Not the Weakest Link

Review of The Commencement of William Tan at Yale Cabaret

For some, high school sucks. It’s the time of life when you can learn some pretty disheartening things, like maybe the girl of your dreams really isn’t the girl of your dreams, like maybe your best friend is a racist, and maybe you’ve been in denial all along about a big part of your own identity. Those are the sort of coming-of-age struggles facing William Tan (Eston Fung) in this likable comedy-drama from Don X. Nguyen, directed by Lauren E. Banks.

You don’t have to be a high school alum from the Eighties to appreciate the familiar sit-com elements that create the reassuring aspects of the play, but, if you are, William Tan will certainly jar you back to the heyday of teased hair and shoulder pads, on girls, and bad dance moves on guys. It’s the era of Ferris Bueller’s famous day off, and William Tan, as played by Fung, wears a suitable air of Matthew Broderick cluelessness and earnestness—particularly when trying to parse a poem for his English teacher.

Eston Fung as William Tan

Because he’s an ambitious gymnast for the Lincoln High Links in Nebraska, William hangs out with the jocks at the school, particularly Dutch (Jason de Beer), the BMOC who, it will emerge, has issues with the Vietnamese guys, not from Lincoln, who hang out at the convenience store near the school. Thanks to a bit of relevant historical context from Guidance Counselor Ms. Chadda (Libby Peterson), we’re reminded of the mid-Seventies, when U.S. racists could be virulent about Vietnamese-Americans, whom they saw as virtually indistinguishable from Viet Cong, the “enemy.” Those days are long gone c. 1989, we might think, but they remain personally relevant for Dutch, who lost his dad in Nam, and seethes with the put-upon gripes of those who feel affronted by other ethnic groups.

What’s this got to do with William? He’s Chinese, so by the murky logic of white racism, whereby all Asians are related, he should be, in Ms. Chadda’s view, the guy to step in when Dutch and his cronies scrawl hate speech in the locker room. Meanwhile, William just wants to concentrate on his parallel bars and figure out how to talk to Gretchen (Tori Keenan-Zelt), the cheerleader (or Pom-a-Link) who has caught his fancy. Of course, he’s got a female confidante, the plain-Jane Betsy (not Bette) Davis (Baize Buzan), his chum who could be so much more. Buzan nearly runs away with the show since Betsy is more aware, clever and concerned than William, but making slow guys think fast is something the long-suffering sex has been saddled with since time immemorial, and she’s willing to call William out to wake him up to reality.

Nguyen’s play gets the high school dynamic right—in part because the story is based on events from the playwright’s past—especially how insular students can be. In minding his own business, William is typical. But the racial dynamic at his school and the expectations of well-meaning females such as Ms. Chadda and Betsy force him to reconsider his friendship with Dutch and the extent to which he is implicated in slurs against Asians. There’s also a nicely laconic confrontation between William and Vinh (Jae Shin), the leader of the Vietnamese kids, where reminiscences of smoking weed in middle school, together with Dutch, are interlaced with threats of a fight armed with knives and guns.

Helping to sell the comedy are occasional timely references and routines by the Pom-a-Links (Keenan-Zelt, Rebecca Hampe, and Cat Rodriguez) that feature radio hits of the day. How satisfied you are with the resolution of the drama may hinge on whether or not it seems fitting that William should have to make himself something of a sacrificial victim and how convincing his motivations are. Nguyen wisely stops short of a major soul-searching epiphany of racial consciousness on William’s part, but there’s a suitable moral in the fact that our hero does shed his assimilationist blinders and might even take an interest in China when he visits with his family after graduation. And that makes for enough of a commendable commencement.

