Ten Foot Rat Cabaret at Under St. Marks x2

Ten Foot Rat Cabaret

Various Performers -- Produced by Rob Dub and Gregory Levine

Under St. Marks -- 94 St. Marks Place; New York, NY 10009

Reviewed 12/9/17

Pic via Ten Foot Rat at http://www.tenfootrat.com/blog/wordpress/

The Ten Foot Rat Cabaret impressed me again with a solid line-up of talented performers at Under St. Marks Theater. This theater, Under St. Marks, and the Ten Foot Rat seem to represent some of the edge that nostalgically lingers over New York’s streets. I’d say it’s a must-see variety show of strong acts for anyone who lives in the East Village especially considering you get them all under one roof for one of moonlit Manhattan’s best deals. This line-up featured the stalwart Guilty Pleasures Cabaret girls in some of their classy dance routines as well as the return of the darkly mesmerizing Shayfer James.

Shayfer James opened and closed the night and certainly put us into a trance starting off with an intense, “Oh your time is coming fast and the ferryman only deals in cash.” If you expected only comedy and a taste of burlesque, then you might have been in for a dark surprise. With a little bit of a parlor room, upbeat piano over which James croons sweetly in a husky voice about murder, it’s a little like sitting in on the in-house entertainment for the Adam’s Family’s annual ball.

Tough to follow that up with comedy? I’m not so sure especially for Melissa Aquiles who made it easy to laugh at a drunken santa left over from last year’s santa con. The audience joked around with her too as she went through the trials of being that typical “frat boy” who went too far. Having been that far gone myself a few times (as has the rest of the audience maybe), there were a lot of moments to chuckle at one’s own blunders.

Appearing again for the Ten Foot Rat was also the excellent Gregor of Berlin. No one handles the anti-joke with such stunning alacrity as the character’s creator, Gregory Levine. As he talked about the tribulations of poor Rudolph and bemoaned the sadistic traditions of Christmas fables, we were lured into the quiet cunning of Levine’s mastery of the art form. Once again the lesson? Live! Live your life to the fullest! Just seeing one of Levine’s sketches of Gregor of Berlin is worth coming to the Ten Foot Rat.

Another awesome sight to see was the Guilty Pleasure Cabaret girls. These dancers put on a revolving sequence of skits that are often holiday and seasonally themed. Their talent for acrobatics, timing, and ability to do all of their complicated skits in the middle of the night time after time make them one of my favorite acts in New York. Truly a pleasure to get a chance to see them work and to see what intricate costumes they’ll dance in next!

If Shayfer James’ hadn’t started us off with dark, then Noam Osband’s skit would have certainly added it. It was an easy one to laugh/cringe at. He sang about love from the perspective of Hitler’s wife, Eva Braun. It doesn’t get much more convoluted than that as one might simultaneously hope the heroine gets her love whilst knowing that she loved…yeah…

Before the Guilty Pleasures girls and Shayfer James, sent us off into the night with another dance and song respectively, Pamela Wess performed one of the most clever burlesque asks I’ve seen. As a clown, burlesque dancer, she attempted to perform a strip tease and constantly failed to do so. She easily found a space that combined funny and sexy although without the clown nose it may have been hard to figure out.

Hope you get a chance to see the Ten Foot Rat Cabaret! They’re a good group of people including host, Jillian Thomas, whose wise cracks about Canada versus the US have only gotten more nuclear ammunition as of late. Get ready for the next show in this monthly series tonight, January 13th!

It's Getting Tired...Mildred at Under St. Marks

This review of It's Getting Tired Mildred at Under St. Mark's Theater was written by Christopher M. Struck and published in Volume X, Issue 7 (2017) of the online edition of Applause! Applause!

It's Getting Tired Mildred
Written, Directed & Produced by Roger Nasser
Lighting Design & Board Operation by Berit Johnson
Costume Design by Karle J. Meyers, Kaitlyn Day & Holly Pocket McCaffrey
Theme & Score by Stephen Sabaugh
Under St. Mark's Theater
94 St. Mark's Place
New York, New York 10009
Reviewed 10/7/17

Welcome to the town of Mildred Springs or should I say "Welcome Back." This show's premiere episode this season at Under St. Mark's Theater is also the 24th episode of It's Getting Tired Mildred. Most of the cast returns as well marking this particularly interesting and unique drama (at least as far as theater in New York is concerned) as a bit of a celebration for the myriad of regulars (in attendance) who have enjoyed the series over the past three years. Roger Nasser, the writer, director, and producer of It's Getting Tired Mildred (under the name Six of Six Productions) is to be credited for bringing variety to the New York theater scene with this "soap opera for the stage."
 

image of the cast from their facebook page - much fun!

Set in the town of Mildred Springs in 1985, this farcical dramedy relies on cliches and hijinks to satisfy and enamor the audience. It does a good job too by consistently varying the delivery and timing of punchlines during short bits that showcase characters with obvious history, chemistry, and rivalry. Like any good soap opera, there are affairs, personality clashes, emotional traumas, and hidden secrets. Each of which the writer ramped up on overdrive as the cast features 22 performers and everything seems to need to be achieved in five minutes or less. Often lovers are traded in from nearby scene to scene or covert affairs are revealed just as one unwitting lover leaves the stage. After the bare minimum of witty banter, social niceties and norms are cast aside for a raucous turn on the community couch with the lights fading to black just as the actors lock in an overly passionate embrace. You'd feel bad for one dame only to find she's screwing someone else behind her lover's back too.

While the production does rely on at times egregiously simple dialogue to drive narratives and heighten the drama, it compounds so quickly that you can't help but laugh. For example, one cast member was replaced by a new actor and the character had just gotten married, so when describing his marriage in the first scene, he triumphantly stated, "I'm a different man!" It's almost like an anti-joke where the lack of a punchline forces you to chuckle where you expected to anyway and then you laugh more in an attempt to justify your laughing. Part of this is because the actors are so serious about their roles strutting in or sulking or sauntering to take their simultaneously stereotypical and important roles from oversexualized hypnotherapist to the family patriarch. It's posh, camp, flamboyant and also extremely well-orchestrated. 

A number of the actors here are fun to watch like the lead woman in the "Milton" family who has dominated Mildred Springs, Charmaine Milton, played by the exquisitely dressed Morgan Zipf-Meister. She is about to confront her father, the lovably evil patriarch, Cornelius Milton, played by an equally talented Linus Gelber. A grave secret found within a file aptly labeled "secret" has been slowly spreading from character to character. It threatens to change everything we know about at least one character and perhaps two. Roger Nasser, the show's writer, understands that newcomers may not know all of the background and thankfully he has built some history into each little bit. Although for some reason it seems easier to figure out who's sleeping with whom than what each character's name is. There is a lot to look forward to in Episode 25 on Saturday, November 4, 2017, at 10:30 p.m. at Under St. Mark's Theater. Get advance tickets by visiting www.horsetrade.info 

Check out their facebook page too - https://www.facebook.com/Its-Getting-Tired-Mildred-1544140389173208/