Summerfest Daily Report - Sunday, August 5

By Glenn Sumi

Seeing hundreds of plays each year makes you a bit jaded. After a while, you come to think you've seen it all. An earnest one-woman show about body image and feeling insecure? Yeah, been there. An ensemble comedy about the acting world? Tell me something new. A relationship drama where the action moves backwards? Yawn.

Good ideas stand out in any festival. But a lot depends on how well they?re realized onstage. Many shows remain simply good premises. Here's a list of new SummerWorks shows that are good or bad ideas, with critical commentaries on how well they succeeded.

GOOD IDEA, GOOD EXECUTION: Laurie Fyffe's THE MALAYSIA HOTEL.

Premise: In a seedy traveller's hotel in Bangkok in 1982, a Cambodian prostitute (M.J. Kang) tries to get a jaded Canadian teacher and writer (Leanna Brodie) to help her escape the country.

Execution: Fyffe's script is gripping, smart and highly playable, with great big themes that touch on politics and various levels of exploitation. From the turning on of the first lightbulb, director Guillermo Verdecchia creates suspense which never lets up until the play's powerful candlelit conclusion 55 minutes later. There are two excellent parts for female actors, and Kang and Brodie deliver note-perfect performances, each evoking distinct worlds with separate mythologies and realities. With any luck and justice, Fyffe's play will become a classic two-hander, discussed, argued over and studied. Highly recommended.

GOOD IDEA, OK EXECUTION: THE SINGULAR LIFE OF ALBERT NOBBS, by Simone Benmussa, adapted from a story by George Moore

Premise: An excellent hotel waiter in nineteenth-century Dublin turns out to be a woman. Think Yentl meets James Joyce.

Execution: Benmussa's adaptation of the George Moore short story still feels awkwardly literary, with people narrating it, usually clumsily, and a detachment that distances us. The character of Nobbs (played very well by the dignified and proud Stavroula Logothettis) is also confusing. We?re told she has ?the emotions of a woman,? but we?re never really shown what these emotions or feelings are. He/she seems inhuman. The opportunity for a powerful feminist critique of the time and place gets lost. That said, there are some lovely moments in the piece, and it's always watchable, especially with Peter De Freitas? evocative costumes.

BAD IDEA, BAD EXECUTION: Anne Ptaznik's NO POSTHUMOUS VICTORY

Premise: A single Jewish woman, the child of a Holocaust survivor, bemoans her single state. Execution: Ptaznik's endless monologue feels more like a personal essay, or something she wrote for a psychiatrist, than a play. History, religion, sexuality, violence -- these are all presented shallowly onstage. And let's face it: the piece is in terrible taste. It's not funny. It's not thoughtful. And the actor/performer, who shrugs her shoulders like a Borscht Belt comic and runs too quickly over many lines, has zero stage charisma.

STAMP OF APPROVAL

Because of the layout of the venues, and the length of the lines, it's hard to hear most of the hoarsely-delivered pre-show speeches by house managers at SummerWorks. These are the speeches where they tell you about cellphones, no readmittance and tipping the festival.

Nicole Stamp, though, has no problems being heard. The other night, she coralled a restless crowd into the lobby of the Factory Studio to give us the spiel. And to encourage us to reach into our pockets, she delivered a damned good a capella performance of Can't Help Lovin? That Man, from the musical Show Boat. The sexual politics of the song may have been questionable, but her performance was hotter than the Factory Upstairs theatre after a full day of shows. Needless to say, she raked in lots of change for SummerWorks.

Her performance might not have been as hair-raising as her ball-juggling for the fest a couple of years ago. But remember, she's busy. She's directed Gordon Portman's S&M* at the fest, and just came from a successful Fringe run of Bobby Del Rio's Christian Values.