Sunday Jaunts and Junkets

I have two modes of relaxation: 1) catatonia, and 2) aggressive, event-packed cultural tourism. The former usually follows a period of heavy activity, for example the run of a show. The latter occurs when I start to get my wind back and want to catch up on a lot of things in a short time. Sunday was one of those days.

The Countess and I started off with a visit to the Proteus Gowanus complex, which includes Observatory, the Morbid Anatomy Library, the Reanimation Library, and the Hall of the Gowanus. Patrons like me who are attracted by the 18th-19th century science vibe in their electronic outreach should brace themselves for the modest scale of the enterprise -- the  collections are basically on the order of what a very cool friend might have in his/her house:  a few bell jars containing beetles, a framed set of pinned butterflies, and the like. Unless you live on the shores of the lovely Gowanus or unless you're attending for one of their excellent-looking lectures, I'm not sure I would take the trouble it takes to get there. Visit a much more elaborate museum in your mind.

Then it was off to the Brick in Williamsburg for the Comic Book Theater Festival. We intended to see all four shows that day, but only made it through three (not a reflection on the quality of the three, except the third one came in real short, leaving us with a whole hour to kill...time enough for us choose "go home" rather than "sit in the pizza place for an hour").

Anyway. Jillian Tully's Five Things (A Webcomic in 3-D) was a terrific start. Sarah Bisman plays a depressed single girl in the city; Jillian plays her cat. Wait, wait, come back! She doesn't walk around on all fours and say, "meow, meow". That's for losers. Instead, the hyperimaginative Tully gives the cat, one Rhubarb Flummery, a rich and entertaining interior life that is fantastical, funny and charming. The sweet, romantic tone reminded me a lot of Archy & Mehitabel, Don Marquis's timeless whatchacallit from the nine-teens and twenties. (Picturing George Herriman's illustrations brought this admittedly non-comic-themed play more in line with the festival's supposed motif than did director Amy Overman's funny graphic sound effects and thought balloons, although those worked too).  Tully's playfulness in the role of Rhubarb amplifies the sweetness effect; she gives her nerdy, scientific and slightly snobbish feline an openness and innocence that reminds me of the best children' s storytelling. But it's not for kids. It's about a couple of characters who decide to stop hiding and confront their own fears, which is something that gets harder the older you get. Anyway, two opposable thumbs up for Five Things. As it happens I am having a ticket giveaway contest for this show. To find out how to win two tickets to see it, go here.

Next came Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons' All I Want is One More Meanwhile, a familiar yarn about superheroes having regular human-type problems. Director Ivanna Cullinan rocking the God mic may have been my favorite part of this trifle which comes with its own souvenir comic book. Although there is much to be said as well for Jorge Cordova's funny portrayal of a loveable former supervillain now trapped in the body of a pooch. Can it be an accident that a person-playing-a-dog play follows close on the heels of a person-playing-a-cat play? It cannot.

Lastly came Funny Book/ Tragic Book, a bill of two short pieces by Adam McGovern. (I appreciate the use of "funny book". That's what my grandmother used to call comics, whether they were "funny" or not. That's just what some people called them). McGovern comes to the festival from the comics side, and he has a resume full of street cred in that department. Some of his work has been reviewed on this very site. Theatre is a new medium for him, and in the two pieces presented here he confronted that formal challenge by skillfully avoiding it, meanwhile regaling us with his always impressive torrents of persiflage. "Norriga the Thunderer" is presented as a dramatic reading at a comics con, with a cast of earnest thespians (Amy Overman, Gavin Starr Kendall, Adam Swiderski, Rasheed Hinds, and Shelley Ray) reading McGovern's hilariously over-the-top parody of Marvel Comics, full of Teutonic God-men who speak in that hack Middle English so beloved by the more ambitious comic myth-makers. Tom Reid is hilarious as the comic's publisher, clearly modeled on Stan Lee, with all of Lee's cheerful self-importance and breezy, alliterative hype-speak. So much for the "funny" book. In "Underworld", we get a piece with more serious intentions: brooding, moody, pessimistic and full of the writer's beloved "what if"? Told in first person by the piece's director Ian W. Hill, the piece manages to intertwine Freud, Hitler, Hiroshima, time travel and universal evil. The writing in this piece reminded me a lot of H.P. Lovecraft, which is to say, skates a hair's breadth from the bathetic. As with the first piece, it is accompanied by a slide show of illustrations, but unlike the first piece it could function just as well without them. Close your eyes, and "Underworld", with its rich language, would make a nice radio piece. Tickets to Funny Book/ Tragic Book are also prizes in one of our contests. To enter, just go here. And for info on the Comic Book Theatre Festival in general go here.