How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
'Camouflage'
Katie Polin
While impeccable one woman shows do exist, Gail Roberts' 'Camouflage' cannot be classified as such. With its dull, depressing tone and lack of thematic consistency, the play reads more like a therapy session for dissociative identity disorder than a performance for the stage.
For the first half of the hour-long show, Roberts displays her knack for applying makeup, lulling the audience to sleep as this epic metaphor for camouflage drags on. The remainder consists of Roberts assuming the roles of multiple characters, all of whom are executed at amateur status. She seems to think that changing the position of her legs miraculously brings about a correlating shift in gender.
Moreover, the camouflage motif does not follow through to Roberts' various characters, and this lack of cohesiveness hurts the show. She jumps from a homeless woman who takes one too many sugars in her coffee to an obese car salesman to herself as a young girl. There is no way to link these personas.
'It's better than sex!' screams the show's tagline. Listening to your grandmother's ramblings of working on the farm and making friends with a deranged homeless woman? Trust me, you can find better entertainment.
'Jihad for Vent and Dummy'
Andrew Flockhart
The basic premise of this ambiguously titled one man show: Ron Coulter (writer and star) would like to educate the audience about the dangers of 'belief' (aka blind faith in religion). Using the art of ventriloquism to illustrate the creative use of 'belief,' Coulter, who shatters the fourth wall within the first few minutes, embarks on a phenomenally well-acted, short and disturbing dialogue with his ventriloquist dummy Sid.
Unfortunately, not even Coulter's repeated monologues about the dangers of religion in the wrong hands and the differences between belief and faith can compensate for the play's muddled message. From the start, the audience is forced to accept only Coulter's definition of religion, belief and faith in order to comprehend what follows. Yet even after this tenuous leap of faith, confusion is inevitable: Coulter himself seems unsure of what he is trying to convey, let alone how to convey it.
Despite the confusing and often incoherent message of the play, Coulter's adept puppetry and acting (as well as the novelty of bringing ventriloquism to this medium) makes 'Jihad' worth seeing.
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'Hefner Monologues'
Katie Polin
Fun fact #69: There are seven men in the world with the last name Hefner. 'The Hefner Monologues' recounts the life of John Hefner, cousin to that infamous playboy Hugh. John is the awkward, balding, lisping Hefner, and he knows it. His one man show finds its comedic edge in its informality and John's overt willingness toward self-deprecation.
Wanting nothing more than to set himself apart from 'pipes, pussies and PJ's,' John feels lost and hopeless. How do you make a name for yourself when your name is already taken? In attempts to answer this question, he recalls all of the awkward experiences that make up his life through a series of flashbacks - the most prominent being Tammy.
Tammy was a dangerous girl, 'the type who played strip Dungeon and Dragons.' She was also John's first love. To recall her image, John caresses a single red rose. His fond memories with Tammy include asking her to slow-dance at a wedding, plotting a romantic date, and vomitting the first time he went down on her.
'The Hefner Monologues' are raw and painfully real. By the end, it is clear that John never did or ever will resemble the name Hefner in any sexy sense of the word (which is what he wanted all along). But we ultimately end up loving John because he lays his quirky, glamourless Hefner on the table and owns it.
'The Black Jew Dialogues'
Nina Patel
If you are wondering what good can come from hatred, allow 'The Black Jew Dialogues' to show you. In their hysterically funny two-man play, Larry Jay Tish and Ron Jones reveal a common heritage of persecution and misunderstanding between Jewish-Americans and African-Americans.
Through various scenes, music clips and video interviews, they manipulate each cultures' stereotypes to elicit endless laughs, as well as briefly inform the audience of the shared struggles and social activism. Ignorance, they say, is the basis for 'fearotypes,' the irrational suspicion of their races that perpetuates discrimination.
The first of the play's medley of skits is a series of interviews with unwitting people on the streets, conducted by a black or Jewish puppet, that display how little people know about either culture. If you think you would fare better, wait for the interactive game 'Jew/Not Jew' to follow. Jones invites the audience to test their own 'jewdar' by seeing if they are able to determine which celebrities are Jewish.
A side-splitting rendition of black and Jewish grandmothers Mabel and Esher meeting for a picnic further reveals stereotypes that, with work, can be set aside. Tish and Jones also discuss the ghettos (both Jewish and black), Chinese food on Christmas, and the presence of a black God through a light-hearted perspective.
While working to find a common platform for blacks and Jews to unite in friendship and activism, 'The Black Jew Dialogues' delights with humor while touching on the real discrimination that both groups face.