The Commencement of William Tan
By Don X. Nguyen
Directed by Lauren E. Banks

Dramaturgs: Ashley Chang, Kee-Yoon Nahm; Scenic Designers: Dan Cogan, Jean Kim; Costume Designer: Edmund Donovan; Lighting Designer: Alex Zinovenko; Sound Designer: Fan Zhang; Technical Directors: Dan Cogan, Rae Powell; Choreographer: Matia Johnson; Fight Choreographer: Sean Patrick Higgins; Stage Manager: Steven Koernig; Producers: Sooyoung Hwang, Steven Koernig

Cast: Eston Fung; Baize Buzan; Libby Peterson; Jason de Beer; Jae Shin; Rebecca Hampe; Tori Keenan-Zelt; Cat Rodriguez

Yale Cabaret
November 5-7, 2015

Keeping It Together

Review of MoonSong at Yale Cabaret

MoonSong, written by Sean Patrick Higgins, an actor in the Yale Drama School, and co-directed by Higgins and Libby Peterson, a theater manager, could be considered a play about illness, though what it’s really about is one woman’s unbreakable spirit. “Mom” is based on Higgins’ own mother and is  played by her daughter Mary Higgins, and what she manifests, from her opening, ice-breaking pre-song patter as an entertainer, to her struggles with the well-meaning adult son who is trying to break her of bad, health-deteriorating and money-wasting habits, is centered self-awareness and an offbeat sense of humor. Indeed, Higgins’ play shows how humor, as much as love and good intentions, is key to weathering difficult circumstances.

Mom faces many trials in this very compressed play: her condition of multiple sclerosis, a first husband jailed, a second husband who dies well before she would have expected, and children who, like the free spirits she has taught them to be, tend to prefer make believe to unpleasant realities.

Mom is a singer, and from time to time breaks into song. She also prays the Act of Contrition with a believer’s sense that the trials she endures, like her blessings—eyesight!—have come from God. Higgins and his collaborators are to be commended for creating such a direct and charming character, letting her address us in her own voice. In fact, her monologue—interrupted at times by Son (Jonathan Higginbotham) and his games or his tantrums or his tattling on his brothers or sister—is, for most of the play, the show’s main virtue. Interaction with other characters doesn’t fully come into its own until Son is off to college. Particularly effective is her vigil at the dying bedside of her husband Phil while speaking to Son on the phone. We see there, and again and again, how her basic mode is to think of others. Though she tells us, the audience, about her fears and frailty, she hides it from her children as much as she can, and stays “in character” as the mother they need. She keeps it light.

Late in the play, that role starts to fray. We see how hard it has become to maintain her even tone of kind affability. Her son takes her to task for smoking, for giving away money, for buying snacks for a neighbor’s dog. We might think her mind is starting to go, but in the give and take between Son and Mom, Higgins gets at the tension—call it pride, call it independence—that keeps a mother, in her 50s, from willingly and easily becoming her child’s child. Mom has her reasons, she has her wants and needs, most of which she has ignored and let go in her long, hard life. There’s a little bit of Lear’s “O reason not the need!” in her defiance, and our sense of her character grows as a result.

Though there could be more interest provided by the enactment, with more actors, of the other characters in this family of five, and while Son seems not to develop much, there are other assets to the evening: Mary Higgins’ clear and simple singing voice, and her effective way of acting out physical impairment without dwelling on it; moments of dance or rhythmic movement that, at the show’s opening, set a tone of “interpretation.” We know we aren’t getting a play with conventional scenic development. There are huge leaps in time, gaps in what is happening, and the bursts of choreography tell us things in a non-narrative manner. There are also projected backdrops in Izmir Ickbal's moonlike set, and sound effects: the image of rain patterning a giant moon works into the play almost as a sign from God, letting us for a moment glimpse the benign universe that, for all her Job-like troubles, Mom still lives in.

Beyond the question of what keeps this woman’s spirits up and makes her such a loving and dedicated mother to her “pups”—at one point she claims “I’m a lioness and these are my cubs”—there’s the question of how we, as a culture, treat and judge the ill. In Mom’s view, God’s plan is present even in suffering, but, socially, we tend to see the ill as victims of bad judgments or tough luck. In MoonSong, hearing and seeing how those afflicted cope with a life that, for many, is already hard enough, is certainly inspiring, but it should also be a goad to look for ways to help those who need the help.

A sensitive portrait of a rare spirit, MoonSong makes a strong case for the bonds of family and the heroism of living for each day’s blessing.

