Adventures in Mating

Theater Schmeater

Through Aug 25.

Warning: This review will consist entirely of quotes from the PR material for Adventures in Mating™ as culled from the world wide web.

"YOU play the role of cruel fate in a romantic comedy for cynics of all ages! When the dysfunctional couple can't make simple decisions like ordering red or white wine, the audience votes and the show takes off in wildly different directions. With multiple storylines and endings, plus ever-changing scene options—you can't see it all if you only see it once! Soup or salad? Slap or kiss? Life or death? YOU DECIDE!"

"It is now, literally, an international sensation! An ongoing production of Mating plays every Thursday night in New York. Theater Scmheater [sic] in Seattle is producing Mating in July and August of 2007. In late 2007 and early 2008, the first translated version of Adventures in Mating will be performed at Theatre 199 in Sofia, Bulgaria."

From the reviews:

"Funny beyond the power of adjectives! I may stop laughing—next week! The PERFECT INTERACTIVE SHOW for Passive-Aggressive Minnesotans!"

From merchandising:

"Support independent art by turning yourself into a walking advertisement for Joseph Scrimshaw's hit interactive romantic comedy! Will you choose the Jeffrey T-shirt or the Waiter Apron? Boxers or thongs? Proudly display the show logo and motto—'You can't see it all, if you only see it once!'"

And back to the PR:

"You can also bring an existing production of Mating to your event! The show is quality comedic entertainment for corporate parties, a great example of alternative theater for students of the arts, and a perfect speed-dating event for singles groups! For rates and availability, e-mail joseph@josephscrimshaw.com." BRENDAN KILEY

Cupcake

The Historic University Theatre

Through Aug 25.

"Are you offended easily?" asks an 18-year-old who hears it's my first time at Cupcake. I tell him about my planned neck tattoo of the Gerber baby with a snake coiled around its head, squeezing. The snake will have red dice for eyes, I think.

"Good," he says, "the show's kind of... crass. It's really funny, but not for everyone." He wears a chunk of meteorite around his neck and a pink shirt with "I'm dripping Julien" written in cursive around a delicious-looking cupcake (it's supposed to be a girl's shirt, he explains). His friend's Cupcake T-shirt reads "premature ejaculator." The crowd is decidedly under 20.

At midnight-thirty, Ethan Newberry and Justin Sund arrive, each with a 40-ounce bottle of Olde English malt liquor duct-taped to one hand. A batch of cupcakes and two shots of liquor sit center stage. The shots are for shooting, the cupcakes for pelting.

Newberry and Sund perform scenes like "Trapped on a Rollercoaster with a Cannibal" and "Hitler's First Date." ("Do you want to die or do you want to have sex with Hitler?") As an added challenge, Sund and Newberry must finish their 40s before the show's end. Next week's challenge involves Mexican wrestling masks and "unoffensive" Mexican accents.

It's easy to see that Newberry and Sund are skilled improv artists, but they rely more on jokes about cocksucking and the random, well-delivered obscenity than the actual skits for laughs. In the middle of the show, an adult couple in the second row—the only adult couple—makes a big production of leaving.

"I'm dripping Julien" has it right: The show is funny, fun, and crass. If you're under 18, you might even call it genius. CIENNA MADRID

Mud Angel

Live Girls! Theater

Through Aug 11.

If the seven actors in Mud Angel were disappointed to play for only two audience members on a Saturday afternoon, they didn't show it. They performed an earnest interpretation of an earnest script (by Seattle's Joy McCullough-Carranza) about Pablo, a Guatemalan orphan who leaves for L.A. at 12 years old, grows up, writes some best-selling novels, and returns to his village as a publicity stunt. "This trip is just business," Pablo keeps saying, "to show the people at home that I'm still connected to the village."

He isn't, of course—when he says "home," he means Los Angeles. But his apprehension about returning to Guatemala is overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of his gringa wife and the accompanying gringa magazine journalist. The American trio stays with Pablo's adopted Guatemalan mother and Ana, his childhood friend, who was supposed to have been the love of his life. Ana has quietly carried a torch for Pablo for decades.

Predictably, Ana is upset when she meets Pablo's wife and even more upset when Pablo isn't upset by her husband. Tensions rise, but everything is tenuously resolved with a bit of natural history: The quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, has fled its home country for Costa Rica. "But its tiny heart," the novelist declares to Ana, "beats for Guatemala." Only a disingenuous writer would try to weasel out of a sticky emotional mess with a grandiose metaphor. And only a playwright who's written herself into a corner would let him get away with it.

But Mud Angel's biggest weakness is the presence of a phantom character, a projection of what Pablo might be like if he'd never left his Guatemalan hamlet. This pseudo-Pablo makes explicit what is implicit in actual-Pablo's dialogue. Ouch.

But director Darian Lindle has found what's best about the script (the failures of ethnic authenticity, the queasy relationship between subject and journalist, the sadness of spouses who feel shut out from each others' lives) and the actors manage well, particularly Daniel Christensen as the conflicted Pablo and Heather Gautschi as Ana, his damaged childhood sweetheart. Despite the script's shortcomings, the two of us in the audience clapped extra loudly for the curtain call. BRENDAN KILEY