June 09, 2005

SOME EXPLICIT POLAROIDS
the Celebration Theatre

Reviewed By Paul Birchall
Playwright Mark Ravenhill's drama reminds one at times of those Angry Young Men plays of the 1960s, in which a hero rages helplessly and unendingly against a politically conservative world of greed and cynicism. However, by contrast, Ravenhill now sets his sights on the corruption and smugness of the kids several generations on, suggesting that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

In 1984 young British anarchist Nick (Bryan Jennings) is convicted of assaulting a businessman (David Cramer) and is sentenced to 20 years in prison. When he's freed, years later, Nick discovers that he has remained the same, but the world has changed unimaginably. He first looks up his former anarchist gal pal Helen (Jill Cary Martin), but she has now become an unbelievably smug prospective Labor MP and has bought into every conventional belief that she previously fought against. Nick's "fish out of water"?like drifting takes him into the orbit of hedonistic young stripper Nadia (Erika Tai) and her pal Tim (Steven Parker). Tim, who is afflicted with HIV but refusing to take his pills, is engaged in a nihilistic life of total pleasure with his go-go boyfriend Victor (Keith Bennett).

Ravenhill's play isn't perfect: The narrative falters midway through, and the subplots feel artificially spun out. But this is a comparatively minor cavil, considering the power and force of his scathing philosophical worldview, which is powerfully conveyed in director Dave Barton's evocatively passionate production. Barton shrewdly depicts a generation whose natural idealism has become subordinated to corporate obedience, trivial pursuits, and trash culture.

Although the performers often appear to be awkwardly wrestling their working-class British accents?the accents sometimes gaining the upper hand?the emotions portrayed possess a searing, believable truthfulness. Tai, Parker, and Bennett are marvelous, depicting a trio of silly people who think they're having a good time when they're just building a sandcastle against deep despair. Martin brings an unexpected sadness to her turn as Helen, as she comes to grips with the idea that she has inevitably become the enemy she once hated. Jennings, as a former dangerous political activist, now gone badly to seed and out of step with the world around him, is rich with pathos as Nick.

"Some Explicit Polaroids," presented by Rude Guerrilla Theater Company at the Celebration Theatre, 7051 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2:30 p.m. Jun. 3-Jul. 9. $20. (213) 446-8869.

The warning of "nudity and sexual situations" is certain to
guarantee an audience for "Some Explicit Polaroids," although this
production's juggling of strippers, Ecstasy, AIDS, go-go boys,
assassination and anarchy -- as well as the eternal search for love
-- is never quite satirical or incisive enough.
The play bursts into life to the sneering tones of the Sex Pistols'
"Anarchy in the U.K." A man in a leather jacket sits in darkness
onstage, and when the lights come up he draws a gun and shoots
directly at the audience. The gunman is Nick (Bryan Jennings), fresh
out of prison after some 15 years and already imposing himself on
former girlfriend Helen (Jill Cary Martin).
Time has changed her: She's now a local politician who wants to make
it to Parliament, and ex-con anarchists who want to "Eat the Rich"
aren't her cup of tea anymore.
At the airport, the energetic Victor (Keith Bennett) -- "great body,
crazy guy" -- has arrived from Russia to meet his online
buyer/lover, Tim (Steven Parker) but instead meets Tim's best friend
Nadia (Erika Tai). She's borderline desperate and only feels "love"
when she offers her body to people as if it were a handful of candy.
Tim arrives soon after with a real bag of candy -- and Ecstasy --
and an interesting menage a trois forms.
The first great twist comes when MP Jonathan (David Cramer) talks to
Helen about her political aspirations, then pointedly asks her where
Nick is living, putting these people on a collision course.
In different ways, they are all products of a state system -- a
system they rely on in the same way that Nadia relies on makeup to
cover the bruises from her (unseen) boyfriend. Be it hospitals,
prison or Parliament, a system controls all their lives, and Nick
can't understand why nothing's changed since he was inside.
The stage is decorated in the red, white and blue of the Union Jack,
and pictures of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair adorn the walls
alongside anarchist slogans and symbols.
Decor echoes the lack of overall coherence in the text. Ravenhill,
whose debut play "Shopping and Fucking" was an infamous worldwide
success, doesn't write well enough for the female roles. Helen is
little more than an outdated, irrelevant Thatcher wannabe, and with
only a Madonna/whore parallel between them, neither Martin nor Tai
has much to work with.
Dave Barton's lackluster direction doesn't elevate them above being
a titillating sideshow for the male machinations, and the actors'
wavering English accents don't help them either. However, Jennings'
excellent accent adds greatly to his convincing performance.
Play's second half is much more involving, with Parker and Bennett
sharing a moving and effective death scene that echoes "Six Feet
Under" and "Angels in America" and produces the only real emotion
and empathetic moment for the audience.
The overall experience is more gratuitous than revolutionary.