MoonSong
By Sean Patrick Higgins
Co-directed by Sean Patrick Higgins and Libby Peterson

Stage Manager: Rebekah Heusel; Set Designer: Izmir Ickbal; Costume Designer: Sydney Gallas; Lighting Designer: Erin E. Fleming; Sound Designer: Ian Williams; Associate Sound Designer: Matthew Fischer; Projections Designer: Elizabeth Mak; Choreographer: Dan Higgins; Technical Director: Kelly Fayton; Dramaturg: Catherine Maria Rodriguez; Producer: Chiara Klein

Yale Cabaret
October 15-17, 2015

Cab 47 Recap

Season 47 of the Yale Cabaret has ended its run as of April 25th, which must mean it's time for a re-cap of the season. A re-cap wherein I try to recall and celebrate my favorite contributions to the magical basement that is the Yale Cabaret. Ready? Here are a baker's dozen of categories with my five exemplars in each (in chronological order, but for my fave pick), for a total of 65 citations: New Play: This year’s top five never-before-seen, new plays were: Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, in which Alice in Wonderland—or rather Liddy in Wonderland—meets “Little Miss” beauty pageants, written with verve for a cast of crazies by Emily Zemba; The Zero Scenario, in which every Cleveland in these United States is threatened by the Ticks of Death but for a special plucky band of heroes, written by Ryan Campbell; The Untitled Project, in which a collective of black male YSD’ers create self-portraits in the context of racial profiling, conceived and directed by Ato Blankson-Wood and created by the ensemble; Sister Sandman Please, in which three sisters put it out there for a cowboy, with varying degrees of passion, irony and intention, written by Jessica Rizzo; and ... 50:13, in which an incarcerated black man about to be freed tries to tell it like it is, with candor, wit and a variety of character sketches, to a young prison-mate, written by Jiréh Breon Holder.

Adapted Play: Impressive pre-existing plays adapted for Cab 47 included four translations and an English-language opera: Don’t Be Too Surprised, written by Geun-Hyung Park, translated and directed by Kee-Yoon Nahm, lets us know in no uncertain terms that familial dysfunction can still take surprising forms on stage; MuZeum, translated and directed by Ankur Sharma, tells stories from ancient sources and contemporary headlines, to dramatize powerfully the victimization of women; Quartet by Heinrich Müller, translated by Doug Langworthy, directed by David Bruin, revisits Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons as a wickedly entertaining pas de deux and psychologically fraught cat-and-mouse; The Medium, an opera by Gian Carlo Menotti, directed by Ahn Lê, creates a world of mystery, loss, and deep feeling and gives further credence to the notion that opera is not just for opera houses; and ... Leonce and Lena by Georg Büchner, translated by Gavin Whitehead, directed by Gavin Whitehead and Elizabeth Dinkova, presents a play of aristocratic ennui that torches the well-made play, and this time with puppets!

Set Design: After all, the Cab is a basement with a kitchen, and convincing us we’re in a new space each week takes some doing. Here are some set designs that went beyond all expectation in their achieved artistry: Kurtis Boetcher’s set for Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time made a door where there’s a window and had the coloring and style of a child’s playhouse; Joey Moro’s versatile set for Hotel Nepenthe breathed a seedy charm, like we imagine Hotel Duncan does, or should; Chika Shimuzi and Izmir Ickbal’s stunning set for MuZeum lent aura aplenty and eye-catching beauty to its revue-style presentation; Christopher Thompson’s set for The Zero Scenario seemed to defy space itself in cramming so much busy-ness into the Cab, including a motelroom and a hidden headquarters, and ... Adrian Martinez Frausto’s moody set for The Medium was so fully achieved in its seedy gentility it might be a film set inviting a camera’s scrutiny.

