Tag Archives: Jaimelyn Gray

Death by Christmas

photo by Jake Badovski

by Jeff Grygny

SOCIAL MEDIA STUNT CAUSES FATAL PLUNGE!

WOMAN COOKS TO DEATH IN ELECTRIC BLANKET!

MALL SANTA RUNS AMOK!

These and similar tabloid tales, all in the key of human folly, are brought to twitching life by The Constructivists in the second iteration of their seasonal revue, A Very Deadly Constructivists Holiday. It’s a bit Dickens, a bit Twilight Zone, and a lot of Mad Magazine. If you’re a hipster who appreciates the films of Michael Haneke, thinks Bojack Horseman was brilliant, and loved  NPRs Annoying  Music Show, this performance would be your refuge from all things peppermint and pine-scented.

Now in their seventh season, The Constructivists are one of the last survivors of Milwaukee’s once-thriving alternative theater scene. They’ve always had a dark, edgy vibe, often detailing with ruthless precision how ordinary people can so quickly spiral down into horrible behavior. This show was created by the ensemble, with a concept by Artistic Director Jaimelyn Gray and prompts from Chicago-based Director Andrew Hobgood and Playwright Joe Lino, who bring the sharp bite of their hometown’s comedy style. The players were tasked with developing characters based on one of the Seven Deadly Sins (without being too literal), and setting them in stories related to Christmas. The result is a creative mash-up of pop culture that brutally skewers our collective obsession with getting ahead.

photo by Jake Badovski

The pastiche of A Charlie Brown Christmas as performed by the Garbage Pail Kids could be pretty painful to watch, as the beloved characters wallow in the pits of social media madness. Likewise, seeing I Love Lucy turned into a tawdry tale of catfishing, contract killing, and real estate envy, you might wince a little —or find it hilarious, depending on your tastes. A skit based on the anodyne comfort of Hallmark holiday movies hits its (easy) target cleanly and effectively. We humans sure can be dumb schmucks, can’t we? But considering that the show’s creative process coincided with the presidential election, the general misanthropic mood is pretty understandable.

The show conjures a dingy nightclub setting.  Bill Molitor plays the master of ceremonies as a sinister game show host in a rumbled Santa coat. With the cynicism of a cheap attorney, he pulls people out of the audience and makes them dance. They are clearly all on the “naughty” list, and they get prizes that are emblematic of each one’s particular fatal vice. Andrea Ewald plays a pompous “Karen,” tying the show together with her representation of the sin of pride. Haley Ebinal slathers on the pathos, both in her roles as “Carly Beige” in the totally-not-Peanuts knock-off, and as a little boy with no hands in the Hallmark holiday movie spoof, in which Emily Mertens totally commits to her character’s unhealthy attachment to all things cozy and Christmassy. Joe Lino anchors every sketch he appears in with understated confidence, while Nate Press shows his formidable acting chops, channeling Travis Buckle in a monologue about a demon of wrath.  

The foundational Christian holiday has always been fertile ground for moralists, from medieval  clerics scolding the peasants’ drunken revelry, to Dickens calling out the greedy, to modern fundamentalists damning the infidels. It’s an occasion to recognize just how often we fall short of the transcendent ideals of selflessness and brotherly love; or how, as in the ancient pagan solstice, the light dances in just when it looks like the darkness will last forever. But in our age of the metastasized mega-holiday industrial complex, colonizing our fantasies and vampirizing our desires, who can blame anyone if the season brings stress and disappointment? Maybe makes it easier to act a bit greedy and entitled? Perhaps we need figures like Krampus and Black Peter to take the self-centered jerks down, to scare us into a little self-reflection and remind us— as the cast sings in their final song, to the tune of “White Christmas” —“don’t be that asshole.”

Not as rousing a message as Dickens or Doctor Seuss deliver, but these are the times we live in.

Unfortunately, this show has finished its run— but we can look forward to next year’s incarnation: it’s sure to be bigger, bolder, and with even more bile!

The Constructivists present

A Very Deadly Constructivists Holiday

Conceived by Jaimelyn Gray
Directed by Andrew Hobgood

Curated, Devised, and Written by Andrea Ewald, Andrew Hobgood, Anya Palmer, Emily Mertens, Haley Ebinal, Jaimelyn Gray, Joe Lino, Kristina Hinako, Ky Peters, Nate Press, and William Molitor

Oconomowoc End Times Singalong

Photo by Christal Wagner Photography

by Jeff Grygny

We sign the roster and get our name tags, receive sheet music for “99 Luftballons” —in the original German—and are sorted into our sections: soprano, alto, tenor, et cetera. The room is the archetypal church basement of millions of meetings: bare walls, fluorescent lights, gray metal folding chairs, and that distinctive pebbly floor that looks like it was made to withstand a nuclear blast. “NO FUN” proclaims a large flip chart in magic marker. It could be the setting for any community theater, bible study group, or AA meeting, or but it’s a rehearsal for the Oconomowoc a cappella group; a band of small town citizens who just want to sing, but who will find themselves helpless as their rehearsal devolves into a maelstrom of dysfunction and madness. How could anything good happen in this stark denatured room?

