Theater Review by Michael Dale . . . .
Sometimes, if you’re lucky enough, you’ll witness a theatre experience that reaches far beyond the fourth wall of the stage and spills out through the venue and onto the street, sparking beloved memories of what used to be. So you’ll understand if I find myself unable to fully write about seeing the Off-Off-Broadway return of playwright/director Erik Champney’s Dead Brains without a bit of a preamble.
If you’re of my age, you’ll remember an Alphabet City of the 1980s and 90s that was teeming with live performances, with Avenue A serving as LES’s Broadway. If you didn’t have the extensive listings of the Village Voice handy, you could just walk around and read the Xeroxed flyers taped to street lights (before Mayor Giuliani slapped a $50 fine on the artists who posted them, as part of his campaign to improve the city’s quality of life) to see what loud garage band was playing at Brownie’s (names like Eve’s Plumb and Free Beer were good for attracting attention), who was featured at the Nuyorican Poets Café’ next slam or what drag character that guy Charles Busch was playing in his new show at The Limbo Lounge. (One of my fondest memories of the time was a midnight showing of his Gidget Goes Psychotic, later known as Psycho Beach Party.)
While I wasn’t a regular at Pyramid Club (most of my late-night hours were spent at SideWalk’s anti-folk open mics), I do recall it as a landmark center for attitude-laden drag and punk rock. Renamed Baker Falls after COVID forced Pyramid Club into permanent closure, the scheduling of Champney’s psychosexual thriller for Sunday performances suggests new management’s commitment to once again making the space a go-to spot for live music and theatre.
After taking in the cozy atmosphere of Baker Falls’ bar/café, I noticed the back room sported the familiar name Knitting Factory, this being the latest home for the popular East Village performance space that has settled into various locations throughout the last few decades. While waiting for the basement theatre to open, I enjoyed overhearing a loud, percussion-heavy garage rock band preparing for that evening’s gig.
Once downstairs at the Feverdream Lounge, I was immersed into designers Nick Boder and Deb Parker’s world of hip Victorian goth, with antique framed photos and fixtures hanging on classically decorative wallpaper. Rows of chairs are all on the same level, so it’s good to get there early for general admission seating.
Champney extends the Feverdream’s vibe onto the small stage with pieces that represent the New York loft apartment of the play’s central character, Henry (Jon Pratt) the kind of multimedia creator of conceptual gallery shows that inspired the old saying, “Yes, but is it art?”
The first of the 70 minute play’s three scenes define the relationship between Henry and his muse/lover/abuse target Philly (Charity Schubert), who he plans to display live in a bloody white frock masturbating with a bacon hook in his new gallery show, The Suffering of Women.
It’s a familiar situation upped to a more severe degree; the power-thirsty narcissist who believes being an artist allows no limitations to do whatever he likes in the name of creativity, and the enabler of low self-esteem who has turned to self-mutilation to deal with the complexities of their relationship.
Enter the naïve shoe salesman Corey (Dylan Godwin), who Henry sees as fresh meat to devour. When Philly finds the newbie in Henry’s apartment, she mistakes real physical violence for just another one of Henry’s artistic ventures.
While sex and violence permeate the proceedings, Champney’s staging shows restraint, when he could have easily dived into full-on Grand Guignol. When a gun is fired in one scene, an actor simply yells out, “Bang!” and we get the point.
I saw the second performance of Dead Brains and at that point it appeared the production hadn’t yet reached its rhythm. The press script provided says the playwright wants to convey an atmosphere that’s “mysteriously erotic” and that, “the air must always be filled with a sense of danger.”
The fine trio of actors seemed to be playing for more grounded realism than the stylized performances such words suggest, and the pacing of the production seemed to lag because of it. But that kind of sharpness usually gets honed with repetition before an audience. By the time you’re reading this, Dead Brains might be providing some crackling good thrills.
And one of the traditional features of Off-Off Broadway is that inexpensive ticket prices allow for sacrificing perfection for the sake of seeing something adventurous. Adventurous theatre should be encouraged, and even toasted. Conveniently, Feverdream Lounge has a small bar in the back of the house where you can do just that.
Dead Brains. Sunday nights at 7:30 pm through February 18 at Baker Falls, 101 Avenue A between 6th and 7th Streets. Running time: seventy minutes with no intermission. https://www.knittingfactory.com/tm-attraction/dead-brains/
Photos: Bryan Cash
