Crescendo Falls: The Hump Episode

Theater Schmeater

Through July 22.

A tomcatting father, who is a movie star, and his nerdy son, who is in high school, are standing in a hospital, by the bedside of the mother, who is in a coma. The father is telling the son how to score chicks. "You gotta take charge," he says, straddling the unconscious mother and jackhammering his crotch towards her face. "Grab her, throw her down, and ride her like she owes you money!" The audience groaned that happy, terrible-joke groan. Crescendo Falls is the kind of show you can enjoy groaning to.

The story involves the sex-and-violence machinations of a wealthy showbiz family—a mother held hostage in a wine cellar, brothers killing brothers, inadvertent incest ("she's your long-lost sister!"), and gay jokes galore. For instance: Husband to angry wife: "I'm in prison. Do you know what that means?" Angry wife to husband: "Yes! For the first time in your life, you don't have to pay for gay sex!" (Groan.) Director Erik Hill keeps the actors hustling and sweating through the histrionic script. They're obviously enjoying themselves, sometimes more than the audience is, but the show is carried by a knowing grace—it doesn't pretend to be anything other than cheap and dirty. The stage, for example, is covered in sand for Kuwait (see review below), which makes for difficult walking and running. What to do? Have the wacky newscaster (Terri Weagant) announce that a freak sandstorm hit town. Bam. Done. Next joke, please.

Crescendo Falls proudly wears the stripes of late-night theater: gleeful sloppiness, confusing and mostly irrelevant plots, over-over-over-over-the-top performances, filthy jokes, and a bar. But is it worth nine dollars? I guess—if you like to groan. BRENDAN KILEY

Kuwait

Theater Schmeater

Through July 22.

The set for this facile play by Vincent Delaney, about the distortions perpetrated by embedded reporters and their military keepers during times of war (Gulf War I, to be precise), is a giant sandbox. The sand stretches from end to end of Theater Schmeater's wide, shallow stage—granular, dark, about a foot deep. It's got sandcastle potential, but apart from some hysterical digging around for murdered Iraqi babies (orphans, even!), it is sadly underutilized. When the play gets boring, it's hard not to imagine 20 kids rushing the stage and showing the actors what sand is for.

Two characters spend all their time in the sandbox. Kelsey (David S. Hogan), alias Joe, is a soldier assigned to supervise Rachel Cayman (Kelly Kitchens), a New York Times reporter forcibly detained because she strayed out of bounds. The script doesn't allow them much range—Rachel is self-important ("Do you know who I am? Do you know how much money I make?") and wields her sexuality like a blunt instrument, while "Joe" is young and likes beer—but they do attain brief flares of chemistry. Downstage from the sandbox are two more characters: Martha (Terri Weagant), a military spokeswoman, and Catherine (Rebecca Olson), a reporter so ditzy it's hard to believe the playwright graduated from high school. At one point, Catherine burbles excitedly into her satellite phone, "The war is totally awesome, we're winning, bye!" And though Weagant gives her character an appealingly earthy cynicism, she's also forced to deliver a line that begins, "If I had children, and they were orphans, I... "

We get it, we get it: Soldiers are dumb. Reporters are stupid. The offstage citizenry must be fucking idiots. The Gulf War was a stage-managed farce, behind which the U.S. military was probably murdering children (orphans, even!) indiscriminately. Thank god it's a one-act. ANNIE WAGNER

Fêtes de la Nuit

Strike Anywhere Productions at Re-bar

Through July 16.

It's almost impossible to copy down on paper: the Lascivious French Laugh, the rumbling "Oh-ho-HO" that signifies either a smarmy movie Frenchman or your drunken friends acknowledging that a double entendre just entre-voused into the conversation. This production—38 short skits by Charles L. Mee—is the equivalent of that laugh: a horny, over-the-top attention-getter.

Ten characters fumble around Paris—you can tell that it's Paris because there's a large Eiffel Tower on the secondary stage, and also because half the cast is speaking in unreal, now-you-hear-them, now-you-don't FRAWN-say accents—flirting with the audience and each other, looking like they're having the time of their lives. Someone sings "All of Me" to his broom. In one well-acted bit, a woman wordlessly greets different people—lovers, friends, unrequited crushes. There's a baguette fight. A couple flirts on either side of a stranger on a park bench, hilariously including him in their sexual healing. Everybody does the cancan. An especially funny bit involves the theme song to Mr. Belvedere, which is not Gallic but weirdly exciting anyway.

It's a rare theater-going thrill to feel like the actors are openly wooing the audience, using whatever silly methods are necessary to complete the seduction. I'll admit, I swooned; I simply can't imagine a more perfect summer evening theater date than this play. Everything works together to duplicate the giddy, irrational sense of falling in love. One skit features a gorgeous blonde in lingerie, squealing as her boyfriend snaps pictures while barking directions. "Pose a metaphysical question!" he shouts at her. Lying on the floor in her high heels, she pauses, confused, and then throws her legs open as only a woman with gymnastic training can. "Yes!" the boyfriend shouts, ecstatic, taking a picture. Oh-ho-HO, indeed. PAUL CONSTANT