Hollywood Fringe Festival Theatre Review: The Fool & the Red Queen

The Lounge Theatre hosted the world premiere of PaduaPlaywrights Productions' The Fool and the Red Queen, an absurdist story involving an auditioning actor finding himself in the midst of a play within a play.  In the clinically white temporary space of The Lounge, Gary Bean (John Diehl) is an older man struggling with his script while the director and producer engage him in a cryptic conversation regarding the story and such off-handed subjects as the Greeks.  During Act I (also titled "Gary's Strange Callback"), Chauncey (Jack Kehler) and Rondell (Gray Palmer) rifle through their lines like a couple of LA casting directors talking over each other and offering about as much guidance as you could expect from a David Lynch movie.  The two men project crisp, yet obscure foreshadowing of classical archetypes onto the walls and monitor hanging from the ceiling above them with the click of a button, as well as live feed of the production.  We ponder the well-produced Bergmanesque cinematography, while voice-overs sneak in from Gary’s mind.

Julia Prud'Homme, Bill Celentano

There’s an ambiguity between them that continues when a kind of “ancient cunt of earth” arrives during the medieval-set second act after she demands, “Bring me The Fool.”  The title royalty (Julia Prud’Homme) spends the next half-hour bossing around her subject.  The Fool (Dell’Arte International graduate Bill Celentano) has his own representative of his consciousness onstage in ensemble actor Peggy A. Blow, who also serves as a narrator for comical effect.  “The foul runs.  He runs in place, but he runs.”  Eventually the ruler sends him to spy on soldier Rikki, played by the auditioner from the previous installation, who sits quietly along with the audience at a local hotel, run by innkeeper Don Antontio (also played by Blow).  The Red Queen is both director and audience (judge and executioner), as she demands to be entertained and projects her emotions onto The Fool, but admonishes him for not feeling his own.  Her relationship with him is best likened to a mirror in which we prefer to decide what the reflection will look like. 

Broad, yet refined, the confident cast knows exactly what they’re doing.  Prud-Homme takes full bites into her juicy role as the saucy, controlling queen.  Her appearance, as well as vocal delivery reminded me of Tilda Swinton.  Celentano captures the disgruntled, distressed nature of The Fool as he futilely tries to please Her Majesty.  Blow attacks her series of characters with delicious glee.  Diehl is thoughtful in his stalwart repose.  And Kehler as Chauncey (who resembles Dennis Hopper by way of shorts, vest, plaid vans and paisley socks) has a nice bit in Act I cataloguing the sounds of LA, which is complemented by actual activity of trucks and motorbikes passing by on Santa Monica Blvd outside (shockingly with little, if any, horn honking during the performance I sat through).

The audio/visual values of the production, including Brad L. Cooper’s cinematography, are impeccable and well-executed.  The swift guerrilla-style conversion of the stage for Act II reveals Jeffrey Atherton’s simple, but striking set design.  A raked house presides over the darling space of The Lounge with exposed brick and three vertical lancet windows lit up in neon blue at the back of the stage.  Diaphanous curtains hang from the white walls, when not receiving video projections.  (I must have been asleep at the wheel, because multi-media has definitely ingrained itself in mid-professional LA theatre.)  We peer through the looking glass of the forced perspective of the stage walls, as a scarlet red carpet unfolds diagonally to the queen’s throne.  Fittingly, the royal figure rules like Helena Bonham-Carter’s Red Queen from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.  Ann Closs-Farley's exceptionally made stock costumes include the queen's cellophane-waisted glittery bustier that is part of a dress so wide, she needs two chairs to accommodate her, as well as her legs dressed in petticoat pants, red tights and 4-inch heels.  Rags and hijab cover the innkeeper, accented with a bone necklace. 

I struggled with the dense nature of Murray Mednick’s two pieces (he codirected with Guy Zimmerman).  While intended as stand-alone plays, each of the two acts are "sequentially" part of a greater series from the “Gary Plays,” that are both an acquired taste, as well as for fans of the legendary artist.  Not much happens, but a lot is thematically explored and said, including commentary on war.  With little narrative, the non-emotional production examines the connection an actor must make with his/her role weighed against the emotional needs of the audience.  Watching this production is not dissimilar to viewing a Todd Haynes movie (light on plot, he keeps you at an arm’s length of a basketball player): it leaves the audience to decide what it wants to feel, which, for myself, was ambivalence.  For the slow-witted like myself, it requires additional viewings.  Performances are Fridays, Saturdays (both 8 PM curtains), and Sundays (at 7 PM) and continue through June 24^th.  You can buy tickets here.

[Images via Laist, The Los Angeles Beat, Hollywood Fringe]