By Jim Rutter
FOR THE INQUIRER
Too many writers bank on early success and never expand their literary boundaries. Madi Distefano sprang onto the nascent Philadelphia theater scene in the mid-1990s and for a dozen years slashed her pen across the page in epic, edgy scripts about burnt-out youths chasing dreams of punk superstardom.
Fifteen years later, she’s set a different task. After staging small-cast, quick-costume-change shows like Greater Tuna and The Mystery of Irma Vep, Distefano has penned a quick-changer of her own in Meanwhile ..., now in its world premiere with Brat Productions.
Meanwhile ... employs this genre’s stock tricks in a spoof of Mickey Spillane private investigator stories. The usual suspects appear: P.I. John Sharp, buxom blonde Sugar, and a litany of caricatures (club owners, gangsters, gun molls) from post-Prohibition Atlantic City. The convoluted story is only a vehicle for the humor, which first inspires laughter but then abuses one’s tolerance for repetition. Every use of the word box, drawers, or dick (that’s detective, mind you) holds up a sign that screams double entendre!.
Distefano leavens the rampant suggestiveness with verbal gimmicks from every movie starring Leslie Nielsen. Characters ramble on in self-referential jokes: “I’m redundant. I repeat myself,” "I say the same thing over and over"; Sharp notes that “If I did it my way, I’d be Frank.” (Seriously.)
Although Bradley Helm’s versatile set features four doors and two entrances, Lee Etzold’s direction doesn’t move this quick-change show along very quickly. Too many scenes feature only two of the 12 characters, providing no opportunity for the lightning costume/wig changes that make the genre a smash. Otherwise, Mary McCool and Sarah Doherty split the parts and play each with fabulous dexterity. McCool varies hers down to gait and posture; Doherty blasts out an original big-band number with a set of blaring, beautiful pipes.
At its best, Distefano’s script both mocks the genre and gets us to laugh with, instead of at, the very thing she mocks. McCool skillfully winks through the narration and addresses the audience in indulgent asides. Props and a few partially costumed stagehands let the audience chuckle at the backstage machinations.
Such devices give Meanwhile … a charm that will no doubt delight fans of quick-change or detective genres. It’s an ambitious attempt at artistic invention that shows new roads often have rocky beginnings.
Meanwhile ... Presented by Brat Productions at Ruba Club, 416 Green St., through Nov. 19. Tickets: $15-$25. Information: 267-586-9093 or www.bratproductions.org
Howard Shapiro reviews and writes about theater for The Inquirer, and has been on staff since 1970. He's had many posts at the newspaper, including cultural arts editor and editor of the Weekend section. He's twice been the editor of the Travel section, for which he writes frequently. He began writing theater criticism a decade ago, and has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, an Internews fellow in Greece, and a fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts' Journalism Institutue in Theater and Musical Theater, where Robert Brustein was among his mentors. He teaches arts criticism and travel writing at Temple University, and is Broadway critic for the NPR-affliated stations of the Classical Network.
Toby Zinman's night job since 2006 is theater critic for the Inquirer. She also is a contributing writer for Variety and American Theatre magazine. Her day job: Prize-winning prof at UArts, author of four books about four playwrights (Rabe, McNally, Miller, Albee), and doer of scholarly deeds (winner of five NEH grants, Fulbright lecturer at Tel Aviv University, visiting professor in China). Her 'weekend' job as a travel writer provides adventure: dogsledding in the Yukon, ziplining in Belize, walking coast-to-coast across England, and cowboying in the Australian Outback.
Wendy Rosenfield has been writing freelance features and theater reviews for The Inquirer since 2006. She was theater critic for the Philadelphia Weekly from 1995 to 2001, after which she enjoyed a five-year baby-raising sabbatical. She also writes the ArtsJournal blog Drama Queen. She was 2009 and 2010 Guest Critic for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's Region II National Critics Institute, a 2008 NEA Fellow in Theater and Musical Theater, and a participant in the Bennington Writer's Workshop. A graduate of Bennington College, she is inching toward a Master's degree in Liberal Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. She also is a fiction writer, was proofreader to a swami, publications editor for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and a Brownie Girl Scout troop leader.
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