Month: May 2025

I remember as a kid seeing footage of Hitler addressing the populace and the derogatory cartoons, for a few years before I learned the explanation. The odd way he spoke, there was a rhythm to it, and yet something deeply troubling. You needn’t pay careful attention to see there was something ridiculous in his demeanor, comical but pathological. Germany suffered crushing, degrading defeats and Adolph simply told them what they were desperate to hear. He also provided a marginalized, innocuous Community (the Jews) to blame for all of Germany’s tribulations. An unimaginable act of persecution and cowardice. He and a member of his inner circle devised a way to commit genocide without drawing attention.

In 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera premiered in Berlin. New York in 1931. The characters are composed of beggars, thieves, sex workers, a very smooth, ruthless criminal (Mack the Knife) and a corrupt cop (Tiger Brown). Salient points of this remarkably popular musical play are it’s unflinching details of the caste system that result  in inhumanity, savagery, racism, destitution of the poorer classes. A kind of metaphysical cannibalism. Like the slave trade in the deep South, the culture subsisted on the exploitation and abuse of the oppressed, and therefore, no agency. Sex workers provide a necessary “service”, beggars rely on the better angels of strangers, thieves take what isn’t theirs. One way or another these practices are humiliating and contemptible.

Written and Directed by Matthew Posey, the sardonic Moving Creatures gets its jolt and depraved indifference from Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera. The costumes (somewhat opulent but crumby) the makeup (the freakish white pallor of zombies) suggest the privileged yet morally destitute, members of Baron Leopold McDoogal’s “cabinet”. Favored but essentially in servitude. Moving Creatures is set in Scotland, but The TPO’s devices of pulling us out of the narrative, the actors who step out of character to sing to us, directly dovetail with its groundbreaking predecessor.

The humor in Moving Creatures is darker than the gallows, merciless as the plague. It is, and turns on the mechanics of spoof. We could posit that the roots of humor emerge from irony. Even in the midst of the horrific, a well-timed gag can alleviate the sting. Waiter this stew is spoiled. I’m dying. Not to worry sir, you won’t be charged. Working from a vaudevillian vibe, Creatures has much to entertain. Imagine Charles Manson doing slapstick. Gradually despondency eclipses shtick.

Baron Leopold is depicted as a profoundly disturbed, self-absorbed, imbecile. An infant in the threads of a monarch. He’s surrounded by attendants. They are not servants, but neither do they have volition. They indulge his every whim by pretending obedience, but run ragged to prevent catastrophe. Like so many idiots who find themselves perched on the throne, his idea of utopia is a kingdom, a universe (?) where no one can say “No.”

If you haven’t guessed by now, Moving Creatures is an allegory. A way of addressing a particular situation by changing the milieu. Consider how theaters achieve clarity by setting The Taming of the Shrew in the 1940’s. Baron Leopold’s court has been stripped of their compassion. They have been reduced to Moving Creatures.

Ochre House Theater produced Moving Creatures, running May 3^rd,24th, 2025.

825 Exposition Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75226. 214-826-6273. ochrehousetheater.org

Brian Dang’s  H*LLO K*TTY  syndrome begins with the revelation that Hello Kitty is not a cat, but a girl. Several individuals weigh in. “What do you mean she’s not a cat? or “Well of course, she’s not a cat!” Perhaps we can presume she’s female? Or at least she presents as such. She calls herself “HK” popping up in the lives of her friends: a detective, a homemaker (her sister) and a cowboy. They take exception to her odd attire, but she refuses to remove her enormous head. She insists she’s not Hello Kitty, but HK, the girl they all know. Each feels abandoned by her, but not for want of caring. They want to intersect, but only on their terms.

What follows is a series of episodes: each a different angle intended to explore and demonstrate the same issues. Are we who we are, or how expectations shape us? Are we  defined by our pursuits, our gender, archetypes? If you strip away all the layers, when will we find the essence of the essence? Each step in each piece has some element of the ridiculous. Solemn but absurd.

Perhaps this satire on the choice between the value of self and the value of others was inspired by Samuel Beckett. In Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, Endgame, existentialist Beckett considers the same dilemma over and again. We wait for omens and evidence of divine intervention, as if we had no agency. The characters In H*LLO.. likewise are searching for answers, especially HK herself. In one scene HK asks the bumbling Stage Manager (God?) spiritual questions but his answers are vague, passive, equivocal.