Costumes: Dressing actors for their parts often goes beyond the norm, creating inspired additions to the visual flair of a show. Some of the tops in costumes were: Grier Coleman’s range of captivating dress for ancient characters of India and contemporary folks in MuZeum; Fabian Aguilar and Alexae Visel’s super cool get-ups for the agents protecting us from Tick Apocalypse in The Zero Scenario; Alexae Visel’s authentic mock-ups of the cartoonish costumes of the old Batman series “fit just like my glove” in Episode 21: Catfight; Haydee Zelideth had a field day with modernist Enlightenment-era costuming in Leonce and Lena; and ... Soule Golden and Montana Blanco rendered camp versions of the White Rabbit, Hatter, White Queen, and Tweedledum/dee we won’t soon forget in Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time.

Lighting: It doesn’t just help us see, it also selects and shows and evokes, sometimes making for quite magical effects. Illuminating dancers with lights that added to both movement and music in Solo Bach: Caitlin Smith Rapoport; creating a wealth of visual effects that kept us entranced in MuZeum: Joey Moro; putting on a show and putting-on the trappings of a storybook world in Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time: Joey Moro; using light to complement stories and to add drama in 50:13: Elizabeth Mak; and ... creating an Old World atmosphere both spooky and authentic in The Medium: Andrew Griffin.

Sound: It can be used in striking or surprising ways, or to create an aural texture to accompany the action. Creating a wintery world with bursts of music and broadcasts in Rose and the Rime: Jon Roberts, Joel Abbott; maintaining a sustained eerieness and B-movie aura in Hotel Nepenthe: Sinan Zafar; incorporating music and a range of emotional tones in MuZeum: Tyler Kieffer; bringing together recorded voice, spoken voice, and background music into a collage in The Untitled Project: Tyler Kieffer; and ... merging voices, sound effects, loops and his own music to create a shifting aural space in Sister Sandman Please: Chris Ross-Ewart.

Music and Movement: We don’t always get both, but it can make for entrancing theater when we do: MuZeum featured essential music by Anita Shastri, played on stage by a crew of musicians/actors and interacted with by the actors; The Untitled Project used recorded music tellingly and featured a show-stopping dance sequence by Ato Blankson-Wood; The Medium presented a stirring reduction of Menotti’s score into a solo piano tour de force by Jill Brunelle, expressive miming from José Ramón Sabín Lestayo, and impressive vocals from the cast; Sister Sandman Please benefited from Chris Ross-Ewart’s compositions amidst the aural textures, and delighted with a raucous “O Holy Night” from Ashley Chang; and ... Solo Bach showcased Zou Yu’s amazing solo violin performances, combined with the inventive, cryptic and dramatic choreography by Shayna Keller and her actor/dancers: Paul Cooper, Chalia La Tour, Julian Elijah Martinez, Leora Morris.

Special Effects: An ad hoc category that includes whatever doesn’t fit into other categories, such as: the combination of lights and star chart backdrop to create a sense of wonder in Touch: Joey Moro; the evocative projections-as-scenery in Solo Bach: Rasean Davonte Johnson; the B-movie monster ticks and blood and projections and other effects in The Zero Scenario: Rasean Davonte Johnson, Mike Paddock; the varied creepy puppets, hand-held and string-operated, in Leonce and Lena: Emily Baldasarra; and ... the use of projections and clips to tell stories and create context with images in The Untitled Project: Rasean Davonte Johnson.

Acting (ensemble): Ideally, the acting in a play is a group affair, in which everyone plays a part, of course. Still, it’s worth remarking on when a cast is more than the sum of its parts, as in these shows: Look Up, Speak Nicely and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, the big kick-off extravaganza of the season featured a gallery of colorful characters by Sarah Williams, Celeste Arias, Aubie Merrylees, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Melanie Field, Andrej Visky, Libby Peterson; The Zero Scenario, the crowd-pleasing first semester closer, pulled out all the stops with Ariana Venturi, Tom Pecinka, Sara Holdren, Ankur Sharma, Aaron Profumo, Emily Zemba, Ryan Campbell; The Untitled Project, an ensemble-derived show that focused on the subtle distinctions and broad stereotypes of race, was created and enacted by Taylor Barfield, Ato Blankson-Wood, Cornelius Davidson, Leland Fowler, Jiréh Breon Holder, Phillip Howze, Galen Kane; Leonce and Lena, in which actors and puppet-handler/actors interacted to create a zany theatrical world of kingdoms and encounters, with Sebastian Arboleda, Juliana Canfield, David Clauson, Anna Crivelli, Ricardo Dávila, Edmund Donovan, Josh Goulding, Steven C. Koernig, Lynda A.H. Paul, Nahuel Telleria; and ... Hotel Nepenthe, a comic tour de force of changing roles, repeating characters, and linked situations that ran from the creepy to the farcical, all created with manic intensity by Bradley James Tejeda, Annelise Lawson, Emily Reeder, Galen Kane.