FRONTIERS

Rude Guerrilla takes '03 show on the road

The Orange County troupe reprises 'Some Explicit Polaroids' at the Celebration Theatre in West Hollywood.

 By ERIC MARCHESE

Special to the Register

 For the second consecutive summer, Orange County- based Rude Guerrilla Theater Company has mounted a production at a Los Angeles venue.

 Unlike last year's "Blasted," though, Rude Guerrilla's staging of "Some Explicit Polaroids" at the 66-seat Celebration Theatre in Hollywood is an encore of a successful previous production, one the troupe staged at its Santa Ana home in early 2003.

 Dave Barton, the company's artistic director and the director of both productions, said Mark Ravenhill's seriocomic, 1999 play, "a hit the first time around," was "even more relevant now." U.S. involvement in Iraq, he said, has underscored the play's theme of political disillusionment while making the overall tone more melancholy.

 Even with the original cast, Barton said, he and his actors have brought subtle changes to the play's tone and to what each character represents. "We've really looked for things we may have missed the first time around."

 Barton said that, "Polaroids" included, Rude Guerrilla has produced more plays by Ravenhill, a British playwright, than any other theater in the nation - five in all, including two U.S. and two Orange County premieres. The original staging of "Polaroids" was a California premiere, and its current revival is a Los Angeles premiere.

http://www.Flavorpill.com

Ecstasy, booze, strippers, prostitutes, go-go boys, AIDS, anarchists, and assassinations — all the makings of a typical Rude Guerrilla production. In Some Explicit Polaroids, playwright Mark Ravenhill, for his revolutionary shocker Shopping and Fucking contrasts the angry and radical ideals of an anarchist holdover from '80s London against the self-indulgent and disaffected youth of our current times. Director Dave Barton zeroes in on the torment of these seemingly vapid souls by relentlessly careening the characters towards self-destruction and then exploring their pain and desperation with a naked and delicate honesty. A fearless ensemble of actors pulls off the daunting challenges of Ravenhill's text with brutal grace. (ASM)

LA WEEKLY

 New! Recommended!

Brit playwright Mark Ravenhill’s work hasn’t been seen in these parts since his Shopping and Fucking played at the Celebration Theater in 2001. Now at the same theater, Orange County’s Rude Guer[r]illa Theater Company presents Ravenhill’s Some Explicit Polaroids, also a brutal satire about consumerism, cultural displacement and AIDS. The comedy comes in quips, like in one about a 7-year-old selling drugs to finance his PlayStation, while the drama concerns the return of gentle lug Nick (the flawless Bryan Jennings) to his former flame, Helen (Jill Cary Martin), after years in prison for slicing up [corporate CEO] (David Cramer) as part of a very angry political movement. Poor Nick’s now out of it, since the culture has moved on from punk rage to New Age truisms about self-fulfillment and doing what you can with what you’ve got. Which is why Helen has become a petty bureaucrat, hoping for a run as an MP. While avoiding a requested meeting with his victim, Nick hooks up with a stripper (Erika Tai), who’s friends with AIDS-stricken Tim (Steven Parker) and Tim’s smitten Russian trick, Victor (Keith Bennett). In all this shopping and fucking, where lies love? Or even human contact? The play’s age reveals itself in an extended, teary hospital scene that takes us back to the era of Rent. Such bathos notwithstanding, director Dave Barton serves up a polished production with only a few smudges — some wobbly accents, and a couple of actors not quite in their characters’ skin. The production design is terrific: Barton’s set design places the action on a Union Jack, painted into the stage floor. (Steven Leigh Morris)

