Sunday, September 28, 2008
A+E, Theater, Reviews

Pump up the volume

Three current productions bring the noise

BY BERT OSBORNE

If you’re old enough to remember the TV commercials that posed the question, “Is it live or is it Memorex?,” chances are you were also around during those waning years before the wiring up of musical theater. I’ve asked it before and I’ll ask it again: At what point does theater cease to be a natural, spontaneous art form and start to be a technically programmed nuisance? Given a trying trio of current productions, that’s anybody’s guess.
 
In Horizon co-artistic director Jeff Adler’s so-so “Altar Boyz,” the answer is: right off the bat. Music director Bryan Mercer, who fared better fronting a real band in the recent “Oh, What a Lovely War!,” here resorts to a canned instrumental track to back up the Boyz (Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham), an evangelical pop group on the last leg of its "Raise the Praise" tour. For all I know, the Backstreet Boys don’t perform with live accompaniment, either—and the show is supposed to be a concert, which somewhat justifies the volume level, as well as the application of body mics, like you might see taped to Justin Timberlake’s face in concert.
 
Too routinely used as a directorial crutch, it’s more jarring and obnoxious hearing mics on, say, Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer, simple country boys who otherwise exist in a pre-Civil War world. Sure, they make everything louder, but they also tend to take you out of moment. Playing to Broadway houses is one thing; playing to the intimate corners of Horizon or Theatrical Outfit, in this case, is something else—a "live" performance in the sense that the actors sing and talk in actual time, and yet artificial in that it all emanates from stereo speakers instead of from real voices.
 
Fittingly enough, the resounding song highlights in the Outfit’s “Big River”—directed by Heidi Cline, with music direction by Renee Clark (they last collaborated on "Cabaret")—clearly belong to Eric Moore and Bethany Irby, who hardly need the amplified boost, anyway. It’s the sort of show in which, at least during its splashier numbers, slaves and their masters blissfully coexist in choreographed harmony, singing and dancing side by side. Only slightly less implausible: As Huck and Tom, respectively, Cline casts the ever-drab Brandon O’Dell and the more animated Rob Lawhon, neither of whom look believable as early teens. (Two capable actors who might better pass for that age are Matt Felten and Chris Moses. So what, if maybe they don’t sing? By the prerecorded logic of the music in "Altar Boyz," what would be the difference in having them lip-sync to somebody else’s vocals? "It's Memorex!")
 
In Dad’s Garage’s revival of its 1998 hit "Cannibal! The Musical," a grisly Gold Rush farce, the singers aren’t miked, the music is live, and director George Faughnan’s staging is still a mess—both audibly (with music director Craig McConnell’s electronic piano often overpowering the cast) and visually (although even the bloody special effects seem ho-hum next to the company’s recent zombie spoof "Song of the Living Dead").
 
As with many other Garage shows, you’re never entirely sure whether they’re trying to be "bad" (and ostensibly funnier), or whether they’re merely bad. What’s the incentive to try at all, when the typical Dad’s audience will eat it up and give them a standing ovation, good or bad? They rehearse for how many weeks, and this is the best they can do? You’ve probably seen more polished high-school musicals.
 
Each of the Altar Boyz experiences a personal epiphany during their concert—if you can call it that, when the gay one basically resigns himself to staying in the closet—but the cumulative effect of these three shows is more of a rude awakening. A person could go deaf, and then need body mics and loud speakers just to hear at all. SP