Acting (individual): For individual performances, I’m going with some standouts, whether in accomplished ensemble work, or showcased in two-handers, or in the unrelenting spotlight of the solo show. Ladies first: Celeste Arias, hilarious as an unhinged mommie dearest in Look Up, Speak Nicely and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time; Sydney Lemmon, riveting as Mme Merteuil but even more so as Mme Merteuil/Valmont in Quartet; Maura Hooper, chameleonic as a series of characters, including a disaffected nun and a happy hooker, in Shiny Objects; Zenzi Williams, demonstrating a range of attitudes in four characters, from spiritual to demur to quietly confident in Shiny Objects, and ... Tiffany Mack, unforgettable as a heart-wrenching victim of an acid attack in MuZeum.

Acting (individual): And from the men: Jonathan Majors, finding himself in an unbearable situation and quietly going to pieces in Touch; Tom Pecinka as a highly verbal passenger monologuing his anxiety in The Zero Scenario; Edmund Donovan, riveting as Valmont but even more so as Valmont/Mme de Tourvel in Quartet; Ricardo Dávila as the slippery, caustic and fascinating Valerio in Leonce and Lena; and ... Leland Fowler as a stand-up guy feeling the longings of the jailed and acting out a quick lesson in family history and racism in 50:13.

Directing: For the vision behind the whole shebang that makes it all hang together, we celebrate directors: for the all-out campy and creepy charm of Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time: Ato Blankson-Wood; for keeping the hopscotch logic and many shifts in tone of Hotel Nepenthe on point: Rachel Carpman; for creating the interplay of stories, including humor, confrontation, and violence in MuZeum: Ankur Sharma; for showing a dramatic and thoughtful grasp of the resilience of a human spirit trapped in a cage in 50:13: Jonathan Majors; and ... for providing the comic highpoint of the season with wild charm, horror surprises and relentless verve in The Zero Scenario: Sara Holdren.

Production: From the above, it’s obvious which shows seemed tops to me, but to bring them all together for a final nod: Hotel Nepenthe, Sarah Williams, producer, Taylor Barfield, dramaturg, Avery Trunko, stage manager, the kind of shifting and surprising show that keeps me coming back to theater; MuZeum, Anita Shastri, producer, Maria Ines Marques, dramaturg, Emily DeNardo, stage manager, a strong and cathartic import to our shores; The Zero Scenario, Ahn Lê, producer, Helen Jaksch and Nahuel Telleria, dramaturgs, Anita Shastri, stage manager, a crazy sci-fi ride that screams “sequel!”; 50:13, Jason Najjoum, producer, Taylor Barfield, dramaturg, Lauren E. Banks, stage manager, an important and meaningful addition to the one-person play and the "black lives matter" movement; and ... Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, Kelly Kerwin, producer, Nahuel Telleria, dramaturg, Avery Trunko stage manager, “the gang’s all here” type of theater, presenting a lively riff on the rigors of growing up female in our media-ized Wonderland.

Thanks again to our hosts for 18 weekends—plus a Drag Show: Molly Hennighausen, Will Rucker, Tyler Kieffer, and Hugh Farrell. And ... see you next season, at the Cab!

