to relate to the number of lines I’m capable of memorising. People are apparently astonished at my ability to learn an hour’s worth of lines and in the absence of any greater apparent talent, feel this is safe ground. If only my ability to memorise things at school had been so highly praised. I’m sounding ungrateful, but it’s more just my disappointment at myself and my wish that I could dazzle audiences with something other than my (less than) perfect memory.

But back to reviewers. On opening night I was going to put up a promotional board in the lobby of the City Theatre with a poster of the hideous We Will Rock You musical and quotes from the absolutely appalling reviews it received when it first opened. These included:

‘It wasn’t just bad, it was traumatising’ – The Guardian

‘Surely they could have come up with something better than this’
- The Independent

‘Far from being guaranteed to blow your mind, We Will Rock You is guaranteed to bore you rigid’ - The Telegraph

‘..shallow, stupid and totally vacuous new musical – Daily Mail

But then Erik pointed out that people might think these were quotes about my show and so we decided not to do it. He’s usually infuriatingly right about these things. But my point was that critics and audiences rarely agree and that inspite of all the crappy reviews (and my one-woman hate campaign), We Will Rock You is still going strong 7 years later.

The truth is there’s nothing bad that a reviewer could say about the show that I haven’t already told myself over the past few weeks. And I really can’t be too concerned over what other people think, unless of course they think it’s brilliant, in which case I’ll take their opinion very seriously indeed. The fact is that I’ve taken a risk, learned a lot of frustrating lessons, lost money and done something new to scare myself.

Freddie would be proud. And probably a bit mortified. But mostly proud.

Saturday night at 10pm: the first full performance of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, to an audience of 12. A few shaky moments where I didn’t have a clue what was coming next, a few where I knew it wasn’t going right but couldn’t change it, and a few ad-libbed moments that are now part of the script. Most importantly to me, I could hear the audience laughing, not necessarily in the places I thought they would, but I learned that lesson often enough in stand-up. And no-one booed my rather horrible American accent, but I think I get a pass on this after 8 years of putting up with dreadful ‘ello Guvnor, chim-chiminey’ type greetings.

Unfortunately, one of the press reviewers was sitting right up front and in my direct eyeline so I could see him rather clearly. It’s hard to see someone making notes about something you’ve done, but not know what they’re writing. Reminds me of taking my driving test and hoping the tester was scribbling so furiously because he was so incredibly impressed at my driving skills. I remain suitably pessimistic.

Sunday evening, 6pm: Fun show, a very biased, pro-Maggie audience of around 20. Just before the show, I finally found the shoebox with all my Freddie Mercury/Queen press clippings and photos and there was a certain power in reading Freddie’s HIV statement from the original Guardian newspaper report. Made a few other mistakes, including forgetting the name of the other bloke from Van Halen and dropping one of my favourite lines, which Erik reminded me of later.

Was a bit concerned over the lack of laughter, which apparently is my version of crack, but was sort of reassured by all the positive and generous comments from friends after. Audiences should be aware that unfortunately, your performer cannot hear you smile, even if it’s an all-out grin.  Erik had at one point offered to run a laugh track from the sound booth, but only to be played when he felt I really deserved it. When I used to do stand-up at the Velveeta Room, the manager Dana, would ding a bell on the bar if a line was particularly funny, or spectactularly bad. The little dings were almost more rewarding than the pay, which was just as well. Comedy rarely pays. Unlike crime.

I’m just happy to get this show started and genuinely quite proud of how quickly this has all come together. Most artists like to brag about how long it’s taken and how hard they’ve worked to bring their vision to the stage. Robert Faires, Chronicle Arts bloke, has apparently been preparing his current one man play about Henry V, for 20 years. I started working on my script for Don’t Stop Me Now in mid April 2009. Robert Faires probably wasn’t still trying to funny-up his script or wondering if he had too many light cues, in the week before he opened .

Maybe in 20 years, when the hideous We Will Rock You musical finally comes to an end  and I get to stage ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ without having to worry about infringing rights and depriving Roger and Brian of a few more quid, I’ll look back to this week with a mix of nostalgia and embarrassment. Yes of course people will still know who Queen are in 2029. If old Henry V can still be relevant when it’s hundreds of years since he died and he didn’t even bother writing any songs, then the creator of Bohemian Rhapsody and the best band ever, can’t possibly be forgotten.

