Month: April 2020

Matt Cox’s Puffs, is a smart, whimsical spoof on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It follows the lives of the key characters: Harry, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley (by different names) and their adventures at Hogwarts. Hogwarts is a private school for witches and wizards. Clearly this saga goes far too long to fit into a traditional play, so it’s basically a gloss. Hogwarts engages many of the same customs as a traditional British Private School, different houses that compete, yearly exams, and regular sporting events. At Hogwarts it’s Qidditch, with two teams facing off on broomsticks.

It emerges right away that the members of the Puffs House include Harry, Hermione, Ron, and a band of assorted underdogs. This is the premise from which Cox fashions his satire on the tropes and familiar plot devices of Potter’s odyssey. Cox avoids what might be considered cheap shots at Potter and his misfits. They’re never depicted as losers or nebbishes, but rather, good-hearted teens who can’t catch a break. Puffs plays like sketch comedy, taking occasional excursions into the unlikely, the same way we laugh when Sue Ann Niven rotates on a circular bed, beneath a mirrored ceiling. Cox takes sweet-natured jibes at the various characters We may laugh at the villains, but never our hero(es). It’s like the send-ups they used to write for Mad Magazine. Cursory in the best sense of the word. Whatever the jokes were, you couldn’t take them too seriously. Whether their target was The Sound of Music, Mod Squad or Dragnet, first last and always, it was about the gags.

Directors Kyle Igneczi and Ashley White handle the merriment with skill and agility. Episodes and bits move at a brisk pace, orchestrating punchlines, blackouts and rejoinders with aplomb. The multitudinous cast (Billy Betsill, Micah JL Brooks, Savannah Elayyach, Alli Franken, Edna Gill, Nick Haley, Damian Gomez, Madeline Morris, Taylor Staniforth, Juliette Talley, Aaron White, Mark Oristano) is nimble and poised as a bus filled with zippy gymnasts. Or a barrel full of convivial ferrets.

Puffs is a clever show, with lots to tickle aficionados of Harry Potter, the orphan kept in a pantry by his Aunt and Uncle, beaten down until he discovers he has remarkable, supernatural gifts, and parents who died, saving his life. In every volume he does his time as a pariah, going from champion to the object of scorn. Cox takes the story of a lonely boy, who goes on to forge amazing, lifelong friendships (but not without adversity) and gives us gobs of amusement and glee.

IMPRINT Theatreworks staged Puffs in January 2020. www.Imprinttheatreworks.org

Matt Cox’s Puffs, is a smart, whimsical spoof on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It follows the lives of the key characters: Harry, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley (by different names) and their adventures at Hogwarts. Hogwarts is a private school for witches and wizards. Clearly this saga goes far too long to fit into a traditional play, so it’s basically a gloss. Hogwarts engages many of the same customs as a traditional British Private School, different houses that compete, yearly exams, and regular sporting events. At Hogwarts it’s Qidditch, with two teams facing off on broomsticks.

It emerges right away that the members of the Puffs House include Harry, Hermione, Ron, and a band of assorted underdogs. This is the premise from which Cox fashions his satire on the tropes and familiar plot devices of Potter’s odyssey. Cox avoids what might be considered cheap shots at Potter and his misfits. They’re never depicted as losers or nebbishes, but rather, good-hearted teens who can’t catch a break. Puffs plays like sketch comedy, taking occasional excursions into the unlikely, the same way we laugh when Sue Ann Niven rotates on a circular bed, beneath a mirrored ceiling. Cox takes sweet-natured jibes at the various characters We may laugh at the villains, but never our hero(es). It’s like the send-ups they used to write for Mad Magazine. Cursory in the best sense of the word. Whatever the jokes were, you couldn’t take them too seriously. Whether their target was The Sound of Music, Mod Squad or Dragnet, first last and always, it was about the gags.

Directors Kyle Igneczi and Ashley White handle the merriment with skill and agility. Episodes and bits move at a brisk pace, orchestrating punchlines, blackouts and rejoinders with aplomb. The multitudinous cast (Billy Betsill, Micah JL Brooks, Savannah Elayyach, Alli Franken, Edna Gill, Nick Haley, Damian Gomez, Madeline Morris, Taylor Staniforth, Juliette Talley, Aaron White, Mark Oristano) is nimble and poised as a bus filled with zippy gymnasts. Or a barrel full of convivial ferrets.

Puffs is a clever show, with lots to tickle aficionados of Harry Potter, the orphan kept in a pantry by his Aunt and Uncle, beaten down until he discovers he has remarkable, supernatural gifts, and parents who died, saving his life. In every volume he does his time as a pariah, going from champion to the object of scorn. Cox takes the story of a lonely boy, who goes on to forge amazing, lifelong friendships (but not without adversity) and gives us gobs of amusement and glee.