INLA Magazine

It's a post-anarchist world, in which the young minds of today are not connected to anything, not fighting for anything. In its exploration of modern British society, Some Explicit Polaroids could be a commentary on the apathy of the new millennium, or a metaphor for simply growing up, as our idealistic youth fades into yuppiehood. It's a familiar feeling to watch these incredibly screwed up individuals undergo a confusing mass of events, suggesting that perhaps we all need a little bit of apocalyptic anarchy in our lives.

Director David Barton keeps a good hold of Mark Ravenhill's script, which threads together a story of a few insignificant people trying to create inner peace out of tumult. We try to piece together this world through the eyes of Nick (Bryan Jennings), an anarchist who has been in prison since 1984. While his old flame Helen (Jill Cary Martin) has moved on to a more mundane suburban lifestyle that does not include him, Nick wanders into the new world with a wary eye. When he falls head over heels for sexy Nadia (Erika Tai), a Cockney stripper with low self-esteem, he also gets tangled up in the lives of her best friend Tim (Steven Parker), and his lover Victor (Keith Bennett), a Slavic go-go boy with a self-proclaimed “beautiful body.”

Of course, Some Explicit Polaroids is rife with sex, drugs, and metaphysical questions about our place in the universe, which always promise some rich scenes. After some time, the characters' mooning about gets rather tiresome, to the point that the play stagnates with their whininess (falling in love with a stripper who seeks out abuse is so obviously not the way to achieve balance), but in a way, that fits well into commentary about today's self-indulgent world. Within all of the sadism and silliness, a serious backbone of desire and loss carries through, pulling it all together into a poignant exploration of the human condition. -- Sarika Chawla

OC WEEKLY

Some Explicit Polaroids

Anyone who claims theater is irrelevant hasn’t been listening to Mark Ravenhill. Easily the most compelling dramatist to emerge in the 1990s, the 39-year-old Ravenhill writes uncompromisingly disturbing, politically infused fare that urges lofty ideals like compassion, justice and social change while dramatizing some of the most degrading scenes imaginable. If the South Park generation ever decides to grow up and start meaning something, it may recognize Ravenhill as one of its primary literary icons.

The Rude Guerrilla Theater Co., Orange County’s most politicized theater troupe, is re-mounting its excellent production of Ravenhill’s best play, Some Explicit Polaroids, in Hollywood. The company will most likely lose money—Los Angeles may boast as much theater as any other metropolis, but it’s a bitch to get noticed. That’s a drag because this is a play that deserves attention.

Polaroids is really two plays in one. The first concerns the conflict between two middle-aged, former anarchists, one who hasn’t surrendered his passion for wanting to change things by blowing shit up, the other effecting change on a smaller level: working in local government to make sure the buses run on time. The second revolves around three kicks-seeking youths who reject any thoughts of political responsibility through reveling in drugs and sexual debauchery. Both plot lines are concerned with meaning in an apparently meaningless universe, and while Ravenhill convincingly shows how fucked and unfair the world is, ultimately he makes a case for getting off your ass and doing something about it.

Oh, yeah, there are also breasts, genitals, strippers, corpses getting jacked-off, coke binges, flamboyant queers going down on beautiful chicks while an AIDS victim listens from a hospital bed, and a brilliant distillation of Francis Fukuyama’s embracing of the Capitalistic ideal in his book The End of History and the Last Man. That ability to blend the prurient with the political is Ravenhill’s major talent, and it’s in full bloom in this very fine production.—Joel Beers