The Yale Cabaret Season 47 September 18, 2014-April 25, 2015

Tales from the Dark Side

Review of American Gothic at the Yale Cabaret American Gothic, the third offering by the Yale Cabaret this season, brings together three tales by renowned short story writers: Raymond Carver’s “Popular Mechanics,” (also known as “The Little Things”), Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and Jorge Luis Borges’ “El Sur” (“The South”). The show also brings together three creative disciplines: Nahuel Telleria, director and adapter (School of Drama), Sam Vernon (School of Art), and Sam Suggs (School of Music). The presentation, in front of a large curtain-like backdrop that is actually a sculpture by visual artist Vernon, presents a sense of “Gothic” as it comes down to us from Gothic fiction, with the three actors in the play—Kevin Hourigan, Libby Peterson, Jenny Schmidt—arriving gowned in hooded robes and carrying candles. Once revealed, their faces, pale with make-up, sport dark-rimmed eyes, giving a ghoulish cast to the proceedings. Suggs’ musical score is at times a fourth character, providing much of the dominant mood.

But are these stories really “Gothic” in that ghostly sense? Granted, they all three present situations that are tense with threats, with a feel for the darker, perhaps grotesque, aspects of life. But only Borges’ tale, which gets short-shrift, plot-wise, in the proceedings, is an outright “Gothic” tale, in the manner of, for instance, Poe. It’s a story of what may be a deathbed experience that becomes fraught with the kind of peril that may be mind-forged. As the closing tale, “The South,” with dramatic visual effects and voice-overs, segues into the end of the play, wherein the very production itself seems to become a phantasmagoria born of a book.

Sometimes a narrator reads from the book before the actors take over, as in the lengthiest segment, the O’Connor story, and the precise minimalism of the production, with its significant props and moody lighting by Joey Moro, works to set-off the fact that stories, even when played on stage, take place primarily in the audience’s imagination. One could say American Gothic relies on that kind of inner transformation more than most drama does.

The Carver story, because of its simplicity, comes across well as a mimed enactment of the narrative. A brief account of a couple at odds with one another that comes to focus on who will get the child, the story has the feel of a folk tale and, in its grip on a certain desperation, shows us that we’re in the world of “Southern Gothic.” The tale ends cryptically but, we assume, horribly. So move along to one of the stories that defines the genre, O’Connor’s “Good Man.”

With the cast of three taking on the five roles in the family—comprised of a married couple, their two children, and the husband’s mother—acting out the story as it's narrated, the dramatization feels a bit like “storytime.” But what a story. Hourigan, sort of insipid as the father, does a convincing transformation into “The Misfit,” a criminal at large that the family encounters after a freak accident on the road to Florida. The story has long been noted as an example of Southern Gothic with its well-detailed grasp of the persons in a certain milieu—here a somewhat dysfunctional lower middle-class family dynamic—thrown against the kind of malevolence that, real enough, feels like fatalism. O’Connor keeps a knowing grasp of her characters so that there is even grim humor in its horrific conclusion.

The special features of the show—the installation art, the score, the projections (Jon Roberts, James Lanius)—go a long way to make American Gothic an interestingly atmospheric production, though how the three tales hang together—without a Rod Serling figure putting it in a nutshell—is, perhaps fittingly, left to the viewer’s imagination.

American Gothic Conceived by Eli Epstein-Deutsch and Nahuel Telleria Directed by Nahuel Telleria

Dramaturg: David Clauson; Choreographer: Anita Shastri; Installation Artist: Sam Vernon; Costumes: Steven Rotramel; Lights: Joey Moro; Composer: Sam Suggs; Sound: Nok Kanchanabanca, Jon Roberts; Projections: Jon Roberts; Associate Projections: James Lanius; Stage Manager: Anita Shastri; Technical Director: Sam Lazar; Producers: Jason Najjoum, Libby Peterson; Production Manager: James Lanius III

Yale Cabaret October 9-11, 2014

Mommie Dearest

The Yale Cabaret is back, kicking off their new season this weekend with Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time, a new play by Emily Zemba, third-year playwright in YSD, and directed by Ato Blankson-Wood, a third-year actor. The play places Liddy (Sarah Williams)—younger sister of Alice (Libby Peterson)—in the snares of a beauty pageant for children when her older sister, according to their mother (Celeste Arias), fell down a hole and “isn’t coming back.” Liddy, with misgivings, is game—anything to please Mom. The majority of the play depicts for her, and us, just what she has let herself in for.