IMPRINT Theatreworks staged Puffs in January 2020. www.Imprinttheatreworks.org

Surprisingly sophisticated for an incipient feature film, Rapture in Blue is a psychosexual thriller, written and directed by accomplished local actor, Ryder Houston. Rapture in Blue explores the discrepancy between the life that Jason Aylwood (Bryce Lederer) has chosen, and where his true desires lie. Jason is dating Valerie (Sarah Greenfield) and decides to take her to his childhood home. There they discover a guy named Sebastian (Tanner Garmon) who’s still in the process of moving in, when Jason slips his key into the front door lock. The two have barely recovered from their surprise when he invites them in. Sebastian is that most dangerous of men, fetching and unapologetically rapacious. Not that he does anything wildly inappropriate, but his eyes and demeanor tell a different story.

After Jason and Valerie make their departure, things between them start to unravel. Intimate Polaroids taken by an apparent stalker are turning up. Jason catches glimpses of some ghastly, terrifying phantom. Lovemaking attempts between he and Valerie feel forced and vapid. Jason seems to be repeatedly pulled into some kind of intensely disturbing fugue state. Some force beyond his control is tormenting him, playing havoc with his sanity.

There is something deliciously audacious at work in Rapture in Blue. From the outset, with a quote by Sigmund Freud, referencing the id (or shadow self) Houston sets up the dynamic lurking at the core of this eerie, yet enticing story. The id is the part of us that emerges and manifests our most repressed attractions. For all the progress mankind has made, there are still people who treat the queer community with contempt and aggression. Does his intersection with Sebastian trigger an unsettling epiphany for Jason? Do the visions intruding on Jason’s psyche evoke his worst fears? When Rapture playfully raises the assertion no lover wants to hear: It’s not you, it’s me, the duplicity isn’t lost on us. Yes it is Jason, and it isn’t.

Rapture has a purposeful, if trippy visual style. It falls somewhere on the continuum between the cunning of Nicholas Roeg and the gauziness of Robert Altman. Houston cleaves less to verisimilitude than phantasmagoria. There’s a tenuous tether to actuality, but just barely. Poor Jason has entered a place in his unconscious that refuses to play nice with the life he’s embraced. But only because he knew no differently. There may be some missteps, here and there, but Ryder Houston’s Rapture in Blue portends a future of cinematic odyssey that’s gripping, beguiling and implacable. The best filmmakers know how to gloriously mess with our minds, while remaining enjoyable. I’m thinking this describes Mr. Houston.

Available for streaming May 1st on Amazon Prime Video.

Mrs. Haggardly opens with three ladies sitting on thrones. Various comparisons come to mind. The Fates. The Gorgons. The Weird Sisters. A Tribunal. Two of them (Mrs. Haggardly and Madam Pigslips) are dowagers, one much younger (Mrs. Busybottom) a war widow. They wear elaborate gowns, gobs of makeup and enormous, turgid wigs, reminiscent of the aristocracy that fell to the French Revolution. The fact that these pretentious, arrogant, vindictive ladies are played by men, only adds to the grotesque air of decadence that suffuses this sardonic satire. (Gender mockery is a persistent thread.) These three run an orphanage for children who would seem to be casualties of war, emotionally and behaviorally speaking. One of their charges sits on a high stool, wearing a dunce cap. Johnny Rumsrunner, a kid who managed to escape, is a constant source of consternation

The Ochre House has a genius for cultivating a tangible sense dread (at least for me). Once I cross their threshold I hold my breath, convinced something unsettling is about to happen. This is not a bad thing. Ochre House has never stooped to crass shock appeal, or gratuitous mayhem. I savor knowing that anything can happen, and it’s always earned. Most of the characters in Mrs. Haggardly seem to suffer from one kind of deterioration or another: caricatures that explicate yet deprecate the glorification of battle.

Matthew Posey (playwright and director) and his intrepid troupe of remarkable artisans submerge us in a netherworld of buffered rage and throttled grief. I kept wondering if  Mrs. Haggardly was a rejoinder to Mother Courage (who for all her pragmatic chicanery, was merely trying to survive) while the despotic ladies of the orphanage reek of rapacious cruelty. The songs, composed by Justin Locklear, with titles like The Orphan God Forgot, Death Calls Merrily, and Ashes, have a searching and trance-like quality, often steeped in irony.

Mrs. Haggardly takes us into a realm that where you might as easily find The Red Queen, The Mad Hatter and The Jabberwocky. Matthew Posey’s peerless at fashioning mindscapes that function autonomously, gleefully engaged in their own perverse, yet consistent logic. The pathos is genuine, the camp a thing of excessive beauty, the tragedy a fraud and the monsters poised to jump from under your bed. Mrs. Haggardy is a rich, layered, detailed allegory of men’s ridiculous obsession with warfare. Don’t miss it.

“Even in these crazy times, Ochre House Theater is still here! Beginning Friday, April 3rd through April 24th, we will have Mrs. Haggardly, written and directed by Artistic Director Matthew Posey, available for streaming via the provided link. In the meantime, subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon for notifications! See Mrs. Haggardly once again, and if you haven’t seen it, now’s your chance!”

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT3anawUGNECyoRQsrVRZbg