It’s an original production by the risk-inclined The Constructivists, with the complete title A Cappocalypse! Or. . . Oconowocappella’s A Cappella Practice has Been Canceled. This satirical farce was created by the company under the guidance of Andrew Hobgood of Chicago’s New Colony and Actor/Playwright Joe Lino. Over the course of a year, the players created characters with full back stories, relationships, and histories going back generations to create a fleshed-out fictional universe of small town life, where everyone knows everyone. The result is sort of like a hologram: every part contains the whole thing. And so it’s also a cartoonish parody of 21st Century America.

We see a spectrum of mashed-up stereotypes: the abusive micromanaging director from the “loudest voice” school of management; the masochistic follower with short-term memory loss; the buttoned-up nerd; the brash social influencer; the crunchy stoner; the survivalist nutjob. In all the bickering about rules of order and shallowly simmering grudges, “99 Luftballons” is all but forgotten. It’s a nightmare of small group dysfunction, and, in a cringy sort of way, often very funny.

 Under Jaimelyn Gray’s skillful direction, the company is committed and energetic. The action moves along propulsively, and the satire’s sharp teeth find many a tender spot—though they don’t bite too hard. The actors play with great confidence in their concocted world.  Matthew Scales and Andrea Ewald as the Director and “Assistant to the Assistant,” seem locked in a little Beckett play with notes of The Office. Anya Palmer’s social media influencer storms into the rehearsal with cell phone blazing, seemingly in her own little show.

Kellie Wambold gives her conspiracy theorist a feverish intensity, like Peanuts’ Lucy on steroids, creating her own cult in the course of the play. When you live in a world of dirty little secrets, paranoia actually seems sensible, and fearful people will grasp at almost anything that offers meaning. Clayton Mortl’s understated comic timing is the show’s secret spice. And in the role of the local big fish, whose claim to fame is that he appeared on America’s Got Talent, co-playwright Joe Lino’s smile conceals a Machiavellian will to power.

As the rehearsal convulses into Lord of the Flies territory, We’re left contemplating how the world got into it’s current state. The Roman Empire could blame lead in the pipes for its fall. What can we point to? Toxic masculinity? “Wokeism?” The internet? We can yell about them all, but one thing is clear: We’ve got to stop meeting in that church basement.

Heute zieh ich meine Runden
Seh die Welt in Truemmern liegen
Hab’ nen Luftballon gefunden
Denk’ an Dich und lass’ ihn fliegen

The Constructivists present

A Cappelocalypse! Or, Oconowocappella’s A Capella Practice has Been Canceled

Created by Andrew Hobgood and Joe Lino

playing through April 6

www.theconstructivists.org

or call 414.858.6874

Sexual Perversity in Cyberspace

Christal Wagner Photography

by Jeff Grygny

Have you ever longed for a place where you could be your real self, free of society’s rules and  definitions of who you’re supposed to be? Welcome to The Nether, Jennifer Haley’s amazing, frighteningly smart play (whose three-week run was sadly cut short by the pangolin plague). And while we might have all kinds of fantasies of freedom from rules, Haley digs into what exactly that might mean—in the process uncovering a whole worm’s nest of squirming quandaries involving our bodies, our identities, and our technology.

If there is a single word for this play, it has two syllables: the first is “mind” and the second rhymes with “luck.” Haley has written for the techno-creepy TV series Dark Mirror, and it’s evident, both in the story’s subject matter and in the efficient movement of character and narrative that consistently shows, but doesn’t tell, its themes. There are so many ideas here, you might have had the repeated sensation of your brain ballooning into space with each gobsmacking realization, right up to the surprisingly poignant final scene.

Director Jaimelyn Gray conducts a skilled cast in a tight, disciplined chamber piece, exquisitely paced and rich with contradictory emotions laid out for our delectation. Mr. Sims (nod to the online role-play game clearly intended), is the “host” of a very exclusive corner of ‘The Nether,” a sensory-immersive virtual world where you can appear as any avatar you can imagine. This place is a tidy reproduction of a Victorian manor, its “clients” strictly regulated to conform to the dress and manners of the time. It’s charming—but why are there so many children, and why are they so friendly and complaisant? And what is that bloody axe doing in the bedroom?

The plot unfolds like a procedural, shuttling between the Nether and an interrogation room of the Nether’s regulatory division. As an agent investigating Sims, Maya Danks is like a charged coiled wire; a dangerous and powerful foil for Sims, as played with righteous authority by Robert W.C. Kennedy. Their intellectual thrust-and-riposte provides much of the play’s electricity. Within the Nether, where Sims goes by the handle “Papa,” we meet one of his girls, a complicated entity called Iris, in a fearless, subtle performance by Rebekah Farr.

This chilling scenario plays out so many problems surrounding digital media, it could be the basis for a college course on the ethics of technology: game addiction, catfishing, porn, escapism, alienation, the dilemmas of regulating online behavior. Beyond that, what is identity anyway, if it can become unmoored from flesh? Reality in this indeterminate future world does not seem to be a very nice place; characters fleetingly express their nostalgia for trees, and there’s reference to the practice of  “fading:” hooking up your body to life support and vanishing entirely into virtual reality.

The Nether poses hard problems, but ultimately, like all good dystopian fiction, it asks us to think about the world we’re headed to. Is reality so unappealing that so many people are desperate to get away from it?

The Constructivists present

The Nether

by Jennifer Haley

Alas, this production is now closed