Consider noirish 'Breed With Me' your anti-Claus

December 18, 2009|By Kerry Reid, SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE

"Breed With Me" ***


Writer/director Bob Fisher and his company, the Mammals, present "Breed With Me," part of a "noir triptych" that Fisher has been working on for several years. This is a remount of a show Fisher first staged in 2003. I saw "Devils Don't Forget," another third of the triptych, earlier this year, and this latest demonstrates Fisher's command of the broken poetry of classic, hard-boiled Chandleresque dialogue. The pieces are self-contained stories but share a clammy mind-bending aura enhanced by the basement studio where the Mammals scurry about. The shadow plays that unfold behind the scrim on the rear wall of the tiny playing area enhance the creepy sensation of being watched by unseen eyes -- a perfect poor-theater alternative to big-budget effects.

Set in a vague dusty corner of the 1950s American West, "Breed With Me" follows a yearbook photographer (Ron Kroll) with a prurient interest in the high school girls he shoots who falls into the clutches of an alien femme fatale (Sara Gorsky), bent on replicating her blood line by impregnating a series of men. The ghost of an FBI agent (Dennis Frymire) already done in by the Doll tries to warn the shutterbug about his captor. "Most dames can play games, but this dirty skirt has got games you don't want to know."

A cross between Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard" and the Borg Queen in "Star Trek," Gorsky is a sensation, clad in an ivory dress and turban that enhances her chalk-white complexion. (Adam Dodds created the period-perfect costumes and otherworldly makeup.) In one stand-out monologue, the Doll practices her seduction techniques, delivering a series of hilariously profane come-on lines (enhanced by the headset mike she wears) while jerkily trying to replicate cheesecake poses. It's a subtle but wholly effective slice of feminist film commentary, wrapped inside a grotesque little story that, while definitely not for everyone, should be a must-see for horror and noir fans alike.

Through Jan. 23 at Zoo Studio, 4001 N. Ravenswood Ave.; Ste. B-1. $15 at 866-593-4614

"No Longer the Rock of the World" and "Dead to the World" ***

Beau O'Reilly penned this pair of one-acts for Curious Theatre Branch, and both ably demonstrate O'Reilly's nonpareil knack for anatomizing the dialectics of isolation. In "No Longer the Rock of the World," Carol (KellyAnn Corcoran), the grieving widow of a performance artist, confronts her dead husband's brother, Charles (Guy Massey) on the day of the funeral -- a day she has spent curled up in the fetal position listening to the music the dead Walter composed for Elsie, a singer who shared Walter's interest in "two-chord structures." The raw minimalism of the songs, performed live by pianist Julian Berke and singer Jenny Magnus (who alternates with Sofie Senard), enhances the bipolar emotional timbre of the play, particularly in the lyric "Muddy when it rains, and dusty when it don't."

There are faint echoes of Lanford Wilson's "Burn This" in the story. The wounded but vinegary duo deliver verbal sticks of the shiv as they try to unravel the mystery behind the man neither of them fully understood. Corcoran and Massey work the postage-stamp space with spare but effective physical grace, drawing us into their characters' divergent lives.

But "Dead to the World" is the real knock-out punch. Kate Teichman crosses genders to play a male dishwasher, caught up in an urban landscape where mundane annoyances (the woman down the hall who complains about the music) start taking on nightmare overtones. Ex-lovers (one with "blue veins jumping and beautiful, like a heavenly Etch A Sketch"), sad-eyed women on the bus and a host of other fleeting presences flicker through the story, delivered by the owlish Teichman with a febrile intensity and mordant wit reminiscent of the narrator in Dostoevski's "Notes from Underground." It's one of the most haunting and watchable performances I've seen in a long time.

Through Jan. 3 at Center Portion Gallery, 2850 1/2 W. Fullerton Ave.; $15 or pay-what-you-can at 773-508-0666 or curioustheatrebranch.com