Come and see the show before I completely rewrite it. Or go to Henry V, apparently it’s V. good.

Freddie Mercury had it all:- fame; fortune; adoration; a dodgy moustache.
And now you can too — here’s how:

1. Having an overbite gives you a natural Freddie Mercury advantage. If you’re already blessed with one, chuck out the braces and delight in your mild speech impediment. But careful with the BJs, you don’t want to be known as the potato peeler. Or carrot grater, onion skinner, shaft shucker, etc.

2. Black eyeliner will give you that 70s Freddie glam rock look. However, if you’re under 30 you may be mistaken for an Adam Lambert groupie. Over 30 and you’ll be taken for the sad old twat that you are.

3. Tell people you’re bisexual. Everyone will know this really just means gay but it makes you a lot more palatable to the phobics if you also claim to like vag.

4. Burst into impromptu falsetto scales when in a group of 3 or more people, no matter where you are. And never leave home without your sawn-off microphone stand with which you can perform lewd sexual gestures.

5. Go through your day with the Flash Gordon theme playing constantly in your head. You’ll get everything done faster and you may actually save the world.

6. Quote endlessly from Queen song lyrics, starting each sentence with “as Freddie would say…”. People always love that.

7. If, like Freddie, you were cursed at birth with an ethnic name (Farrouk Bulsara), go ahead and change it. Take the first name of your favorite horror film character (Freddy, Jason, Michael, Hannibal, Chucky) and one of the planets for your last name. You’ll sound so much cooler (and shaggable) as Jason Jupiter.

8. Write one of the best-selling singles of all time. And take the secret of its meaning to your grave.

9. Live a fabulous life and never give a toss about what anyone thinks about you. Especially the critics.

‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, a new play about an obsessive Freddie Mercury fan, who bases her life’s decisions on WWFD (What Would Freddie Do?). The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd, Austin. Opens Saturday July 11 at 10pm

www.maggiegallant.com/wwfd for performance times and tickets.

Less than two weeks till the opening of my new show, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. I’m strangely calm. Strange in that, I’m still messing around with the script; haven’t recorded any of the sound cues; am having trouble channelling my inner American teenager and haven’t figured out an effective replacement for the Queen songs I was going to play, until EMI told me I wasn’t.

On the positive side, I have a Rubik’s cube, an avocado green rotary dial phone, a Freddie Mercury doll and a Raleigh Chopper bike. I’m also learning the choreography to Hey Mickey, for no other reason than it’s a distraction from working on my lines. Thank god I’m the director.

The show is a bit in the vein of my old nemesis, Gemma Wilcox or GW. Not literally in it, because her vein would probably be icy cold and filled with poisonous venom, but in the sense of it having multi-character scenes like her FronteraFest show. In non-wanky talk, this means that in parts of the show I play two characters in dialogue with each other and switch between them. Gemma made it look easy, I on the other hand shall prove to the audience just how difficult it really is and how much practice is required to pull it off.

If you’re a Queen fan, you should definitely come to the show. Unless you’re also a fan of the ‘We Will Rock You’ musical that’s still plaguing London. And if you don’t like Queen, at least there’s none of their damn awful songs in the show. Thanks again EMI.

Tickets and more info at www.maggiegallant.com/wwfd

“The person I really feel bad for in all this is Farrah Fawcett. After all those months of suffering with cancer, poor Farrah could barely get in 12 hours of death coverage before Michael Jackson came along and stole the spotlight.”

or equally obnoxious:

“And with that, Fawcett’s struggle was set aside. She became the follow-up story. For the first time, I really felt for Farrah.”

You’d think, in the case of the second blogger, that the whole dealing with cancer thing might be enough to elicit his sympathy, but no, it was the act of being usurped by Michael Jackson that made him really feel for her. Well that’s great, but she’s dead and probably not too bothered by the whole thing.

In fact if anything, she’s probably grateful. The measly 12 hours of death coverage that so affronts the first blogger is more than enough to cover her life. It’s not like there was that much to talk about in the first place: the hair; Charlies Angels; the red swimsuit photo and the accompanying Guinness Book of Records entry for most teenage wanks over a 70s icon; Ryan O’Neal – saint or tosser? – and cancer. That’s pretty much it. If MJ hadn’t died, the networks would have been scrambling around trying to find more to say about her and who knows what skeletons she had hidden away. Possibly the original Jaclyn Smith, given that the wooden version that appeared on Shear Genius was missing a personality.

