by Analyn Revilla

The theme of the story can be likened to the spirit of a verse from a John Lennon song: “Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans” (from “Beautiful Boy”).

The first unexpected is being offered a free beer upon entrance into the theater (and it’s a designer beer too.) The theater is nearly full and the seated audience is already being entertained by a clown fawning for affection and laughter. People are all smiles and curious as to what will unfold for the Four Clowns presentation of “The Halfwits’ Last Hurrah”.

A young woman at the front row is being wooed by the clown. He draws her out to the stage, and they do a Simon Says act in mime. She’s surprisingly good as she follows his soft shoe dance and improvise some of her own. I wondered if she was a member of the troupe. She was a good sport regardless.

“Butterbeans Arbuckle” (Don Colliver) shoos away the clown from the stage. He’s half dressed in a white shirt and underwear. He butters up the audience with jokes. He flirts with the females (“Who likes sausage?” A drizzling of hands go up and he picks on a pretty woman. “We’ll talk later after the show. I know of a good sausage place in Echo Park.”) He cajoles the audience to imbibe on the free booze. Finally, he chooses a volun’told’ member of the audience to be his scapegoat should any any mishaps and failures befall the evening’s presentation. “Leopold, I’m blaming it on you.”

Butterbeans runs to the back of the curtain and hails fists upon the clown for good measure of proof that he will not accept failure or fault. Lights dim down, and the show begins. Welcome to an authentic American vaudeville. In a few minutes Butterbeans is back with his assistant Nimrod (Elizabeth Godley). Nimrod’s costume is a bowler’s hat and a black vest over a white shirt, and she holds an orange cone that pipes her squeaky voice. Her enthusiasm and sweet adoration of Butterbeans wins the audience’s hearts from the get go. Already the story is rich with characters that has possibilities of the unexpected.

The show is kicked off by the Inderdorf Twins (Jennifer Carroll and Dave Honigman). Their suggestive blue dialogue was, at first, strange to my ears until the the light went on – Ahh…that’s better. The twins describes their clean country living at the farm in the alps with strange acrobatic forms and sexual innuendos of “collecting morning wood” and “riding the chicken”. The risque content is standard fare of vaudevilles. “The Halfwits’ Last Hurrah” is complete with a burlesque act by Blonde Burlesque (Jamie Franta). Her mystique is the brave face she puts on and puts out. The black eyeliner, false lashes, bright red lips on creamy skin is arresting. There’s an awkward sexuality beneath the facade. I play along and want her to seduce me with her dance, costume and song. Then she braces for the finale of her act. “Here goes nothing!” she hopes, and shakes her titties to twirl the tassles of her brassiere that covers a modest 34B cup (maybe).

Between the first and second acts a mysterious character calls out from the darkness. “Soo wee!” the voice hollers, and Butterbeans falls into a hypnotic trance that is a combination turret-body contortion that disengages him from his normal faculty into a puppet. The voice is The Real McCoy (Jolene Kim), a figure in an all white western getup that haunts Butterbeans throughout the show. She taunts him to give up his dream of theater and accept that the future is in something outside himself. The latest magic is in technology which The Real McCoy claims as what Butterbeans wants. She holds up the magic wand beyond his reach like the forbidden apple on the tree of knowledge. The relationship between Butterbeans and the Real McCoy is symbolic of the hero and his inner dragon that taunts him to fail.

This relationship and its battles weave in and out through the show; they are the shadows to the light of the heartful comedic acts of: Madame La Merde (Helene Udy) who walks in stilts to spin plates on towers; the angelic singing of Pruella Tickledick (Charlotte Chanler); the liquor vendor (Julia Davis), and a handkerchief trick show by Nimrod. Her expressions are reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Tramp’. Nimrod catches a teary-eyed audience, the same woman dancing on stage earlier. They have touching interlude that gives the audience some breathing space as the conflict mounts to a crescendo, like the wave building momentum to its crest.

The story has a lot of moving pieces like a chessboard game with each player having a specific contribution to the whole. Their common goal is to pull it all together for the audience. The mayhem culminates with The Real McCoy and her henchmans (Tyler Bremer and Jamarr Love) turning the stage into a scene from ancient Pompeii after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and it is left to Butterbeans and Nimrod to save the the Halfwits from The Real McCoy. How does the hero face his dragon?

