Mindgame

The house lights came up; the plunking marimba sounds of Mike Duncan's movie-score music returned. It was intermission at Meadow Brook Theatre, and I was thoroughly spooked.

It doesn't take much time to start wondering what's really going on in Mindgame, the Anthony Horowitz play in its Michigan premiere. Major and minor clues are peppered through the first act, eventually leading one to realize that something is amiss. Writer Mark Styler (Loren Bass) has made the trip to secluded Fairfield, an asylum for the criminally insane, in order to unlock the secrets of the serial killer Easterman for his next lucrative true-crime book. Instead, he's stymied by Dr. Alex Farquhar (Mark Rademacher), who denies Mark access to the patients but keeps him talking, and Nurse Plimpton (Inga R. Wilson), who's both terrified and brusquely insistent that he depart. What begins as a long, indulgent talk between Mark and Dr. Farquhar is in fact laying out the complex groundwork for a reality in which nothing is as it appears. Once the story gets moving, it veers out of control, and — Here's the thing about reviewing a play in which unexpected things happen: you can't talk about anything for fear of spoilers. This one is best kept vague.

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Mr. Marmalade

The title Mr. Marmalade may be catchy, but make no mistake: this is Lucy's world; everyone else just lives in it. Accordingly, I found the opening moments of the Breathe Art Theatre Project's production misleading. The onstage presence of the title character (Joel Mitchell) before the play even begins suggests that Mr. Marmalade is the focal point, whereas the real omnipresence is four-year-old Lucy (Christa Coulter), the lens through which every stimulus passes.

Essentially, if Lucy's not interested in something, it doesn't exist. In her eyes, her New Jersey home consists of dull, empty walls and grown-up chairs with their backs to her domain. The play's ninety minutes cover less than twenty-four hours of real time, but for Lucy and her play world, timelines bend to her will. The primary challenge in director Kevin T. Young's staging is the unavoidable dissonance between the narrative structure mirroring a four-year-old's attention span and the deep investment in her real-seeming imaginary life. Coulter is sometimes an uncomplicated child, but just as often the preternaturally composed adult Lucy imagines herself to be, and the shifts are fluid, not overt. Young's blurred lines of make-believe and reality lend occasional unevenness (especially the inconsistent use of characters' "play" accents), but also generate an atmosphere of stream-of-consciousness immediacy that ultimately work for Noah Haidle's darkly comic script.

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Thursdays at Go Comedy!

Thursday nights at Go Comedy! occur in one-hour increments. Come at 8, 9, or 10 PM, and stay as long as you like. See one show for ten bucks, or see all three shows for ten bucks. Brief intermission-like breaks in between allow plenty of time to reset or to mingle with the performers, who hang out at the bar. Thursdays are easygoing, casual. Mind you, once on the stage, these aren't the Not-Ready-For-Weekend-Timeslot Players; this blend of Go regulars and area professionals has comedy prowess to spare.

At this shrine to improvisation, Thursdays were originally set aside for sketch comedy. The new lineup remains scripted, but has let go of the sketch concept for the time being in favor of three short plays, all written by local artists, and all with some flavor of comedy (c'mon, they're not going to rename the theater Go Drama! just for Thursday night). At 8:00, The Opal Show is restaged from BoxFest Detroit '09, written by Kim Carney and directed by Shannon Ferrante. The 9:00 spot belongs to Hobo, originally written and directed by Tim Robinson for the Planet Ant, now with a new cast and direction by Tommy LeRoy. Finally, Michelle LeRoy's brand-new Dial R for Radio Drama at 10:00 is billed as an "experimental improvised show," in which the script of the radio play can't account for what happens off the page.

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The Marvelous Wonderettes

For all its promotional material about cotton candy–colored dresses, the Gem Theatre's production of The Marvelous Wonderettes is actually quite analogous to a confection. The dancing and singing are a treat to see and hear, thanks to a talented cast and the best set I've ever seen at the Gem. The music is catchy and familiar, and jokes and sight gags keep the audience sated. However, underneath this sweet soundtrack lurk empty calories in the form of a wafer-thin premise.

Obviously the plot is not the selling point, but what keeps the show from being billed as a concert is the story and characters, so these elements invite dissection. The story — what little exists — is lame. Creator Roger Bean introduces us to the dimwitted one (why, yes, she is a blonde), the vampy attention hog, the bossy mousy one (glasses? check), and...the Ethel. Each girl is distinguished by her dress color better than she is by her name: just call 'em Blue, Pink, Orange, and Green. The four are high school frenemies and song leaders, class of '58. Their lives revolve around boys, and when those boys hurt their feelings, they sing away their troubles as the prom-night entertainment while dressed in matching pastel crinoline. At the school's ten-year reunion, the same boys have hurt their feelings again, so the estranged group sings some more, this time wearing marabou-trimmed, neon-bright costumes ostensibly stolen from a drag production of Mamma Mia! In a frankly weird choice, the lighter '50s songs of the first act are chosen to reflect the girls' state of mind, a sort of jukebox-confessional style, whereas in the second act, their very lives have been railroaded to fit the popular songs of the '60s; they've lived each number they sing, word for word. Early mentions of a "Judy" and a "Johnny" lead to the literal scenario described in "It's My Party," a stab at cleverness that makes the women's second-act woes seem like creepily foretold conclusions.

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Defending the Caveman

In the shadow of the lady-quartet musical in the larger space next door, Defending the Caveman enjoys far more modest surroundings. Booking these shows together is an interesting exercise — it's almost as though the glossy Who-ville is incomplete without a Grinch grumbling in his cave on Mt. Crumpet. Yet however amusing, such comparison belies the curious warmth of this one-man show currently in rotation at the Century Theatre.

The short two-act play begins with a wordless video montage, a series of vignettes featuring performer Ben Tedder and his wife. Its content correctly predicts that the show is not about to break new ground in its exploration of the sexes: Man like grill. Woman like shop. Like much of the subject matter covered, the video is cute but predictable. The Rob Becker–penned script puts forward, amid a bare setting generously inspired by cave paintings and the Flintstones, the theory that men and women are still rooted in our hunter-gatherer pasts. As hunters, men focus on one thing (spoiler: it's TV) to the exclusion of anything else; as gatherers, women collect information on their surroundings and make it their business to be aware of everything. It's almost as if men were from Mars, and women from Venus! Given a topic that's been done to death, the production counts on Tedder's performance to sell it, and he wins over the audience with ease.

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