And didn’t Farrah have her moment a few weeks ago with that documentary about her cancer? At least she was still around to know that 9 million people cared enough about her to watch it. Not as impressive as the 30 million that watched the American Idol final, but hers was reality TV that’s a bit too real. Aside from fellow cancer sufferers it probably appealed to the same ghoulish people that buy the books in the airport about the child who suffered horrific abuse by their parents but went on to make something of themselves. Usually called ‘Daddy You’re Hurting Me’, or some version thereof.

So it’s over and now Ryan O’Neal can carry on playing the grieving lover/friend/ex but without having the awkward tag of ‘widower’ dragging him down when he looks for a new 20 year old girlfriend. What exactly was the purpose of all the marriage-talk? If he’d wanted to marry her it would have been pretty damn easy. Just buy a couple of rings and get someone over to the house. Jade Goody and her good-for-nothing layabout managed it before she died, so why couldn’t he?

I’m just pissed off at the self-righteous bollocks that says Farrah has missed out, that there’s so much more to say and yet not enough room to say it because MJ stole her thunder. I’m sad that she died and that the last few years of her life were so rough, just as with any cancer sufferer. But lets not pretend that she was anything extraordinary. Charlie’s Angels did not define or reshape the television landscape, Farrah Fawcett did not have crossover appeal and nor was she embroiled in sex or drugs scandals. As far as we know, TMZ.

I trust that my own death will be in some way overshadowed by the demise of a greater celebrity than I. Someone beloved and yet fundamentally flawed so that I shall appear almost saintish by comparison. And as I’m in pre-ordering mode, I’d like it to be quick, so I can have that shocked ‘where were you when?’ aspect. But give me some warning so I’m not doing something odd, like sitting in a hotel wardrobe with fruit jammed into all my orifices and a copy of Melissa Gilbert’s biography about Little House on the Prairie. It’d just make it so much harder for Elton John to adapt Candle in the Wind.

Been obsessing about all these things this week as I was supposed to get new headshots done. I don’t really want new headshots as it suggests a certain renewed commitment to acting and to taking it seriously. But also because I still haven’t really figured out what I’m doing with my hair. Sadly, the old ones don’t look much like me anymore and at least the very thought of going to a photoshoot got me to the dentist for the first time in four years. Also started using the expensive face creams made from sheep’s bladder that my ageless Westlake dermatologist recommended as she assessed my face while injecting her lineless forehead with a few vials of Botox.

Photoshoot was cancelled because of the rain and inability to shoot in natural light and so I feel like I’ve been given some kind of prisoner style reprise. Now I have an extra two weeks to turn into Kate Moss waif-like model, or at least to lose my inner tube and get some of the pillow creases out of my face from a really good nap last week.

Went to my first singing class on Sunday. My goal is to be able to sing We Are The Champions at my show in July rather than just shout it as if drunk and yelling on the street, which used to be the case. So I channelled a bit of Freddie, worked my overbite and did my rendition of the song in front of the teacher and classmates. The feedback was fine until the teacher said I was developing a bit of an ‘OLD LADY WARBLE’. 

Good god, no. She went on to demonstrate, as if she worried that merely saying ‘old lady warble’ wasn’t clear enough to me. You can get the same effect yourself by singing any song in the key of Katherine Hepburn (circa On Golden Pond). You could also gargle. It’s the same sound my mother and her cronies make when singing about poor Jesus in church. As if he hadn’t suffered enough.

Apparently the onset of old lady warble can be staved off, just requires a strengthening of the vocal chords and a loosening of the throat. That’s what it’s all about at this age, tightening and loosening the various body parts. Just hope I don’t get my vag confused with my throat. Wouldn’t be the first time of course.

Had to go back to the studio yesterday to work with the teacher on selecting a load of songs which will be my pool of material to choose from over the next 8 weeks or so. I seem to have based my choices on nostalgic reminiscences rather than songs appropriate to my voice or gender. So my list includes Meatloaf ‘Two out of three ain’t bad’, Monty Python ‘Always look on the bright side’ and Phil Collins ‘Against all odds’. And yeah, Jack and Diane’s on there too. After I perused the list, the teacher went through so now I also have ‘All that jazz’ from Chicago and Levon which apparently is an old Elton John song. Never heard of it, but can’t complain too much as my initial selections included ‘Your Song’ which is only slightly less noxious than Phil Collins.

