2.sailor(man)

every year,
the new york international fringe festival
hosts a bevy of the world's newest, most innovative theatre pieces

and also a lot of utter shit.

a prime example of such wonderful theatre came to me in the form of one "sailor man," an dark and profoundly moving tale of the misunderstood popeye the sailor man, his arch nemesis, and the love of his life. complete with mind-blowing stage fights, Tony-award-worthy performances, seamless scene changes, and brilliant direction, "sailor man" changed. my. life.

actually i'm being sarcastic. get it?

let me paint you a picture:

john, candy and i arrived at the bleecker street theatre one evening, fully anticipating what was sure to be an incredible show. after all, it received glowing reviews from the fringe press, and how could anyone go wrong with a production about popeye the sailor man, a staple of my childhood? why, the audience was packed, the excitement palpable, the players over-confident and the house manager overly jolly. we took our seats with no hesitation and waited patiently for the show to begin...

i wish it hadn't.

from then on, i was filled with an overwhelming sense of horror at what i was witnessing. everything - EVERYTHING - was. terrible. the man playing popeye put on this heinous voice to try to channel the beloved cartoon, when in actuality, all it did was make me cringe. the first fight scene was painfully amateur, and tried to compensate for its own sloppiness by sloshing around gallons of fake blood for us to "ooo" and "aawwe" at. no cigar, sailor guy. i felt more like i was watching a poorly planned comedy sketch than an actual show at this point. what's more, the scene changes (there were two of them, and it was two too many) took upwards of five minutes. in the dark. with little result. in fact, the only real purpose of these changes was to mop up the puddles of fake blood, which served no purpose anyhow and would have been simpler to clean if someone on their high horse had just decided to keep the lights on. but alas, such was not the case.

much to john's chagrin, the direction was abominable. it looked as though the actors were moving around the space simply for the sake of moving, and standing still simply because they knew not what else to do. it reeked of a poorly-staged high-school production in this sense. and for a 50-minute show, it did seem to go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and....

bottom line: i would equate this to a badly-made porno movie, except instead of unsatisfying sex scenes, we were cursed with unsatisfying stage combat scenes.

but here's the horrifying thing: the audience fucking loved it. they ate that shit right up. i wanted to scream out, "did you fuckheads just SEE the show that i saw?! it was absolute horse shit!!" not only did they receive a standing ovation at curtain call, but made an encore bow after having already left the stage. it was quite an alarming experience, to be frank. and as john, candy and i looked back and forth at each other in sheer horror, i couldn't help but think, is this really what it's come to??

now, i may be slightly pretentious when it comes to reviewing theatre. and that's simply because i have that lens: i work, live, and breath in the theatre; i see and do it every day. but it would not take an expert to appreciate how abominably terrible this show was. in fact, a five-year-old could recognize this. so how was it that all these innocent theatre-goers were so brainwashed by this awful piece of work?? it's one of the great mysteries of life, i suppose.

but i can't help but be quite troubled by this. is "sailor man" what people want in theatre? is this what they're going to shell out their cash for, spend their evenings on, take their children to see? is this what the art world is so eager to produce? and how in the name of fuck did an established entity such as the new york international fringe festival let this piece of trash slip under their nose and into the east village? i've never felt so scared for contemporary theatre.

the fringe festival is the self-proclaimed stage of the "future of theatre" - the innovative, the unapologetic, the modern. it is responsible for such greats as "urinetown," and "dog sees god." it is a playground for contemporary artists to jump start their work and bring something new and exciting to the theatre-goers' table. so what happened, jurors? were you high when you reviewed their proposal? or just lazy? and viewers: are you really so apathetic that you'll allow yourselves to be spoon-fed any amount of shit they dish out?

we, as artists, need to demand more and work harder and climb higher and reach further. we need to say to the shit-heads who make up the "sailor man" shows of the world that we will not let them represent us and we will not let them stamp a sell-by date on our art form. people in the theatre know that we all work too hard and too thanklessly to blindsight audiences with the same old mediocre crap.

it's time for the theatre to seriously consider how we can leave a lasting and profound mark on our world, and how to prevent future "sailor man" endeavors from slipping through the cracks and into the hands of the public. because once they grab hold of that, who knows how willing they'll be to grasp something different?