It’s campy, zany fun rife with cultural references that zing and swirl as we, with Liddy, try to get our bearings. We (I’m assuming) have the benefit of knowing something about Alice in Wonderland, so we’re not as out of our depth as Liddy is when confronting new characterizations of Lewis Carroll’s characters: Aubie Merrylees’ White Rabbit is hilariously manic with verbal tics, odd voices—some reminiscent of Jeremy in Yellow Submarine (Merrylees speaks to an invisible “Jeremy” over his headset)—and a cute little cottontail on his white hot-pants; Shaunette Reneé Wilson’s Tweddle-dee/dum is an aggressive schizo who has maybe been in just a few too many pageants; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s MC Hattah looks like he could be Captain Hook and moves like he wants to be James Brown, and also manifests as a preacher and as a creepy befriender to befuddled Liddy; Andrej Visky’s Caterpillar Custodian does a softshoe mime routine with a broom (reminding me of the Lorenzo TV show but there’s no way this cast could know that, is there?)—and actually tries to be helpful, in a “there’s no place like home” fashion, to Liddy. Then there’s Mom as a Red Queen who has a few schizoid tendencies herself, one minute a beseeching Blanche Dubois, the next ready to belt like Ethel Merman as Gypsy Rose Lee, all while remaining a Southern Lady who only wants—desperately—what’s best for her beloved daughter—and the higher the heels, the better. And as the White Queen Melanie Field preens and pouts, representing the truly psychotic aspect of these mothers living vicariously through the cosmeticized beauty and poise of their little pre-teens. Or even pre-double digits. Oddly, the parts of the sisters seem a bit underwritten, with Williams suitably childish and Peterson a bit peremptory (as perhaps only older siblings can be). Her little aria about the demonic qualities of the looking-glass are accompanied by a very suitable soundtrack.

The set is a minor miracle in its own right as it creates a stage door where there is no door. The layout of the Cab generally only affords two exits/entrances—both of which are also fire exits—but Kurt Boetcher’s set for Look Up… has the cast coming in and out through a great curtained area at one end as well as a cartoonish set of stairs that takes them in and out of what is actually a window. Though I’m familiar with the Cab layout, it took some time for that fact to sink in. That’s part of the charm of the topsy-turvy world of Look Up… and costumes that combine the talents of Soule Golden and Montana Blanco will keep you entertained.

But it’s not all for laughs. The cult of glam and youth that causes mothers to make dress-up dolls of their children is in poor taste, if nothing else, and Zemba’s play is at its most barbed in depicting the toxic relation between these Queen Mothers and their hapless offspring; the more baleful side—wherein pre-pubscent girls are tricked out as miniature Lolitas—is underscored by the creatures of Lewis Carroll’s imaginary: Carroll, in his own person as Charles Dodgson, has been presumed by some a borderline pedophile with a penchant for pretty little girls—such as 11-year-old Alice Liddell, the model for his fictional Alice. MC Hattah’s brief “Billy Jean” inspired moonwalk might put us in mind of other “harmless” friendships between those too young to consent and those old enough to know better.

Yet it would be wrong to see the play as polemical or predominantly satirical. It’s primarily a fantasia, much as Carroll’s endlessly entertaining Alice books are, and that means an occasion to indulge imaginative sallies about childhood, motherhood, dressing up (in all it’s theatrical aspects, including drag), playacting, and those mysterious “judges” out there in the shadowy areas off-stage who ultimately determine who wins and who loses in show-biz.

Look Up, Speak Nicely, and Don’t Twiddle Your Fingers All the Time Written by Emily Zemba Directed by Ato Blankson-Wood

Dramaturg: Nahuel Telleria; Set: Kurt Boetcher; Lights: Joey Moro; Sound: Kate Marvin; Costumes: Soule Golden, Montana Blanco; Projections: Kristen Ferguson; Stage Manager: Avery Trunko; Producer: Kelly Kerwin

Yale Cabaret September 18-20, 2014