Above all, H*LLO…addresses the question of gender identity, and how it plays out in the day to day world. How our culture unwittingly indoctrinates us. At one point poor HK is thrown into the lair of serial killer, as you might throw a nun into a flophouse. We adopt the roles our culture imposes, but when crisis intervenes, they break down. Each character finds themselves switching to the archetypical garb of a different gender. The compulsively pie-baking homemaker becomes the noir detective, the cowboy becomes a housekeeper, the detective becomes the cowboy. I think. It feels like kids playing make believe. HK is a normal girl, obliged to keep everybody happy. The sunshiny angel without a mouth.

The play raises the question repeatedly, is intimacy possible without authenticity? Our identity (such as it is) anchors us. But if we remove that, if we see one another without accoutrements, do we lose friends by practical application? Does society demand sketchy assignation of gender and purpose? In a pivotal scene, a man and HK begin to spark romance. She is mutually compliant, but when she won’t shed her outer layer, things get ugly. She won’t let him sandbag. He’s not wrong, exactly. But it’s not his choice to make. And we don’t know many times she’s been wounded, when she took that risk.

Undermain has produced quite the spectacle. Playwright Brian Dang illustrates their insights in revved up, urgent permutations. The performers possessed by a manic energy, a myriad of chaotic montage. The various scenes, carefully, ritualistically composed, feel as if they’re colliding with the actual.  The sublime wrestling with the farcical. The experience is exhilarating,

Undermain Theatre presents: H*LLO K*TTY syndrome, playing from May 1^st through the 25th, 2025. Undermain Theatre. 3200 Main Street Dallas, TX 75226. 214-747-5515. www.undermain.org

 

Gail has been chronically ill for more than twenty-five years. Agonizing, intense, punishing. After a parade of doctors and specialists she is no closer to a solution. Understandably desperate, she sells her home to check into a sanitarium, that promises a possible cure. Once she gets there, she is greeted by Sacha, the gatekeeper. She offers Gail a glass of water, then tells her where she can get one. The consummate host.

It doesn’t take long to discover just how sketchy this institution is. Dr. Tolliver the “guru” has a doctorate in Literature, not Medicine. The regimen is decidedly Draconian. No leaving your Spartan cabin after curfew, no questioning their methods or ideology, no wandering the grounds. No contact with the outside for three weeks. Warmth or encouragement offered only in small doses, if at all.

We must wonder if Dr. Tolliver wraps her recovery retreat in mystery so she can appropriate the client’s money. Despairing patients willing to sign up for any inkling of hope. If the passengers of the Titanic knew their ultimate destination, would they have purchased a ticket? We could speculate on the strategy behind the treatment. Distract the patient from focusing on their illness. Some of the sick will hold fast to their pathology, because it gives them some psychological reward. Don’t indulge physical torment, because it could hold them back.

One is reminded of the notorious Boot Camps for delinquent teens, where they are subjected to Drill Sargent techniques. Prolonged hikes and sleep deprivation and compulsory submission. Results are no measure of success. If you shoplift and they cut off your hand, you’re reformed? For some it works, others die.

Playwright Blake Hackler aims to explain the inexplicable. If you’re chronically ill and science fails, try the unorthodox. If the unorthodox fails, find a metaphysical healer. Luckily Dr. Tolliver keeps one in the wings, for just such emergencies. Gail is wheeled out on a gurney, with the reassurance she’s in for worse suffering, but it should do the trick. No other explanation. Just another enigma.

There are patterns. Martyrdom. Lack of compassion. Victim blaming. Equivocation. It’s not unusual to find dramas that offer (to engage, to provoke) questions with no answers. Perhaps this drama (like a pilgrim) wants to find out why healing sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t. Perhaps at long last, it’s unknowable.

Second Thought Theatre presents Healed, playing April 23rd-May 10^th, 2025. Bryant Hall on the Kalita Humphreys Campus. 3400 Blackburn Street, Dallas, Texas 75219. 214-837-3091. secondthoughttheatre.com