The unexpected of this wonderful souffle is the texture of airy lightness of the Halfwits’ performances to the soul-satisfying struggle of Butterbeans to overcome the struggle with The Real McCoy. It is the forbearance of the heroes to be in the light, thus their last Hurrah! and to shed their mediocrity to be the bright stars on stage as well as to be immortalized in the memory and hearts of the audience.

Four Clowns production of “The Halfwits’ Last Hurrah” is the company’s 5th appearance at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

The last performance of the show for the Fringe is this Friday, June 26th at 10:30 in the Lillian Theater located at 1076 Lillian Way LA. CA. 90038.
Get tickets through this link: http://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/2166?tab=tickets

by Jennifer Bobiwash

I have been trying all week to explain my first Fringe experience, but the words are jumbled and come out in a string of disjointed sentences. Which, truth be told, is how this whole experience has been making me feel.

My first show was a preview on Sunday. I have been fighting with the words that make up my play. As I try to memorize them for my show I wonder why the heck I wrote these things and why I want to share them with the world. As I sit on the stage, in an empty theater, running through my show. Pencil in hand, I cross out sections of text that will be cut next time. Right now my brain is settled in to the story, however repetitive the text is.

I try to distract myself by writing other things, poems, writing challenges on hitRecord, and random postings about how to use social media.  My brain seems to be distracted for a bit. Shhhh! Don’t tell it I’m blogging here.

My play has been workshopped on a few occasions and I’ve sat and read it to remind myself of the story, but it wasn’t until I had to perform it off book that I could see the (w)holes.  For as long as I have written and re-written the same circumstances with different characters and locations, it was always the same story.  After I had resigned myself to finally putting it to bed and completing it, I pulled together stories that would best lead to a completed play.  Workshopping it allowed me read the play for an audience, solicit feedback, see what was working and wasn’t.  I sat in the back of the room listening to the words I had thought were brilliant when someone else was reading them.  I explained to the dramaturg, director and actor about my thought process.  We spent a day with the timeline of the main character.  Me answering questions about the backstory of the story.  At the time not understanding why they were asking.  It was only later after I had a quiet moment that I could reflect upon their questions and why they mattered.  My story was missing the tiny details that gave color to the who and why.  The moments I took for granted as just knowing they were there, and when I read the lines I could see them.  I’m reminded about seeing the forest through the trees and I never understood the meaning of it.  Being in the thick of the action, but knowing what’s going on.

But now as I reviewed the lines and tried to commit them to memory, these tiny details are getting in my way and tying my tongue.  Alliteration and repetition fill my story and at times as I try to say the lines, I lose the poetry in an effort to just say the lines.  I can see the trees.

That’s where I’m at now.  I just have to be the performer and forget the writer. As much as I have been trained to honor the writer’s words, it’s time to trust that I know what I’m saying and just do.

I’ve taken so many different writing classes, but each instructor has said “go see solo shows”!  Luckily Fringe is filled with them and each offers me more insight into the writing process.

Now go out there and see some shows!

by Erica Bennett

“I love new plays,” says a friend and colleague. And, so do I. So, I drove west to the Kirk Douglas Theatre today to witness the work-in-progress Throw Me On The Burnpile and Light Me Up, written and performed by Lucy Alibar. I attended with a friend and another fan of Beasts of the Southern Wild screenplay that Alibar adapted (from her play Juicy and Delicious) with the films director Benh Zeitlin.

As we took our seats, we remarked over the scenic and lighting design from the charming string lights, to the (overly dense) Spanish moss, to the lovely antique twin bed insignia. And, I thought, “look at all those props,” and remembered those words coming at me from my last director, and grinned.

I settled in, and then I remembered the time I unwittingly ridiculed the “swap meet” design of an Americana exhibit I’d seen, within earshot of the colleague who had designed it. And, I felt ashamed. Lights dimmed, and I was perfectly primed; a tremulous mess (ready to feel).

The play is filled with wonderful language told by a magical, gentle-voiced performer who deftly painted her stories in the air for us. But, it was also a lesson for me, as a playwright. I realized tonight that I wished Ms. Alibar had let us see more of the moments, like when Daddy got mad, rather than tell us about them after the fact. Because, it was those in-the-moment moments, that kept me enthralled today.

And, this brings my realization earlier in the week that a play is about Action full circle.