I think I’m going to give Lola a go, because Kinks are cool and I like singing L-O-L-A-LOLA, though teacher may require me to change the arrangement and turn it into a showtune. And anyway, cool factor will be lost on the 13 year old participant in class. But at least by the end of her set I’ll know a new Hannah Montana song

$34 a ticket, plus the $4.50 online booking fee, a processing fee of $5 and something spuriously called a ‘facility fee’ of $2. $46.50 in total. No wonder the theaters in town are struggling to fill seats (not that I necessarily know that they are, I just want to sound like an Austin Chronicle letter writer).

So am I in the right, or just getting old and miserly? When I was 20 I worked a season at the Pontin’s Holiday Camp at weston-super-mare. There’s no US equivalent to Pontins, it’d be like taking a Club Med and dumping it in Kentucky and staffing it with community service offenders. Nasty food, grotty entertainment and staff who warred with the punters. I worked behind the bar. At the start of the season we got a lot of pensioners, we called them the GOG’s, grumpy old gits, because they’d come up to the bar and complain about the price of beer and tell us how much cheaper they could get it at their social club back ‘ome. I just rolled my eyes, my friend Karen went slightly further and regularly told them to ‘bugger off back there then’. It took longer than expected for Karen to be fired due to the fact that we all swapped name badges so the complaints about bar staff were more evenly spread.

But I fear I’m turning into a GOG. The last couple of restaurants I’ve been to, I’ve been quite shocked by the prices for a not particularly spectacular meal. If we buy a bottle of wine for more than $12 it had better come with a guarantee of our classiness and ideally a mail-in rebate. 

But the Zach Scott deal, or lack of, really pisses me off. After all it’s Austin theatre not sodding Broadway. I checked the prices for the other nights, wondering if they were increased for the weekend shows and discovered that every night has a different price. So on Wednesday’s, tickets are $20, increasing to $39 on a Saturday, which with all the added stuff would make them over $50 a piece.

Why such variable pricing? Why not have a pay-what-you-can night like other theatres and then charge a set price for the others. I don’t see how they can justify charging an extra $20 for the same performance. But then I realised that it probably isn’t the same performance. Perhaps on Wednesdays you really do get what you pay for. A 70 percent performance for the cheapskates who wouldn’t pay full weekend prices. Perhaps the actors will drop a few lines, miss a couple of cues and flip off the audience at the curtain call. Slightly above the standard of a Pontin’s all-star variety show.

I’m going on Wednesday to find out. And I’ll be making full of use of the ‘facilities’, to be sure that my $2 is being spent wisely. In fact I’ll probably say that quite loudly in the lobby so others can hear my pithy wit. Right after I’ve complained about the programs being a bit flimsy and cheap, the unnecessary truncation of Zach Scott  and my horror at what they charge for bottled water and snacks. It’s all quite ridiculous. Thank god I’ll have packed my Werther’s Originals.

Come on down let’s rock this place
Come on down and
Sock it to me

I’m a Queen purist which means that I definitely won’t be going to see ‘One Night of Queen’, the Queen/Freddie Mercury tribute band that’s playing at the Long Center this Sunday. I hope that saves you the bother if you haven’t already sent me the link or mentioned it in email, or in person.

The bloke fronting ‘One Night of Queen’ is a Freddie lookalike, basing his look sometime around the mid-eighties. He’s got the gay Freddie moustache and photos show him in the iconic Magic tour outfit with the bright yellow buckle jacket, white trousers with the red stripe and adidas white trainers. An outfit I once tried to make for myself out of a lemon yellow blazer and some white leggings and xmas ribbon. Anyway, he’s apparently been doing Freddie for a while (not in a necrophiliac way) as he won the talent contest ’stars in their eyes’ in 2000. It’s a hideous makeover show that makes American Idol look sophisticated.

I’m not a big fan of lookalikes. Having played a ‘professional impersonator’ in my recent show, I know they’re all unhinged loonies. And the idea of watching someone try to be Freddie, doing all the moves with the mic stand and getting the crowd involved in the vocal scales makes me feel a bit icky. Probably because I’ve seen the real thing.

I’m not entirely against tribute bands. There was always one at the Fan Club conventions I went to and there’s a great band in Austin called Magnifico who play excellent covers of Queen songs in small sweaty venues. And while the singer dresses in a lycra unitard, the fact that he’s over 6 feet tall, shaven-headed and beanpole skinny prevents any Freddie comparison. But he’s a damn good singer

Of course I’m able to be a snob because I’ve seen Queen play live, quite a few times. And part of me is tempted to go to the show on Sunday and wear my sweat-stained tour t-shirt from 1984 and be all unmoved as I stand amidst the crowd and pontificate on how it’s ok, but not as good as the real thing and did I mention that I saw them at…etc, etc. Because everyone loves that person.

But then I looked at the ticket prices – bugger me, $49 to be aloof and stand-offish. As the old saying goes, why pay for the cow when you can be one at home.

And there’s also my slight fear that I might get to the show and start feeling that weird Queen sensation. The one where I want to cry and sing and shout at the same time. That I might be glimpsed standing on a chair or clapping along to we will rock you. God forbid that I could enjoy myself watching a lookeylikey, I’d never live it down.

HOME: FEBRUARY 6, 2009: ARTS

Arts Review

 

Maggie Gallant’s excerpt of ‘Our Angle in Heaven’

 

FronteraFest Short Fringe, Week Three

Hyde Park Theatre

Jan. 31

Absent the boisterous improv or spoken word often associated with the Short Fringe, the Best of Week Three was a quiet, reflective evening of experiments and explorations and excerpts.

There were moments of honest laughter and provoked thoughts, but in general you left the theatre wanting a bit more.

The night began with the most complete work, “Lascivious Lunches and Decadent Dinners,” by Priscilla Sample. We moved backward and forward in time as we learned that a man had suffocated to death and his baker wife may have leveraged her knowledge of his whey allergy to commit murder. Paula E. Brooks was a compelling heroine. The story, though not exactly gripping, was enough to keep you interested in whodunit.

Next, Maggie Gallant presented an excerpt from her Long Fringe solo show, Our Angle in Heaven. She treated the audience to three Brits offering various responses to Princess Di’s untimely demise: Jane, a Diana impersonator who felt very close to the woman she pretends to be; Catherine, a young girl who longs to be a boy and doesn’t give a shit about the death of some fluffy princess; and – best of the three – Barry, a conspiracy theorist who believes the royal family is a race of reptilian humanoids. Gallant has a charismatic quirkiness and lovingly inhabits her characters.

“Folding House,” a work in progress written and performed by Sheila Gordon, held the most theatrical promise of the evening. Gordon is doing interesting work with transitions and settings and character. Her voice is a great gift and was spot-on whether she was evoking a planetarium, running an auction, or playing an old man who has suffered a stroke and is relearning speech. In a particularly moving scene, her old man sorts through a box of medicine, trying to remember which he has taken and which need taking. A really exciting start to a piece I look forward to seeing in full.

In “TBA,” an experiment by Stephen Pruitt, each audience member received a radio and headphones. A lullaby began. We sat in the dark and listened via radio to Pruitt stream consciousness on the meaning of the words “to be announced.” He reflected on how life is full of things that are TBA, but often they never are announced; they just happen. He talked about how the deejay’s personality used to matter, but now the only freedom to be found on the radio comes during the programs aired around 4am. Radio waves became a metaphor for human existence. When the lights came back on, we were almost reluctant to relinquish our radios, so pleasant was the experience.

The night ended with another short play, the raucous and almost awesome “Nine Hundred Pound Goose,” written and directed by Walter Miranda. This piece had a lot going for it – a funny cast, push-up bras, wacky humor – but in the end, this exploration of guardian angels and guardian demons couldn’t quite figure out how to seal the deal.

So whether we were made to think back on a sad event from 1997 or the freedom of radio deejays of old, to ponder conspiracy theories and deadly allergies and fate, or to wonder what a play might look like once it’s fully realized, the atmosphere at Hyde Park Theatre was thoughtful. Best of Week Three provided a passably enjoyable night and a quiet car ride home.